Today I was supposed to join the CTS ride group and go on a 26 mi ride. Well, things kind of FUBAR'd when I ended up in Marymoor park instead of Magnuson park. I made this mistake last year too. Stupid Australian.

Pedro called me and asked if I wanted to go for a ride. "Sure, why not." "I'm in Redmond, how soon can you be here?" "Actually... I'm already here." So Pedro took the place of hundreds of n00b cyclists, and we made our own way out to ride to Monroe so he could get some miles on his P2.

Things didn't quite go to plan.

Pedro was descending on a hill, target fixated on a corner and high sided. He broke the cap off his brake lever, scraped the lacquer off the CF and put his tire out of true, but overall the damage was pretty minimal considering he highsided at 30 mph. He was alright, but a bit sad (understatement). He also cracked his helmet. So like Janeen says, take your brain bucket with you and use it.

We rode back to Redmond to get his bike looked at, and after trying one shop and failing, we went to a different shop that was a Cervelo dealer and found what was possilby the cheapest Cervelo part ever: End cap for brake lever, $2.99. Also trued his rear wheel as much as possible, and re did the cabling (free). Sammamish Valley Cycles was the shop, if you were wondering. While there I ran into a Twitter friend of mine, Tommy Williams (twitter.com/twwilliams). We also sorted Pedro's bike, and Pedro ran into some friends of his. You can't go anywhere in Redmond without finding a Microsoftie, I swear...

Post dropping Pedro off, I took the Sammamish River Trail home. Caught up with some fast riders, although all but one couldn't ride for crap so I just paced off them, no drafting. Was pretty tired by now but pushed on. Stopped to fix a broken chain that enabled a family to continue riding.

I think the high and low point of my day were kids. Little terrors that they are, dodging in front of my wheel and whatnot, while at Redmond Cycle, there was a kid that wanted to put a quarter in the machine and his mum didn't have any cash, so she said no. I asked discreetly if she minded me giving him a quarter, and both she and the kid were all smiles. The kid was very good with his thank you's and everything, and it made my day.