Saturday Ride Report--Covered Bridge not Bridges

A beautiful day for a bike ride but a forecast "cold" start had be electing to take off at 9:00am rather than with a large group at 8:30am.  I was in luck because also starting at that time was Dirty Dan and Steve O.  We worked together to the village of Amanda, arriving with a 20.2 average for the 19 miles.  Here, I left the route to go straight on Amanda Southern then left on Bowers and soon......

....I was back on the route and ahead of the 8:30 group.  Steve had warned me that if I stayed with he and Dan, they would over take the group, counting on Cindy having at least one flat and sure enough.....

....here he and Dan came with a Gus Cook led group of 6 and then soon thereafter, a 2nd group who were doing the full 100 mile route, which was my intent although my little off routing would yield me 92 instead.  The 100 mile group was comprised of Mark C, Andrew C, Flyin Tuna, Jeff and me.

We arrived in Sugar Grove and studied the menu, eventually giving an order to an over worked staff.  The subs were fantastic and worth the wait.  From here, people made all kinds of route accommodating, some striking toward Canal Winchester and finishing with around 70 miles and some of us staying on the long route.  Later, entering Millersport....

....we caught up with Dan and Steve, who had stopped at Scott Young's house for an emergency repair.  Note the bike wheel made out of barbed wire above the garage door.  The Covered Bridge ride had by many of our counts, 1 bridge but that is ok because too often trying to force more takes away from the route.  The route had a good first half but that second half, yikes, boring. Work on that for next year, ok?

The Covered Bridge ride is tomorrow and I suspect there will be other rides as the day progresses.  This is a COP event with a cost of $5 for members and $10 for non-members. If you are like me, arriving Saturday morning to pay and ride, you will not have access to the gps file for your chosen route. So, here are the links to the routes which I believe are for this year's event:
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/24966459
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/24775271
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/24773361

Looks like 80ish miles rolling out of Rockmill Brewery, route to come for the very fit or for those that want a later start,9:00am.  More to come....