10/30/09
By: C. Kent, aka (Superman)

Hemet, Ca

What do you get when you have low pressure moving over the desert and clear skies after the threat of rain? If you guessed cold, at least cold for Hemet you are correct. At the very least it was cold when I got up to take the dog out, it was below 40 degrees. If you like to pick nits it was 37 according to my indoor outdoor thermometer. Quickly it was decided that that layers would be necessary and long finger gloves. Once properly dressed it was time to go out the door and meet with the diehard friends ready for a ride.

It is just possible that standing in front of the widows at Burger King on Florida Avenue is the warmest place in Hemet. But it didn’t feel all that warm to Duramax, Rocket, Tool Man and me. In fact it was looking like the ride would consist of just three of us because Tool Man had to go to work. By 8:50 we began to discuss the route we wanted to take when the rest of the group started to show up and within 10 minutes we had ten riders ready to ride. Hit man, Quick Sticks, Bounty Hunter, Whippet, (whippet), Ruby Tuesday, T-3, and Raptor joined the three of us.


A route west was chosen and we headed out towards Acacia on our way over to Sanderson and finally Domenigoni.


Somewhere on Sanderson Raptor pulled ahead of the rest of us and opened up a lead of about 300 yards. It took us a while to catch him but after a while we were all in a group heading for Winchester Road. We stayed that way all the way to Domenigoni Hill and regrouped after the traditional sprint up the hill. The next turn was at Linderburger as we headed north. Raptor had to leave us at Simpson Road and the rest of us continued on to Macall and climbed the back side and regrouped again. However by this time people began to shed layers of clothes. Off came arm warmers and jersey vests and in some cases sweatshirts


We rode up to Valley Boulevard and over to Cherry Hill to work our way back to Bradley and then Macall again.


The plan was to turn at the third stop light after we passed the freeway and then climb over the hill through the housing tract and onto Antelope before stopping at the Jack in the Box on Newport. Didn’t quite work out as planned but we made it through the housing tract and over to Newport. Ruby Tuesday and T-3 had to get home so they didn’t stop but the rest of us took a quick break before starting a run down Newport and the Domenigoni.

Once back over Domenigoni hill the group spread out and stayed spread out till we all got back to our respective turns for home. Buy the time I got back to State Street the weather was about as nice as anyone could hope for. In My case it was 41.5 miles in 2.5 hours or riding time. As they say, “this is why we live in California."