Great Day for a Bike Ride

Style Queen & Group Itcher preparing to apply pain to the peloton.

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Above, the long shadow of Kenda Janet surveys the group as a mysterious pair of tennis shoes sits nearby.

Approximately 35 people gathered for Mark V's roving ride.  There was some concern whether Mark would even show up.  If you recall, he wrecked a couple of weeks ago and typically, when people of that age hit the pavement, they begin to think about playing shuttle board instead but, Mark was there.  Beautiful day with sunny skies and temps in the low 50's at the start with a forecast high of 72 and a slight breeze out of the WNW. 

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We departed en masse and enjoyed a relaxed pace on the rolling terrain of Blacks, south on York then east on Beaver Run all the way over to Canyon.  I was out for an easier pace and kept dropping back and being a social gadfly, quizzing people for information I could use against them..err....I mean use to promote their good fortune.  One of those was Nathan (Recumbent Dude) who has been strangely absent from our Tuesday/Thursday rides.  Turns out Nate has been named as a project manager that requires him to fly to Boston each Monday.  I think he said the project he is managing is the mass production of small aircraft.

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We eventually worked our way into Granville and then out New Burg to Dry Creek and eventually attacking the hill on Renyolds and a nice downhill into Utica. I spent most of my miles with the good folks of Kenda--Rick, Janet and Paul but no Dave, probably hung over from a multiple bottle tasting of chardonney the night before.  Janet was not doing so great and spoke frequently of cutting it short and may have done so as she and the other Kendaites disappeared somewhere prior to Utica. Here, we all gathered at the gas station and contemplated whether to take a sit-down meal at "The Pioneer" or grab a snack and GO at the gas station.  Flyin Tuna was relentless in applying pressure to do the sit down and so Style Queen, Kevin K, Polish Pony, Jeff S, Nathan and I stopped at the restaurant while Group Itcher, Amanda, SuperDave, Scott & 1-2 others did the wise thing by grabbing a snack and taking off for the 70 mile route

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We rode and some of us ate....a lot...I took 25-30 pics of Tuna devouring her food but lacked the special high speed equipment required to catch a pic mid-bite.

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The breakfast/lunch was an interesting experience, made memorable by, among other things, Nate telling the watress to bring the pancakes and "bacon them up" and she did.  By the time we finally rolled out of there, we were ill prepared to continue the ride but we did with SQ, Nate, Pony and I doing 70 and Tuna, Jeff and Kevin doing the 89 mile loop.  Style Queen pushed the pace on the way back and the rest of us just hung on but barely.  I had a couple of small pulls and Dennis gave me the ultimate compliment when I rotated off the front, "For a while, I thought that was Jeff S pulling us"!!!!!!!!  I'll remember those words forever.  My computer shut off a couple of times so I don't have the exact elevation but somewhere around 3000' and a 18.6 mph average.

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