A rare treat

I usually don’t do much bike riding if at all while on the road. I sort of have this personal rule against it for a number of reasons.
1) If I rode all the time then the other staff should get to also.
2) There is no room in the truck for all the staff bikes.
3) If the there is no room in the truck for staff bikes, then the only bikes left to ride are team spare bikes. Since I don’t want to be working on spare bikes all the time, I forbid that also.
4) The most important reason I don’t ride is that I do not want to give the riders any excuse. If I make a mistake fixing a bike for a race day, I want them to know it was an honest mistake. Not because I was out riding my bike. Then they would say something like “Vince was too lazy to fix my bike and went for a bike ride instead.” “That why my bike (fill in the blank for any rider) broke” I don’t really want to hear that.
This trip though I snuck my bike into the truck. OK, I broke my own rule. The only reason I did is because the riders are not here yet. Today Mike Neel and I went for a spin for an hour. It was great to be able to do that since I had been sitting in the truck seat for the past 55 hours driving here. Mike was hilarious to ride with. As all competitive bike riders (past and present) city limit signs are fun (and sometimes a necessity) to sprint for. Mike had the 6th sense and predicted most of the signs and kicked my ass for most of them. The most hilarious thing was his lack of fitness, After each city limit sprint he was gasping for air. I think I lost most of the sprints from laughing so hard from his efforts.