Riding Fast: Know when to hold em, know when to chill the fuck out.

If you want to ride socially, you're going to have to go on a few group rides.  Here is how most of them work:  A bunch of guys all ride somewhere and then all hell breaks loose and somebody wins.  Today's rule involves the "all ride somewhere" part.  If you show up to a group ride for the first time and a bunch of guys are talking to each other about their favorite brand of taint cream, or how many calories they're allowed to eat on this ride, that isn't your cue to go to the front and hammer your fat argyle clad ass off.  We are NOT impressed with how strong you are.  We ARE all pissed that you've strung us out single file on a busy city street where we can no longer talk about our favorite flavor of nair and instead have to ruin our fun conversational warmup ride to chase you around.  This is only made awesomer when we get to the real part of the ride and you get dropped like a plinko chip with a helmet mirror.  Then we spend the rest of the ride complaining about the fatty that had to show off on the ride to the ride.

Moral of the story:  If you're new to a group ride, don't show off.  Especially don't show off if you don't know when you should be going fast.  ESPECIALLY don't show off if in the first 10 miles of an 80 mile ride.

That's all.  Thanks.