By: C. Kent, aka (Superman) After a wet weekend I think most of us were looking forward to getting out for a ride today. I wanted to start out easy so I put together a ride that had the possibility of taking advantage of the predicted winds and headed for the bike shop to get the day started. It was a small group that was ready to ride by 9 am consisting of Dragon Slayer, Minotaur, Abacus Digger and me. We headed out onto Lyon with digger leading and he took us to acacia and then Kirby before turning south. After the turn Minotaur and I headed for Cypress and turned west to get to Johnston.

I thought I would hold back today and just spin without putting much effort into turning the bigger gears so I was in no hurry to follow Minotaur and Abacus out onto Stetson and west towards Warren. After we crossed Warren I looked back and noticed we had dropped Digger so I fell back to get him and slowed to a cruise as we headed for California. He hadn’t caught me by Stowe so I slowed some more as we turned west towards Winchester. I got to Winchester farms just before Digger and joined the other riders waiting to head to the dump road and west once more.

We had a slight change of plans because of the construction we knew was on Menifee causing us to take the dump road to Briggs before heading north. I led out and took us to the dump road where Dragon slayer and Minotaur took over. I stayed with Abacus as we headed past the Wild West Arena and kept an eye on Digger well back in the rear. We were about the same distance in front of Digger as Minotaur and Dragon slayer were in front of us. . By the time we turned onto Briggs I realized the weather predictions were wrong and the wind was not going to assist us from the south. It wasn’t right in our face but it was no help either and I wasn’t sure it would be with us when we turned back east. By the time we got back to Florida we saw that Briggs was closed by construction and we would have to head to Menifee while Minotaur decided to head for Juniper flats. We planned on meeting him at Nuevo and Lakeview so we parted ways and I pulled us to Menifee and dragon slayer took over and pulled us past Mapes. At the top of the rise Dragon Slayer took the pace up and soon we were well ahead of Abacus and Digger. I took the last pull to Nuevo from Central and got us pointed east where Dragon Slayer took over and got us to Lakeview to wait for Minotaur. It took a while so by the time Digger caught up to us we went back to Nuevo and headed up towards where we expected to see Minotaur heading back in our direction. We met up with Minotaur before we had to turn on Hansen so Dragon Slayer led us back to Lakeview and to his street where he and Minotaur left us and took a break waiting for Magic Man to get off work and do another ride. Digger, Abacus and I continued on to the Expressway to start the trip home.

We got out onto the Expressway and Abacus and I took turns pulling us east back to Bridge and towards Warren. Digger held on pretty well for the most part but started to fade a bit before Bridge and we got away from him and had to wait for him at Warren. We then rode to Cottonwood and headed east back to Sanderson and headed south. Abacus and I once more pulled till Digger broke off at Menlo and went home. Abacus and I rode to Devonshire and I pulled us back to the Bike Shop for a short break before heading home to check out the plumbers handy work before having lunch and a hot shower. All in all it was a pretty good day.