Invasion of the weather snatchers

1/28/2013 By: C. Kent, aka (Superman) Invasion of the weather snatchers Last week we had two great days of Cycling. I may have made a mistake however by posting pictures of our great weather and the great rides because it caused enemies of Southern California to try and sabotage our weather. What some of you might not know is our weather is more or less controlled by the quality of our weather people. In Southern California we tend to have positive, upbeat, attractive weather men and women. You may not realize that these men and women were invited to a dinner in LA last week and they were drugged and replaced with body doubles from Seattle, Portland, Boise, and Billings Montana. These evil weather people came in and brought their Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana weather with them. Once I discovered the switch I jumped into a phone booth and changed clothes and headed for LA. I found the offending weather people and forced them onto airplanes, in coach mind you, and told them to go home while freeing our weather people. Knowing what the positive attitude these real weather people would have on the weather I put together two rides for Monday and Wednesday and set my alarm accordingly. It was with positive thinking I came back to the Inland Empire and headed for Burger King to meet my friends for a good ride. There was a small group assembled by 9am because it was still cool and no one was sure that the rain was gone. But still five of us, Dura Max, Dragon Slayer, Highlander, Red Rabbit and I headed down Gilmore to Acacia and then onto Kirby before turning onto Cypress before making our way to Johnston and the light at Sanderson.

After we turned south on Sanderson I thought about our goal for the day. I think one of the reasons we were weather attacked was because we were putting in more miles than some of the Seattle/Portland cycling clubs and they wanted to get our mileage down. So with 5 riders we needed 40 miles each to give us a 200 mile group average for today. So thinking about pace and keeping the group I took us down Sanderson and out onto Domenigoni east. We made short work out of the Parkway and turned onto State to ride through McSweeney before heading back out onto State and down to Chambers. Soon we were back out onto Stetson and heading east again. Only Dragon Slayer and I took the map route onto Columbia and then on Crest all the way over to Lake and back to Stetson. Still we came out about a quarter of a mile behind Rabbit, Highlander and Dura Max. Then we made the turn North on Fairview and took it all the way to Ramona to start our trip to Soboba.

Dragon Slayer was pulling us at a great pace until Rabbit dropped off of the back and we slowly but surely dropped him. He was maybe 400 yards behind us at Hemet and fell another 500 yards by the time we got ready to turn and cross the dry wash and head over to Soboba. This time we waited for Rabbit, last time we lost him, and he joined us and stayed with us to the light on Soboba. Once everyone made it through the light we headed for Soboba and west. We were moving pretty good as we got back to the driving range and once again we started tom drop Rabbit. Not as bad as before however.

Highlander pulled for quite a way west on Soboba and then Dura Max pulled us to and over the last little hill that makes up the three rollers of Soboba Road. The reason we considered calling him Dura Max is that his pace slows very little on these short rollers and today was no different. Once he crested Dragon slayer took the lead and we headed for the regroup point at Soboba and State. All that was left for us t do was wait till everyone was regrouped and we could head down State and back on Ramona to Carl’s. There we took a short stop for coffee and conversation. We ended up spending most of the time talking to two county workers about how great cycling is and telling them that they should start before the retire so by the time they are ready to join us they will know just what kind of bike they really want. Rabbit left first about five minutes before the rest of us started on our way home, first up to Lincoln and then to Park where Dura Max headed for home.

Now we turned onto Park and headed for the jag that would get us to Devonshire. Both Dragon Slayer and I were ready for Highlander just in case he started a horse heading for the barn sprint for home but for some reason he kept the pace within reason as we headed for San Jacinto and the Hospital. We got through the light and made our turn onto Latham and once again west towards State. I knew I would be turning at Palm so I told Dragon Slayer to keep an eye on Highlander and I would see them both Wednesday.

I rolled around the corner on Palm and headed to Florida where I caught the last light before heading for home. Soon I had past Starbucks and Hemet Ice and had to do a short track stand on Acacia. I rode past the new Salvation Army Building and the old Travel Trailer factory before closing in on Whittier and home. I got in my 40.4 miles and was looking forward to a hot shower. I just wondered how many realized we had a problem with weather people being replaced with out of state agents? Oh well I will keep my eye on them just in case.