6/14/2010
By: C. Kent, aka (Superman)

Hemet, Ca.

It looked like summer today and it felt like summer just as soon as I went outside to get my morning paper. Having lived here and cycled here for the last two and a half years I thought I was ready for the ride and was looking forwards to burning off some Bar-B-Cue I had had over the weekend. Turns out I was half ready.

Sidewinder stopped by this morning so we could ride to the Burger King together and we had a pleasant conversation all the way over to the parking lot. I had no idea how many riders we would have but the group has been growing and it seems like we have more people than we averaged last year. But I had nothing to worry about because we had a solid 12 riders that were split pretty much equally into the A and B group.


8am and we were on the road heading down Gilmore towards Acacia and I already felt the warm weather was working to my advantage with my leg muscles. I felt strong and was breathing easy as we got to the light on Kirby and Acacia. A quick turn south and we were heading for Cypress and the neighborhood connecting Johnson and Sanderson. I managed to take the lead and pull all the way to Domenigoni and then to Warren road. When I pulled off the lead I found myself with the A group and moving along at an easy 23 MPH and not gaining all that much distance between the B group. We may have reached Winchester first but the B group was breathing down our necks and the pace was picking up.

As we approached Leon I found myself in the third spot heading for the saddle and by the last light I was sitting in second. The group was moving along at close to 26 as we hit the bottom of the Saddle and I went onto power drive. Rocket pulled off of the lead and I found myself hitting then hill flat out one gear higher than I had ever hit it before. But the beginning of the chain link fence Cossack came out from my blind spot and passed me looking like he was just cruising. As he passed I looked at my Heart Rate Monitor and noticed that is I were a car I would have been in red line and was bouncing off of my internal rev-limiter. But we had an average speed from Burger King to the saddle of 19.4 MPH. I discovered I was under hydrated and overheated. I didn’t cool down as we reached Murrieta either. We took the new road on Newport as it turned into Railroad Canyon and stopped at a little store to get more liquid before hitting Goetz hills.

As we started up the first part of Goetz we were still pretty much together except that Sherpa decided to stand on it to check his time for the 2 mile climb. I was between the five in front and the five in back making the group 11 with Rocket leaving to go home to visit with family. The five in front continued on to finish the ride and the rest of us helped change Ellie’s,(Light Saber) tire. Back on the road we all got back together and headed for Ethernic and then back to McCall and over the top. We made it to the top and regrouped with T-3 and Duramax waiting for us. T-3 was riding better than I have seen her ride in a long time. I spent most of the time riding home chasing her and Duramax. When we turned onto Sanderson everyone was glad to see Lowes in the distance

I got a bottle of cold water and poured over my head and started to feel better but I was still pretty tired. Getting more cool liquid in me and getting out of the sun did a lot to revive me but I was still pretty much on auto Pilot as I rode home. It took an hour in the pool and a nap before I felt like myself again. I guess it is very important that we remember that as the summer heat gets here we need to be sure to keep hydrated and back off before we get overheated. But all in all it was a good 43 miles and I had a great time riding with everyone. I will just have to work harder to keep up with T-3, Ocelot and Light Saber.