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| Hawk's Nest Overlook (photo by G. Retseck) |
Preliminary results for the July 10 Hawks Nest (Bushkill Falls Approach) have been posted on the PA Rando website. Please review and advise any discrepancies at your earliest opportunity.
Volunteer Chris Nadovich greeted 16 riders at the start with new riders Olin Johnson and Max Shilvock making their initial appearances at a PA Brevet - Welcome to Randonneuring!
Riders couldn't have asked for better weather for a July brevet. The skies were slightly overcast and temperatures never exceeded 80 degrees. A few riders experienced light sprinkles on Old Mine Road but most riders stayed dry throughout the day.
Unfortunately, 6 miles into the ride Shawn Bowles had an unfortunate situation with his rear derailleur and was forced to abandon. Fellow rider Ello Shertzer accompanied Shawn back to the start.
Sadly this was not to be the last mechanical of the day. Iwan Barankay had a rear derailleur cable failure but was able to continue with 2 gears. (Experience note: Avoid the limited gear options when using derailleur limit screws and anchor the derailleur cable to a water bottle cage bolt. This allows selection of any gear on the cluster.)
The rando award for ingenuity and perseverance goes to Patrick and Cecilie Gaffney who completely wore through their rear tire near Hainesville. 4 more punctures ensued and the team used tubes, patches, boots, wrappers, bank currency and other items from their inventory and borrowed from fellow randonneurs to limp the final 30 miles to the finish. This author (Bill Fischer) has only witnessed more resourceful tire patching when RUSA#41 completed the Alaska Big Wild Ride on a tire stuffed with grass and tree saplings.
Brad Layman blitzed the course in an excellent time of 7:28. New riders Olin Johnson and Max Shilvock completed the ride with smiles on their faces and are looking forward to the next brevet.
Also noteable is Nicholas van der Kloot's completion of the PA SR. This is Nick's second PA SR. He joins a very elite group of five randonneurs who completed the Pennsylvania series this year. Chappeau!
The earliest finishers had to navigate around a police roadblock that temporarily closed Broad St.. A knucklehead towing a 28' Sea Ray had a wheel fall off his trailer (another mechanical.....).
Special thanks to organizer Bill Fischer and his able assistant Gavin Biebuyck. Their individual schedules did not permit a course checkout during the permissible 2-week window. They rode the route anyway demonstrating that it is possible to ride a long route without a brevet card.
We return to the Delaware Water Gap in August with a repeat of Hawk's Nest using the traditional outbound route along the Broadhead Creek through Canadensis. Event details and registration are on the website.
Iwan writes:
Thank you for organizing a splendid brevet. As we reached the start we encountered a fog bank on the highway which should have told us how humid the first part of the course would be and indeed before too long we were all soaking in sweat as we rode up to the USPS control. Shortly after the descent I ripped my rear derailleur cable and was stuck in the top gear. Randonneur-style I tightened the rear adjustment-screw to force it into the fourth sprocket so I had two gears 50-14 and 34-14 to choose from which turned out to be fine for 97% of the course with a bit of walking up the steepest parts of the hills. What pleased me was how little this bothered me as I just enjoyed the much more pleasant temperatures compared to the toaster-600K recently. Finishing in the shade with a pulled pork sandwich and some rando-banter was a fitting end to a great brevet. Congrats to Brad for an awesome display of athleticism to finish low in the 7h range and to Pat and Ceci for an impressive display of tinkering to make it to the finish despite a whole in their rear tyre the size of Mars. And congrats to Nic for completing the PA SR series with a big smile on his face!
So much fun! Thanks to Matt for pacing me, letting me draft off him, and giving me tons of info on randonneuring. Looking forward to the next one.
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