SPOT Ride Report, Such as it is.

How about that thrilling SPOT ride?  Another Saturday of temps in the 40's and winds in the 20's.  One more weekend like this and I'm bugging out for warmer climes.  I was looking forward to a century ride with Steve O and all was going well until about a mile into the ride, our group hung a right where the road marking indicated a right should be made.  One member of our group urged us to stay straight and so Kenda Janet, Kenda Dave, Flyin Tuna and me stayed straight while the others turned right. 

Seems one member of our group flashed back to the Covered Bridge ride and recalled a contrived routing over a bridge she did not like, knew the Covered Bridge route came back into Canal Winchester so we eased to a stop just east of Shades Restaurant to wait for our group to overtake us.  We even coasted to a stop next to yellow road markings that showed the distance options for the ride. There is just one problem with the plan, this was not the Covered Bridge ride or route and coincidentally, one of us noticed the yellow markings on the road had the letter "B" extending, rather than the letter "S" for SPOT.  Thus, we were now miles away from our group who were boring steadily into the winds going away from us. 

We got back on the SPOT route, picked up Aaron to bring us to five and plugged away.  I dreamed of the Rossi tandem, a few miles up the road and how I should have been drafting comfortably behind them.  I was motivated to catch and pursued them with such vigor not seen since I was pursuing the little red head girl when I was in 4th grade.  Alas, despite my efforts and those of my fellow cyclists, we never saw the Rossi's, Oxley or anyone else who started from the parking lot. We did overtake Kenda Paul who is just now getting back on the road after a season counting beans at a Columbus-based accounting firm.  Probably we should have eased up and allowed him to draft because it would have been 0 fun to be out in that head or cross wind alone.  But no, we rode inexorably onward until, we reached an intersection that indicated route options.  We paused, looked west and felt the full force of the ferocious wind and jointly decided, "Let's not go that way." and so, headed on a shorter route option.

Soon we were confronted with another route option and there too we took the shorter option.  Soon we came to an intersection that did not give an option, just indicated we should go south and here we chose the road less traveled, which was also going toward Canal Winchester.  We limped back to the parking lot with a nice 40 mile warm-up ride and proceeded to dump our bikes into our respective cars and drive away, never to know what happened to that part of the group who stayed on the route but now, they know what happened to us.  No pictures due to a dead battery.