By: C. Kent, aka (Superman) Short ride report The day started out about as nice as we could expect. I wasn’t too hot and we had about 10 riders ready to head out by 8am. But a sign that things were going to go south reared its ugly head when Brian had a flat before we even started. He didn’t have a spare tube so I gave him my extra one and filled it with one of my CO-2s. They he decided not to ride with us because of time. Still we headed out to Latham and then headed north on Lyon looking forwards to a short and fast run.

Slowly but surely the pace picked up as we moved north and like most days Bloodhound took off without the rest of us. We kept him in sight but watched him pull away as he rounded onto Ramona Boulevard. By the time we got to Ramona he was halfway to Sanderson and the rest of the group had formed up for the turn on Sanderson and the turn on the Expressway.

As we finally got to Sanderson we could see Bloodhound had made the light and while we waited at the light he finally stopped to wait for us to head west. Once we got started Surgeon closed on Bloodhound and my first instinct was to let him go. However Gambler pulled around me and pulled us up to Bloodhound and Surgeon. Once Bloodhound fell off Surgeon quickly gave the lead to Gambler and he pulled us west past the first dairy. We had a nice smooth cruise going when Bloodhound came back around to the front and tried to kick the pace up again. Picking up the pace turned out to be a bad move because he led us into the mother of all nail drops. Seven out of ten riders got flats. In my case I got two flats. In fact I had planned on heading home and called for a ride when Highlander decided to give me an extra tube. The rest of the group, assuming I was heading home, continued on after fixing their flats. A few minutes later Huntress, Highlander and I followed the route to Bridge and finally to Gilmore. We stayed on Gilmore all the way to Soboba and then headed for Ramona and east.

We rode to Lincoln and dropped off Huntress as Highlander and I headed back towards Burger King. I stopped for some cold tea at the Down-town deli before heading home myself. I spent the first two hours after I got home checking tires, replacing tubes and CO-2s to get ready for the next ride. The ride started off on a positive note but it fell off pretty quickly once the Nail Grinch and his plan struck. In fact Dragon Slayer got nails in his truck tires before he got home.