Johnny Cake # 1

Today was the first race of the Johnny Cake training race series that my club (http://www.cbrc.us/) puts on every Spring. We had good turn outs and exceptional weather. All in all, things went well, no serious crashes, and a good time was had by all. Race Promoter, Tom Butler, Race Director Tom Despart, and a host of CBRC volunteers did a superb job and started the season out on the right foot. Its been through these efforts that this race has grown in popularity and stature. Racers from all over the Northeast attended. Every year the race makes a donation to the David Brinkerhoff scholarship fund... a truly worthy cause for a NYS Trooper who lost his life in the line of duty. The scholarship will be given to an outstanding Coxsackie-Athens High School Graduate who is interested in majoring in criminal justice or the medical field.


This year, i filled in for our Club Treasurer and i handled non BikeReg registration duties. It was good to see a lot of familiar faces of folks that i have not seen for some months. I do have to make some purely biased comments and observations.... Please, racers, sign up on http://www.bikereg.com/. That's all i have to say. Well, one more thing.... bring your license to the race. And i will leave it at that. Well, maybe one more thing... i have a much greater appreciation for the hard work that our Treasurer and our registration volunteers put in for the numerous races that we run every year... including my own Schenectady Central Park Cyclocross race. Thanks again Harry and Margaret, and Deb, and Amanda, and Erica, and all you guys, you know who you are.

Chuck and i did a nice post-race ride... heading West towards Earlton and Catskill. Chuck knew of a nice road that a had a hill in its name that climbed up to a Christmas tree farm that he and his family had frequented. We found that road, climbed that hill and continued on. We had no plan nor destination other than to ride. We found some very picturesque roads and hills. Nothing is flat out there. We rode for a bit more and stopped to check the time... neither of us had a time piece, bike computer, cell phone, GPS device, heart rate monitor, or lap top computer with us, just a inkling to ride some. There was a soft voice (Jen) inside Chuck's helmet telling Chuck that he had house guests at home and he'd better not be out too late, so we turned to a more North easterly direction to find our way back to civilization, and to avoid the mean junk yard dog that chased some miles back, and to hopefully make progress towards returning to the school parking lot. After an unknown number of miles, we exited off a nice winding downhill gravely road onto Rt 81 which ran us right back to Coxsackie, almost like we knew what we were doing. Back at the parking lot... average speed? don't know... mileage? no clue.... maximum heart rate?... unknown.... What a nice ride.