10/24/2011
By: C. Kent, aka (Superman)


We had a great weekend so I was thinking it would be a pretty good day today. There were a few clouds but nothing serious so I put on arm and leg warmers and headed for Burger King a few minutes early. It wasn’t any warmer after I arrived and Dura Max said it was only 2 degrees less than when he left home. By 8am we had a reasonable sized group to head west to Murrieta.


My cycling computer had been acting up and I was having trouble getting it to reset. I played with it all the way down Gilmore and then on Acacia as we pulled up to the light on Kirby. Blood Hound pulled up next to me on one side and Highlander pulled up on the other. We had a car sitting in front of us so the light tripped first try and we headed south on Kirby towards Cypress with Highlander and Blood Hound following close behind me.

The A group looked ready for whatever I could throw at them and to add to it they were joined by Donovan, JATO who promised to add to their ability to run down the B group even when they had a pretty good lead. As we turned onto Sanderson Jato was already asking when the As were going to break off. I pretty well knew once they hit Domenigoni and I pulled off of the front they would be gone.

To my surprise only Dura Max and I cruised west on Domenigoni while the rest of the group stayed right behind Gambler, Jato, Blood Hound, Rocket and D’Artagnon. We watched as they seemed to disappear over the horizon when Wolf fell back to ride with us. Not long after Wolf started to pull us to the Saddle Highlander came back to assist as well. Racket flew past us going the other way as we got to the saddle and where we regrouped and decided to split for the rest of the ride.

I decided to send the A group on the regular route and then modified the ride for the B group so that we could get to McCall first and they would have to chase us. To my surprise the Bs took this as a chance to push themselves and their pace picked up quite a bit all the way to Carl’s. A quick nature call and we were headed to McCall. Once headed east we reached the hospital hill and quickly made it to the top. They were interested in spending much time talking and most of the B group took off for Simpson. I think by the time Dura Max and I got to Leon Highlander, Vortex, Surgeon and Tax Man were already at Chris’s.

Shortly after the A group joined us and we had a quick cup of coffee the group started to get antsy and we were back on the bikes and headed north on Winchester. Highlander, Tax man and Surgeon took off like a shot and reached Stowe well before Vortex, Dura Max and I did and I had to push myself just to catch them for one last picture before everyone split up for home.

I ended up riding with Dura Max and Surgeon and we never did catch up with Tax Man and Highlander before they got back to the cars. We got there just as Jato pulled up after a slight detour following Gambler and D’Artagnon part way home. I rode home and took a quick shower before lunch after which the sky opened up and dropped rain by the buckets full for about 15 minutes. We were lucky we missed the bad weather and lucky we have such a group of people to ride with.