8/13/2010
By: C. Kent, aka (Superman)


When someone gets up in the morning and looks out to welcome the day like I did this morning it is hard to imagine a better looking day for cycling. What makes it even better is when you have good people to cycle with. Those two things alone would be enough to get me out of bed and on my bike. So I got up early, read the paper, had some coffee and watched some news before getting into my kit and heading for the door. The challenge for today would be a ride to keep the A group interested without burning up the B group. I thought I had the route that would do both. I got to the parking lot to see Duramax riding around in circles. The rest of the rides started arriving shortly after we parked our bikes. We settled into introductions with the new riders and last minute inspections and adjustments.


We pulled away from Burger King just after 8am and headed down Gilmore to Acacia. Many of our regulars were behind me, Ocelot, Afterburner, Rocket, Hit man, Gambler, Bandit, Surgeon and Centaur. Some returning from Vacation like Highlander and Sherpa were with us as well. Les and Jim were back with us plus several new riders. I think we left the parking lot with 17 riders.

As I turned onto Acacia I thought to myself that this could turn into a great ride for both the A and B group. There were plenty of strong riders that could form a pace line for the A group and about an equal number for a B group to pull together and at least keep the others in sight. We rounded the corner at Cypress and Kirby and even looking back into the sun it reminded me a bit of the beginning of a rolling motorcycle race. The group looked eager to go and ready to answer any break away someone might try.

With the new riders it took a little while for the group to smooth out and ride together but as we got out onto Stetson from the airport we were doing pretty well. As we passed to Warren Road the pace picked up a bit and it got steadily faster as we turned onto California. Anyone that has ridden with us for any period of time knows that Stowe can turn into a mini hammer fest and today was no exception. We may have done Stowe a bit faster before but we don’t normally have quite so many riders in the lead group. As we regrouped at Winchester we talked about the run down Domenigoni and the splitting of the two groups. Whatever happened we planned to regroup and State Street. The A group pulled away and the B group managed to keep them in sight so they were in a good position to head up Gibble while the A group first rode up to the marina before giving chase. The B group got to the turnaround spot first and seemed glad just to have survived.

We waited till the entire B group had arrived and then waited till the entire A group passed us going up the hill. After their last rider we started back down towards State Street. We had been joined at the bottom of the hill by another rider new to our group and it seems as if at this point we had 18 riders. I think at least eight of us were in the B group.
Highlander was waiting for us at the bottom of Gibble Road but he saw us coming and stayed with us all the way back to State Street. We only had to wait a few minutes at the most for the A to start coming back down. I think Rocket and Hit man were about the first ones of that group back down but it didn’t take long before we were all back together and ready to head north on State and then east on Stetson to get over to Carl’s.

We turned east on Chambers and worked our way up to Stetson before making a quick run towards Fairview. Rocket broke off before we got to Columbia and Duramax pulled up next to me to ask if I was missing anyone. I didn’t think so because I knew Rocket was leaving but what I didn’t know was I had lost Sherpa. He missed a light and then dropped his saddle bag and had to go back for it. But I did call him and made sure he was going to meet us at Carl’s.

About half of the group managed to stop at Carl’s for coffee and conversation. We took about a 20 minute break before Afterburner had to leave and Duramax and Ocelot had to head out leaving a few of us to ride back to Burger King together. It was just starting to get warm but we were planning on cruising and that is pretty much just what we did.


I rode with everyone till we got back to Burger King before cutting over to talk to Highlander in the Mall Parking lot. I wanted to make sure everyone was still feeling pretty good and I knew Highlander had been on vacation for about three months. Seems as if everyone was fine and so we had a good ride of about 38 miles with just a bit of climbing. I for one was pleased and I am always glad to ride with good people.