By: C. Kent, aka (Superman) Day tree after my MTB crash and I woke up to pain. Yes in this case the three day rule applies and I was sore in spots I wasn’t sore in on day one. So I more or less rolled out of bed and slowly, like the Frankenstein monster, stood up to head for the kitchen and start breakfast. The weather outside looked about perfect and I was looking forward to an easy Friday flat ride. I headed for Burger King and planned on a slow warm up heading to Florida and Palm. As I moved towards the light on Florida it turned yellow and I stood to try and sprint through. As soon as I got out of the saddle I knew it was a mistake and my ribs were far too sore for such a move. I thought it would still be ok and at least not everyone would want to hammer it on Stowe or Domenigoni. I would be proved wrong later. There were already four riders waiting for me as I pulled into the parking lot. By 8am we were headed down Gilmore to Acacia nine riders strong. I could also tell I wasn’t going to get any slack dealt me on the ride today. Pain or not I would have to man up and push through or I would get dropped. I knew that my day would be hard even better as we turned on Kirby and headed for Cypress.

As we got ready to turn onto Cypress Bloodhound started to pull away and Minotaur took off with him. I had neither reason nor inclination to chase them and at the early stage everyone seemed to be willing to ride at my pace. Behind me were Sasquatch, Digger, MacGyver, Surgeon, Dragon Slayer and Magic Man. The good part about the formation we had was I knew everyone behind me would help if the pace got too hard for me to hold. But still we watched as Bloodhound and Minotaur pulled away on Sanderson and then Wentworth and headed for the airport. We saw Bloodhound soft pedal as we came through the airport and we were almost on their wheel as we pulled onto Stetson. Minotaur was through the stop sign on Warren and we had to close on him by California. As we moved south towards Stowe Dragon slayer pulled by me taking Bloodhound and Sasquatch with him. I stayed on their wheel till just before the metal barn and made a run for the parking lot. Bloodhound caught me and got there first. We all regrouped while I tried to catch my breath and let the pain fade before heading back onto Winchester.

Thank goodness Dragon Slayer was feeling good because I didn’t have to pull even one foot down Winchester, past the dump road and Simpson. In fact I was safely in his draft all the way to Domenigoni. Out original fear was that we would run into a head wind heading east towards Sanderson. But we were in luck and we had a nice little pace line going as we headed east. We held a pace of between 22 and 24 MPH all the way to State Street where we once again stopped to regroup before heading towards Chambers.

We had Digger, Surgeon and Minotaur leave early to play rabbit while the rest of us gave chase as we headed to Stetson. We were closing on them as we got to Columbia and they decided to stay on Stetson while we headed to Thornton and then Crest. We slacked off from Chasing a bit as we headed for Lake Street but Dragon Slayer pushed us back up as we got to Lake and Stetson. We could see Minotaur and Digger as we scooted towards Fairview and another regroup.

Once on Fairview we stopped to regroup and once again Surgeon and Digger continued on towards Florida. We did see Dura Max out on a ride and talked to him for a few minutes before heading to Florida ourselves. We pretty much stayed as a group as we rounded the corner at Florida and made our way to Cranston to find our Rabbits waiting for us. We took a few minutes before heading back to Carl’s for coffee and a bit of a break up as a few didn’t have time to stop. There were only three of us heading back towards Burger King and we split up by the time we got to Columbia. I got home rather early and took a hot shower before fixing lunch. It was a great day to ride with great people and I feel lucky.