Not Quite What I Had Planned

If the forecast on Friday night was to be believed we would not be able to ride.  Set the alarm, woke and checked radar and looked like we'd miss the rain until noon-1:00pm so headed to Alley Park for a ride we will one day tell our grandchildren about.  Well,,,maybe not.  There were 8 of us at the start but even before leaving the parking lot, plans were being made to short cut either out of concern about getting wet or the need to be somewhere at sometime.  Anyway, Dennis, Little Diesel, Mark C, Steve O, John S, Flyin Tuna, Ryan and me headed out.  

We skipped going up Tarkiln because reports were of heavy cinders at that steep pitch at the top and instead took the climb up Ross, left at 752, down Blue Valley, up McGuery, left at Revenge, up Snortin Ridge and then at Rich Hollow, we paused.  The 80 milers were to go down that while Mark C needed something shorter.  I wanted to do the long route and hills but the weakest of us went with Mark and no one going with Ryan shared my passion for riding easy so I went with Mark, Dennis and Cindy.  We went down Jack Run and then up to some park....let's see, that's 4 good climbs so far. 

I began to regret my decision to go with the shortcutters who were going to go to Logan and back to Alley so I bugged out.   I went back and climbed Jack Run, that's nasty....down Snortin Ridge and up Revenge, down McGuery and up Beck....down Ross and up Tarkiln (cinders were not bad at all), right on 752 and then hit Stump Hollow and finished with 56 miles and 4700' of climbing.  That pales in comparison to what Ryan's group had so I hope one of them post here what I missed.  By the way, some of us are planning to ride something in WV next weekend called "Ride for a Reason". 

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