Friday Fuel Injection 4/27/2012- Charity Rides

Happy Friday!  It's me, Blackie Bike, here with this week's Friday Fuel Injection.
Buttercup and I are going to have a wet and chilly ride tomorrow in the End Hunger Calvert County charity bike ride.  We're doing the metric century (100km- 64miles) route.  This is always a great ride that is VERY well run and a lot of fun.
So let's take just a minute to focus on charity rides!

Fundraising!!

These rides help to provide more information and visibility to whatever cause they are supporting.  Hunger, Diabetes, a local shelter, animals, blindness, Veterans, and the list goes on.  Heck, there's even one put on every year in Boston from the Brain Tumor Association that we're going to go up and do some year!  But here's the deal- for a lot of them, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS RIDE.  There might be a small registration fee.  Some of them have fundraising goals- those run the gambit from $100-over $1000.  Just pick one that suits you.
Do you know somebody with a disease that has a prominent charity ride?  Dad has Diabetes?  A friend or co-worker has MS?  MD?  TB?  AIDS? Cancer?  Some guy who rides a bike who has a blog has/had a brain tumor?  Go ride.  Get them on board for support- maybe your co-worker will help you fund raise?  Maybe they'll come out and ring a cowbell for you?  Cheer?  Hold up embarrassing signs?  SWEET!
And use your social media connections for fundraising.  You'd be amazed at how much closer you can be to your goal with just a little ask.  Maybe your company will help out by letting everyone know?  Or matching donations?

All good stuff.  So we'll be out there in the rain and cold tomorrow morning (BC will be bundled up and I'll have those damn fenders on) out to help the members of our community who just need a little extra help!

So sign up for a charity ride for something that will provide some more incentive for you to GO RIDE YOUR BIKE!!

New Training Route!

Hey!  Blackie Bike here!  So Buttercup and I took advantage of the nice weather on Saturday and went and did some more exploring on some roads up a little further north than we usually ride.  Perfect!

If you add that to some of the stuff we were exploring last week, we've got training rides a-plenty as we continue to get ready for the Total200 ride.  I felt kinda sorry for Buttercup on Saturday, though.  I got the impression his legs were feeling pretty tired afterwards- but that's perfect, right?  He needs those bad boys to be doing some hurtin' so he's strong enough to get me to the finish line!  Can't wear that jersey you ordered if we don't friggin' finish!  C'mon you pansy, push it!

Oh- and we ordered that trailer we showed in the picture last week in the post about being Greener (is that the right word? Greener? oh well...) but it seems like the company is one of those that is a little on the slow side about shipping stuff.  *Sigh*
BC and Ingolstadt went to the grocery store last week- and the poor old guy woke up with a flat yesterday.  First one of those he's had since last year when Buttercup got him the T-Serve Protex tires.  That's on the maintenance schedule for this week.  I think BC's going to get him those SLIME tubes like he got for Blu Bike...  Oh, and I got a nasty cut on my back tire we've been using for training.  He set a new tube of SuperGlue on my saddle yesterday- so I'm guessing he's going to see if it will patch up and last a while longer.  You can see it just above the "Kenda" there where it's got some threads showing...

Nice thing about being shod with a durable tire is that they hold up well, not exactly a "supple" road feel- but far better than stopping to fix a flat!

It's hard to tell if the weather is going to clear up today- if so, maybe Blu Bike and BC will go out for a ride. I prefer not to take my pretty little self out when it's all wet and icky...

Summer weather Sunday 60 Miler

It's Blu Bike here again!  Boy, we've been talking to each other a lot lately, huh?  Well, not really.  None of you bother to comment, which is ok if you don't feel like it- but feel free.  So anyway, I've been talking to you a lot lately, huh?

Today's topic is Sunday's ride that I got to do- that's like 3 rides in a row for me!  Yayyy!

Buttercup got a message from one of his riding buddies to see if we wanted to grab 40 miles as one of their training rides for cool event coming up at the end of this month.  She's doing the Face Of America Ride from Washington DC to Gettysburg, PA.  Good Luck to all the participants!

So Buttercup and I headed down to meet her, then we did a nice 43 mile ride together.  That had a total of 60 miles for us- just about perfect at this point in our training for the 200.  His legs felt like they were slowing down by the end, so I think that many miles in my 1 gear was a good leg strength workout!

Here's a picture of the ride route:

The weather was just amazing- so nice to not be freezing my aluminum bits off anymore.  And no mechanical issues.

Here are a couple of cool shots from the Contour along the way...

Both today are from the "Victory Lap" that we all do anytime we ride with an endpoint on Solomons Island. Here is a great shot looking out onto the river and the Chesapeake Bay...

And you can always tell it's spring in Solomons- when the biker crowd makes their return...

And our cheering for the Capitals paid off!  They won in overtime!  So we're going to try again, ok??

Goat says, "Let's Go Caps!!"

And the weather is supposed to continue to be nice this week- so we'll see you out on the road!