9/06/2010
By: C. Kent, aka (Superman)




Planning an out of town run is one of those things where you never know what to expect and today was no different. By Saturday night I was only sure about 4 of us going on the ride. By Sunday it looked like we might have 6 or 7. By the time we left from Starbucks I knew we had 10. We did make one small mistake however; we left a rider at Starbucks as I pulled out of the parking lot but at least Cossack noticed my mistake and went back for Ansu. Everything else went as planned and we made it to the Ice Palace parking lot and onto the SART by 9:35am.


I looked back to see Sidewinder, John, Sky, Double time and his son, Ansu, Gina, Cossack and Julie clipping along towards the trail head. The weather couldn’t be much better even if we had ordered it beforehand. It might have been slightly overcast but it was pushing 68 degrees as we started and I don’t think it ever made it to 78 degrees. We rolled along to the first bridge crossing before Sidewinder decided to stretch his legs a bit and John and Ansu went with him. I told Sidewinder we would regroup at the park across from the Honda Center and I settled into an easy pace at the back of the pack to enjoy the ride and the sights. It was nice to be spending the day with people that seemed to be enjoying themselves.

We regrouped at the Honda Center like planned and after a quick stop we headed the rest of the way to Huntington. We reached the beach by about 11: 15 had headed down the strand towards the Huntington pier. Because of the overcast it seems like people must have put off going to the beach.

I thought we would be riding in wall to wall people pretty much like when we did this ride last Memorial Day. But much to my surprise the first two or three parking lots we almost empty. We found ourselves cruising along almost as easily as we had while riding on the SART.

We stopped for lunch at the Subway on PCH and sat around talking and getting to know each other. We even did a little people watching and enjoyed ourselves as the overcast started to burn off. By the time we finished eating Double Time’s son had to leave and meet his family and get a ride home. Before he left it seemed like a good time to get a picture of the group before we headed for home.
The plan was to ride back to the Honda Center and regroup and then ride all the way back to the Ice Palace Parking lot and regroup one last time before everyone went their separate way to take care of whatever they had to take care of. Sidewinder and Ansu took off for the Honda Center while the rest of us more or less cruised and enjoyed the ride.

Once we left the Honda Center Park it was a straight run back to Anaheim, Yorba Linda and the Ice Palace. For whatever reason people didn’t seem to be out this Labor Day. The bike trail didn’t have more than a normal amount of people on it and traffic had been light from Hemet. It wasn’t hard to keep up a good pace heading back to where we parked the cars. John and Ansu got there first but even the last rider was just a few minutes behind the first and we were all back earlier than I had expected. I managed to get in just short of 60 miles in about 3.6 hours riding time. Not bad for cruising I think. But the best part was getting to be with such a great group of riders on such a pleasant day.