1/31/2011
By: C. Kent, aka (Superman)


I was surprised to see it rain Sunday and I didn’t know for sure if it would clear up for our ride Monday morning but I planned a ride anyway. Once I looked out this morning it seemed like it was clearing up so I got dressed, had breakfast and headed out the door to meet up with the group at Burger king. Two riders were just getting out of their cars as I pulled in and parked next to the building to wait till everyone else arrived.


Highlander, Wolf and Nick, Rocket and D’Artagnon pulled in about the same time. A few minutes later Attack Cat, Raptor and T-3 arrived. We stood around and talked for a few minutes but it looked like we were going to be a small group today. The plan was to get in about 40 miles and just a bit of climbing with a few sprints tossed in for good measure. 40 miles would push me just over the 500 mile mark for January and this was the last day for me to get it in. I wasn’t planning on hammering the ride today so I was pretty relaxed as we pulled out of the parking lot and down Gilmore.

Disaster was avoided when I noticed a car was behind us and moved over only to manage to cut off Nick. I will admit I never saw him on my right because all I was looking at was my mirror view of the approaching car. Fortunately Nick saw me coming and moved out of the way before I took us both down. We managed to make it all the way to Acacia with no further incident. It didn’t take long and we were going south on Kirby and working our way over to Sanderson to make the run on Domenigoni.
With a smaller group I expected that we would stay together on the way to Leon. We did pretty well till we got close to Winchester when the pace picked up slightly but when we made the turn back east everyone was pretty close together. Once Rocket and D’Artagnon got in front heading back to Winchester we started to spread apart. Wolf and I fell back and reformed with Highlander and T-3 and followed the group back to Searl and regrouped before taking off to ride up Gibble. We didn’t get all that far before we were turned back by two rather large dogs who objected to us riding on their road. Being better armed than we were we decided to head back towards State Street and head over towards the east end of town.

As we headed back towards Stetson Casey Jones came flying by rocket and I and instituted the State Street sprint to see who could get over the rise first. There is just something about the slight rise before you get to Chambers that almost forces you to test yourself to see how fast you can push up the rise. Rocket, Casey and I took turns hammering each other till we got over the rise and then Rocket and I backed down to allow the rest of the group to catch up and ride with us past the golf course and back out onto Stetson. Rocket, Wolf, T-3, Highlander, D’Artagnon and I watched as Casey Jones, Attack Cat and Nick took off for Columbia and the housing track on Crest.

Rocket went home before we got to Columbia so we continued on to Fairview and managed to get ahead of the lead group before they could come out on Lake. D’Artagnon and I lead the group to Fairview where we made the run for Florida with Wolf. As we got back to the light at Florida we noticed Casey and Attack Cat had caught up with us and they continued on to Carl’s. We all regrouped at Carl’s and had coffee and conversation. We split up from there and Wolf and Nick rode home followed by Casey Jones, T-3, Highlander and me.
It turns out we only had to fight some light wind on the way home and just a bit on Domenigoni. I got in just over 40 miles so my month ended up with just over 500 miles. All in all it was a good ride and everyone seemed to be satisfied, even the dogs that managed to keep the cyclists from bothering their street.