4/25/2012 By: C. Kent, aka (Superman) I expected it to rain today so I was surprised when I looked outside this morning and the street was dry. It was heavily overcast but it wasn’t even misting and it was over 50 degrees. Still I put on a base layer and headed out to Burger King to see who else wanted to try and get in a ride before the predicted rain. I got there t see Snow Goose, Dura Max, Coyote ad Centaur had already arrived. However they hadn’t bothered to unload their vehicles. Only Snow Goose was sitting on her bike. At 8:30 just the two of us headed for Acacia while the rest looked at the sky debating if they wanted to ride. The two of us made it down Acacia to Kirby and up to Cypress before coming out onto Sanderson.

By the time we got to Domenigoni Snow Goose started to overheat so we stopped to unzip the winter jacket and headed for Warren. Being her first road ride in quite a while we did push the pace at all heading past Warren and over the dry wash. The wind started to pick up coming directly from the west and right in my face. Snow Goose left me at Winchester and I continued on towards Leon and the Saddle. Even by myself I wasn’t setting any land speed records and more or less cruised to the saddle where I decided to try to get the whole LaLadera ride in before the expected rain. I started down the saddle and didn’t stop till I got to LaLadera. The turn north felt a bit better and my speed picked up just a bit as I turned in front of the Owl Sanctuary. I decide to get in a few pictures before leaving.

The owl wasn’t about to just sit there as I tried to get closer to the fence but I got two or three reasonable pictures with the zoom before deciding that the owls had a natural camouflage that made them hard to see against the dirt and gravel. I took a drink of electrolytes or two before heading on to get over to McCall.

Once I made it to McCall the wind was at my back and stayed that way all the way t the Hospital Hill. I managed to make all the lights green and hit the last light at the hill about 150 yards behind of a young guy on a Mountain Bike. I decided to give chase and closed on him just before the place where the road narrows. After I passed him the decided to give chase himself and only fell back about 20 yards as I topped the hill. I gained another 30 or 40 yards and left him at Menifee. I headed over to Simpson and headed back to Winchester. I did feel a few drops of rain so I decided to stay on Simpson all the way to Warren. When I got to the curve on Warren the wind had shifted from the north so once again it was in my face. I then turned at the light on Mustang and headed to Sanderson where I saw Centaur and Highlander heading north towards Stetson. They let me catch them and we rode back to Lowes together.

We stayed together till we got to Acacia ad Highlander pulled us back to Gilmore before heading north again to Burger King. We stopped and talked for a few minutes and noticed that the predicted rain wasn’t even close to getting here. I then left for home and got to my front door with 38 miles on the computer. My legs were a lot tighter than they have been in at least a month and after lunch I knew I would be taking a nap. It is much better to ride in a group than to ride alone.