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Post-turkey rides
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It's a holiday tradition in many parts — the post-Thanksgiving ride to celebrate the season, give thanks, and maybe burn off a few of the 10,000 calories consumed at the table on Thursday. Here's just a sampler of some of the rides this weekend:
South to the border
Only a few riders in the country can hope to say “we rode to Mexico this morning” and for sixteen Texans that hope materialized during the 1st Annual Day After Thanksgiving Bi-National Fun (DATBFUN) Ride. The diversity and enthusiasm offset the small numbers who gave up sleeping in or power shopping for this all day adventure.
Many members of the local club had ridden into Mexico before but usually with just a few friends. Founding club member Randy Landry said plans were made to build this special route into something bigger.
“It’s a great ride, the weather is still great this time of year, and so we want to make this thing go big time.” Landry said he was pleasantly surprised to see a dozen people on the start line, more than double the last group ride to Mexico.
Los Ebanos, named after a grove of ebony trees, is a small settlement of several hundred people on the north bank of the Rio Grande. The river crossing is narrow, and the state historical marker says the first recorded usage of this ancient ford dates back to the 1740’s. Spanish entrepreneurs headed northeast forty miles to Sal del Rey (the King’s Salt), a briny lake from which they extracted salt needed by the Spanish colony.
For the last six decades, legal trade crosses conveniently on a hand-drawn ferry (barge) which can handle three normal sized cars and makes the crossing in five minutes. Fares are $2 for cars, $1 for bicycles and 50 cents for pedestrians. Smugglers, cattle rustlers, bootleggers and soldiers have used the crossing through the centuries. These days, in addition to the legal traffic, drug and human traffickers try their luck here.
Winter Texan (from Illinois) Bill Lang has probably done more miles on the Mexican side of the river than all other local riders combined. He’s done this route twenty times over the past few years, but still used “fun and exciting” to describe why he’s on it again.
Nellie Leo, the youngest rider, recently graduated from Texas A&M where she was part of the women’s cycling team. Her family roots are deep in the soil of this area, but when asked if she’d ever gone to Mexico on the ferry, she responded, “I’ve never gotten off the ferry.” It is such an odd phrase until she explained that alcohol and cigarettes can be purchased duty free on the condition that you ride the ferry to Mexico and back. She’s done that numerous times, buying gifts for friends and making the round-trip crossing, but not getting off the ferry until today.
A new international bridge will open downriver in the near future. A group called Los Caminos del Rio (River Roads) which promotes international recreational use of the river wants to organize a race and tour using the new bridge before it opens to the public. That coincides perfectly with Team McAllen’s plans. And next year, many more people will be able to say, like Joe Gonzalez the Tour de Los Ebanos features “beautiful people, beautiful riding and now I can consider myself an international rider. It doesn’t get any better than that.” — Robert Ramirez
The Dirty Dozen
The Dirty Dozen is an annual event dating back to 1983 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, organized by two-time RAAM winner Danny Chew. The ride includes a dozen steep hills all within 10 kilometers of downtown Pittsburgh. Riders are given points for the finish on each of the hills, from first to tenth place.
This year local Steve Cummings dominated the event by being first up at least ten of the hills. A record 146 riders, 11 of them women, braved the 28-degree starting temperature and spent over six hours going up and up and over Pittsburgh's steepest hills.
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