I'd never thought I'd do this (Daniel Schaaf, Feb 07)  

I never thought I would do this voluntarily - starting out on a ride at 23°! I did start once years ago at 16° but that was not voluntary. But, this is part of my goal for the year - do the brevet series. So even though it was voluntary, I had to. I made some changes in my cycling gear to make it possible - new shoes, Gore-Tex socks, and shoe covers. And you know what, it worked. My feet were toasty for the whole ride. In fact, all of me was toasty for the whole ride (except when we were leaving from checkpoints and having to warm up again). Even so, one little climb would do the trick. The only other exception to the toasty was my hands. Starting out from Weatherford, we had about 7 miles of downhill. I did a lot of braking on this part because there was black ice on the road and it was hard to see. So I didn't dare let it go. I was on the tandem, by the way with Sharon. My hands were frozen, numb, and in real pain from the cold - until we missed a turn, did a U-turn, and decided to stop for a pee break. I had my gloves off briefly. That did the trick - back on the road we started to get some climbing and my hands were never cold again. I will say this; it was a very beautiful morning. Everything was covered with a very thick frost and there was some snow left over from the day before as well. All of the stock ponds were frozen over and the puddles looked to be frozen solid.  We started out 20 minutes late. For a long time we didn't see another rider, except for the guy on the 3-wheel recumbent. Finally, we reached Lipan after 25 miles, and, a checkpoint. We saw another rider there - Michelle was just leaving and Richard was still there... progress. We removed some items of clothing while there and started out. The first thing we noticed was the wind, and wind chill. We hadn't noticed any wind before, but now we were going south and we had a south wind. It was substantial, too. We couldn't seem to muster much over 14 mph. And on some of the hills, we would get down to 6 mph! I couldn't understand how we could be so slow. Richard was with us and he volunteered that it could be the headwind...  maybe. At mile 53, after slugging it out for the past 28 miles into an increasingly volatile wind, we turned right (yes, north). For 9 miles, we had a slammin tail wind and we made the best of it. We flew along that section - 30+ for quite a bit of it. And guess what - we pulled into the next checkpoint and there were quite a few other riders still there. That was a really uplifting moment. We had company! After a half hour of visiting and munching, we were ready to go. We were just about last again, everyone else having already left, but we were not far behind and we were feeling pretty relaxed. Before Apple Pie Hill we passed the other tandem on the 300k. Shortly after, we went up Apple Pie Hill. There was one short section at 14% grade but the rest was 8% and it wasn't too long before we were up on the next level and slammin along in that fantastic tail wind! Shortly after cresting the hill, we passed George Evans and Mark Sachnik, parked off to the side of the road doing a strip down. Sharon wanted to do that too but I argued that we should get on up to Hwy 180 and then decide if it was warm enough to take more clothes off. By the time we reached 180, the south wind had shifted to the southwest. Guess what? After we turned left, we noticed that 180 also goes southwest at that point. We were back in a major headwind, but we were in the groove, meaning we were in a rhythm, maintaining a steady, if slow pace, and gradually eating up the miles. We were heading west toward Breckinridge, and about to climb up through Metcalf Gap. This was a long hill that went on for a few miles, but it was only about 5%. As we got up into the gap, the surrounding hills blocked the wind, and it was no longer a factor until we neared the crest. About halfway up, we passed 4 more riders, which meant we were now in front of all the 300k riders except the fastest two riders. Somewhere in this section, we saw 4 deer running through the trees, near the highway. At mile 95, we turned off of 180 and in another mile we turned again. Now we were heading north again and that tail wind was kicking us along. There were some substantial hills in this portion, but I'll take a hill with a tailwind over one with a headwind any day! The steepest topped out at 15%, at mile 116. As we cruised along, we spotted an armadillo off to the left side of the road. I can count on one hand the number of times I've glimpsed a live one. We arrived in Graham, at mile 127, about 45 minutes ahead of sundown. While Sharon got the brevet cards signed, I put the headlight and battery on the tandem and went in for a burrito. As we were finishing up, the riders we had passed came in. I wanted to get out of there while there was still daylight. We got back on the road and enjoyed about 25 minutes of useable daylight. The temperature at Graham was a toasty 53°. When the sun went down, the temp quickly dropped to about 44° and we both realized we hadn't dressed warmly enough. This was a section of large rollers. We would descend and be very cold. Then we would climb and warm back up. As we cruised along, Sharon noticed something very bright orange through the trees - it was the moon! It really looked more like the sun coming up in a black sky! I have seldom seen such a vivid view of the moonrise. We saw lights up ahead. Both of us needed to stop and put on some more layers. It was another small town and we stopped at the gas station on the right at about mile 150. After about a 15 min stop, we were more warmly dressed and ready for the rest of the ride, or so we thought.  It was good until about mile 170. Then we turned off into a series of turns on back roads leading toward Weatherford. There were also many short, steep hills and we had to pay close attention to the turn list. I was uncertain that we were on the right road while we were on Old Garner as the route sheet only listed Garner. We could see the Weatherford city lights but it seemed we were simply skirting town without getting any nearer. I didn't think we would ever turn toward town. Sharon got off the bike and asked someone at a house we passed. Turns out we were right on course. We only had about 4 miles to go, so we went ahead and got 'er done. This was a great course but a tough ride nonetheless. We were actually lucky the wind was from the south in spite of the difficulty fighting it. We had much longer northbound sections and it would have been quite a bit harder if that had been the case. Thanks to Sharon for helping me power up those hills and fly along with the wind at our backs!