12/15/2010
By: C. Kent, aka (Superman)


I will have to admit I was pretty surprised to see overcast skies and even received a call from one of our riders on the west end saying the street was wet. It didn’t matter much to me because my street was dry and my hope was that the weather would lift before we got too far along on the ride. But it was a long fingered glove, Arm warmer and knee warmer day for sure.

I got to Burger King early just as Wolf was unloading his bike and Dura-max was pulling in. Soon we were joined by Raptor, Rocket, Cossack and D’Artagnon about 8:15am. As we were talking Attack Cat, Double Time, T-3 and Huntress arrived. Raptor left for his ride as the rest of us pulled out onto Latham and headed towards Lyon. We stayed together as one big group all the way to Ramona and then over to Sanderson. But it was easy to see the pace was going to get kicked up a bit once we got out onto Ramona expressway.

Much like I expected it wasn’t long before we started to break into groups on Ramona. Soon I found myself in a pack consisting of, Sea Lion, Huntress, D’Artagnon, Cossack and Rocket. Needless enough to say I held onto the draft for all I was worth as we fought a slight headwind heading past Bridge Street. We were only on our second rotation through the pace line when I noticed we were coming up on the stop light just before Lakeview. We regrouped and waited till Attack cat, Dura-max, T-3, Wolf and Double Time rejoined us. We started back out on Lakeview and once again split into two groups and this time we were joined by Attack Cat. I pulled most of the way to Nuevo and then merged into the group as we headed towards Menifee Road.
We set up another pace line heading south on Menifee and made pretty quick time after we turned on Mapes and pushed on to Briggs Street. For a change there were no dogs out to challenge our sprinting ability. We did round the corner on Briggs together and took an easy cruise down the grade back to Florida. Everyone seemed full of energy and it was pretty sure we had another sprint of two left before we stopped for coffee.
As we took our turn around then houses on Briggs the group tightened up and we started to get into formation for the run on Grand. As we turned off of Briggs Attack Cat was leading until we got to Leon where Cossack started to pull and Rocket, D’Artagnon and I stayed close on his wheel. As we crested the rise after Leon Rocket lit the fuse and took off on a break. For some unknown reason I went with him as we made quite a jump on the rest of the group. The problem was we were running at about 105 percent and as our energy level tapered off Cossack and D’Artagnon started to reel us in. They caught and passed before we made it to the end of the long straight away. But we all felt good about the run as we stopped for coffee at Chris’s. We didn’t stay long and took off on Winchester to Stowe and it didn’t seem to me as if the pace had slowed one little bit. Cossack got out front and made us work to keep up with him all the way to California Street.

There was very little cruising as we rode down to Stetson and no one was cruising as we turned towards Warren Road. We had no stragglers as we were averaging better than 17.2 for the ride and Attack Cat broke off at Warren as the rest of us continued east on Stetson. Cossack and Rocket kept the pressure on as we got close to the airport turn off. As we broke off to make the turn into the airport road Cossack and Rocket continued on like cowboys riding off in a movie. D’Artagnon, Sea Lion, Huntress and I continued on working our way towards Sanderson.
Finally we took a bit off as we got out onto Sanderson and headed towards Lowes. I was still feeling pretty good and even with the over cast I would have said I had a good ride. It was cool but not cold. It was damp but not wet. All in all it was a pretty good ride and I got in another 38 miles. I know my mileage will drop off when I go to Colorado for the last two weeks of this month but I will be looking forward to getting back in the saddle when I get home.