By: C. Kent, aka (Superman) It is Wednesday and it is supposed to be a good morning. We might have a little wind but who cares we have a ride to do. I had planned a ride west and I did expect some wind but still we have been in wind before and at least in one direction we should get some relief. There was only one little problem, I hurt. I was hurting from a fall Tuesday and there were places than decided to hurt more as I slept over night. By morning my ribs hurt, my neck hurt and my hand hurt. It was all I could do to roll out of bed and get up to have breakfast and get dressed in my Kit to head for Burger King. I hand full of Vitamin “I” and I was headed for a meeting with the group. Digger and Bloodhound were waiting and Highlander was already getting his bike out of his van. Sasquatch, Gambler and Rooster rounded out the group and we got ready to head out onto Latham and north on Lyon. At that moment there was very little wind. But I knew if it did get windy there would be few if any pictures being taken.

Sure enough as we got close to Esplanade the wind started to pick up. Gambler took over and led us almost all the way to Ramona Boulevard but I managed to take a turn and pull us west on Ramona and stopped us to let Digger catch up before sending him ahead to play rabbit and give us reason to chase someone on the Expressway. He made it through the light on Sanderson and the Expressway before we got there and was almost to Warren as we turned west and gave chase. I got a chance to lead us most of the way to Warren and gave the lead to Bloodhound till we caught Digger just after Bridge. We were really moving with the wind and Highlander fell out of the draft leaving just Bloodhound, Rooster, Sasquatch, Gambler and me to run for the light at Hansen. Gambler pulled around about a mile before Hansen and when I tried to cross the rumble strip I tossed my chain so I had to pull over. Digger caught me and before I could clear the chain Highlander flew by me like he was being chased by a vampire. We regrouped at Hansen and decided not to try Juniper Flats. There was a tree blown down on Hansen anyway so we headed to Lakeview and made our way to Nuevo.

We had a vicious side wind and it took us a while to get up to speed. Well all of us except Bloodhound and he was slowly pulling away from up. The problem we were having was blowing dirt. There were places where it made seeing down the road pretty hard and it was not much easier breathing. Even my nose felt like it was getting clogged with dirt. Soon we started to lose sight of Bloodhound.

We worked our way over to Menifee and started south. To tell the truth the wind wasn’t affecting us as much as I thought it would and there was less dirt blowing on Menifee than there had been on Lakeview. We got to Florida and waited for the group to get back together and then moved on to McCall and over the hill to Highpoint and then through the housing tract and onto Antelope to have coffee at Jack in the Box. Our next move was one we thought would be a lot of work. Going east on Newport and over the saddle all the way back to Sanderson. As we got close to the saddle we expected to get hit in the face with about the same force as we had at our back on Ramona. Imagine our surprise when the wind more or less died and stayed dead all the way to Sanderson. Gambler, Rooster and Bloodhound stayed on Domenigoni. Highlander had a big lead on sasquatch, Digger and I on Sanderson and we didn’t catch him till we got back to Gilmore and Florida. Sore or not it was a great day for a ride.