I Survived The 2009er Dirty Wicked Tour of Omaha and I Didn't Even Get a Lousy T-Shirt

But I did order the book.

If I were the hooting type, I'd let out a whoo-wee!

Wow, that was a blast.

The Tour

Last night about 15-20 cyclists showed up at Don Carmelo's in midtown Omaha to prepare for a 28 mile tour of old Omaha organized by Mark of MOD-SPOT fame. You'd think several inches of unplowed, rutty, slushy snow and 10° temps would discourage any sane person from showing up. If anything, it seemed to encourage participation.

I won't do a blow by blow account of the action, but here are some highlights:

• Farman Street is the best plowed street in the city, as evidenced by the multiple snow plow passes observed while gearing up to head out. Too bad they didn't hit any other streets we rode on
• Many wipeouts by many riders. I'm amazed at how fast I went from fully upright to laying on the ground without any memory of the actual wipeout.
• EB took the Hickory Hill climb prize, though I and a few others didn't witness it. We waited at the bottom of the hill for the big group to come down.
• A flat tire near Conagra slowed things down a bit. I'm amazed at how quickly the rider was able to change the tube given the conditions. The area was well lighted, though, so that helped.
• The Blue Line Coffee Shop is nice and warm. It was a good place to decide that the ride would be abbreviated and would soon adjourn to the Crescent Moon for final drinks. I am sure the hills of north Omaha would have been considerably worse that what we'd already seen.
• Riding California Plaza through Creighton's campus was very cool It was a several block long pedestrian mall that was much more interesting than riding the streets.
  
• The Crescent Moon is extremely crowded on Saturday night. However, EB seemed to know everyone there. Mark had all the sweet hookups to get us into a private room where we could sit and chat a bit.
• On the wall behind an swinging door is a really bad place to hang a one eyed dead deer head. Bury the thing. Really.
  

Photographs

I didn't take many pictures. All I had was my iPhone's camera, and it doesn't do well in the dark with the lens fogged over. Lucas was there taking many photos with high-end equipment. Mark had a camera, as well. I sure hope they post some pics.

• Photos from the Blue Line warm up
  

The Map

Jeff recorded the tour on his GPS receiver. Below is a Google map rendering of the track data.


View Larger Map

I think everyone had a great time. I know I did. I've no doubt that we could have done the full tour, even in 10 degree weather, had it not been for the troublesome snow. I got to meet a lot of new folks, and put some names to faces that I'd seen on the blogs. I look forward to this event next year, where hopefully, I might ride closer to the middle of the pack than at the end.