By: C. Kent, aka (Superman) It was the first day after our time change and I got to sleep in an extra hour. I headed for the bike shop thinking I had planned a short easy ride to start the week with and expected a small group because of the time change. I got to the shop to find both Centaur and Earth Dog waiting. Digger arrived and I expected Highlander to drive up soon. Just before I saw Highlander I saw Tax Man and thought it was a good start for a group. Just as we got ready to leave Anaconda arrived and set up her bike. We left the parking lot and headed for Acacia on Lyon. I led us onto Acacia and took us to Kirby and headed south. Anaconda and I talked as we turned onto Cypress and we made our way to Johnston together and led the group to Sanderson to wait for the light to head south.

I thought the morning was just about perfect as we go the chance to turn onto Sanderson and headed for Stetson. It was a bit surprising to me that the wind wasn’t at our back heading south because that was the predicted direction on my weather app the night before. But I was thinking we would get a direction change once we got to Domenigoni. I led us past Mustang and waited to turn east towards Searl. We waited till the light changed green so Highlander and I pulled east and formed a double pace line.

I thought we were pulling easily but we had dropped some of the group and so we slowed the pace a bit as we rolled on towards State Street to head for Cactus Valley. Shortly after turning south I got a phone call and had to pull over. Digger started off before I got off of the call and I had to chase Digger, Highlander and Anaconda to the stop sign at Newport. We were back in line as we rolled through the sign and Centaur was leading as we started up the rise at the turn onto Cactus Valley. About halfway up the rise I jumped out front and made a run for the Golf Course. It didn’t look like they organized a chase group till I was half way to Sage. My goal was to get to the hill at Cactus Valley and Sage and past the Baptist church because that was a segment. I didn’t expect to PR the segment but I wanted to hit it none the less. After cresting the hill I slowed to wait for Earth Dog, Centaur, Tax Man and Highlander. They rode on by as I waited for Anaconda and rode towards the end of the road. Tax Man and digger waited at the last rise before the drop to the end of the road where we were going to regroup.

As we headed back towards Sage I was disappointed that we had a head wind again. I felt I had enough left in the tank to hit the west bound segment to State Street. Earth Dog and Highlander started the pull west and soon they had joined Tax Man and Digger. As they rode by Earth Dog picked up the pace and Highlander fell in on my wheel to get ready for the drop to Sage and the run to State. I hit the drop onto Sage hard and Highlander and Earth Dog stuck like glue to my wheel. As I ramped it up I ran into a head wind and realized a PR was going to be out of the question. There was no reason for me to do all the work so I fell off and let Highlander pull for a while. Anbout 100 yards from the turn onto State Earth Dog came around in a sprint but I had rested just long enough to tag onto his draft and chased him to the turn and then passed him to pull him back to the stop sign on Newport and head for the McSweeney housing tract. We regrouped on State as we came out of McSweeney and then headed north towards Chambers and east to Santa Fe and Stetson. I lost digger on State and stopped to let him catch up at Thornton before heading the Stetson and heading east. We followed Earth Dog to Fairview where we looked to see what direction the rest of the group had taken. It turned out they had gone to Carl’s and were waiting so we headed to Carl’s as well. After coffee and conversation we headed back onto New Chicago and then to Lincoln to head west and make our way to Park.

Once we got to Park Highlander and Earth Dog could smell the hay and headed for the barn. We left Digger as we made the jog onto Devonshire and I started the pull to close with the fleeing Highlander and Earth Dog. We caught them at San Jacinto and Earth Dog jumped off the light and headed for Santa Fe. I went with him and ended up chasing him all the way back to Lyon and then to the bike shop. It was a good day for a ride and I was ready for a light lunch and a shower.