Near-death Spin

I forgot to mention that I did two QCW loops in Fairmount Park around dusk on Saturday: across Girard St Bridge, up,up, up the hill at Landsdowne, past the Civil War Memorial and across the Concorse, up, up, up St George's Hill, then Chamounix, down, down, down the hill on Ford Rd, across Strawberry Mansion, then around the Reservoir to and back across the bridge. This loop is a lot of fun and about as hilly as you can get while staying in Philly proper. As always, I think the bike ride helped loosen my legs up for the long run on Sunday. Hooray for biking! The numbers: about 20mi in about 1hr. (I was surprised at how much pep my legs had--was doing 24-26mph on the flats without working too hard.)

The only bad part of the ride was, oh yeah, almost getting killed. On the downhill on Ford, the road gets narrow and the shoulder is quite dirty, so I moved over and rode in the single lane. I was moving faster than the speed limit, so this shouldn't have bothered anyone. But as a Chevy minivan was passing me on the next uphill (when I'd moved back to the shoulder) the driver scooted over so he was driving IN the shoulder. I guess he thought he'd teach me a lesson or something. Anyways, I looked up and there was this van about two inches from my handlebars. SO not cool. I caught up with him at the next light and just looked over, trying to see if he'd done it on purpose or was just absent minded. I got my answer when he rolled down his window and shouted "get off the road!" Seriously?