Miles. . .

I am going to start posting ride reports from the Saturday morning group. . ..

Good job to everyone on Saturday. We had a good crew and thank you for
hanging back to make sure everyone made it to Lotawana ok. . .

Saturday's Theme: Miles. .. ..

Some commentary for your reading pleasure (from the 7:30 ride). . ..
(starting after Lotawana). NOTE: IT seems Charlie lost the Yellow Jersey
from the previous week, but we are happy to report he was wearing King of
the Mountain colors. . so we didn't do a good enough job of protecting him
the week before. .

I always enjoy riding with a big group of people down Colbern. Everyone seems
a little antsy to get the ride going and test out their legs for the day.
We had a big group hit the big climb and it quickly revealed who was
ready to ride and who was not. Next . . .

Randy got us going on E Colbern Road coming off the hills towards
Stillhouse. . Dave organized us into a semi decent paceline on Stillhouse
till one of us (who I will not name TROY!!!!, had a flat and it took the
expertise of Dave to get him back on the road). Randy, Dave, I (Jared) and
Max helped to get Troy back up to catch the stragglers and then onto QT
where it looked like most of the guys were done for the day. . .(Eric must
have killed them heading to QT).

After QT, we got a good group (around 8-9) guys heading to Buckner on F
Highway. Eric took the first pull and did an excellent job of getting us
close to Pink Hill where "THE MACHINE" Dave Corwin took over and got us
past Pink Hill and up to a good pace. Steve took over till we got to
Truman Road and held his own really well. I pulled up Truman and onto H highway for a bit. . . . we had about 4-6 guys by the time we hit Bone Hill with Randy and Dave attacking halfway up and I believe Randy won King of the Mountain points there. . .

Heading onto 24 highway into Buckner we had the wind at our backs and Randy
on the front (could anyone ask for anything more?). We stopped at Shell
station for some water/ice/gatorade and started the paceline back up.
Headed down Lake City Buckner Road up to Bundschu where Dave or Troy won
King of the Mountain. . Or maybe it was Randy??? :)
I can't remember . . . I was too tired.

After Bundschu, the executive decision was made to head south on 7 Highway
to 23rd street instead of the Bundschu Hills heading East. .. We had a
good paceline heading down 23rd and everyone seemed to riding strong.

We hit church hill off of 23rd and it never seemed so steep, I can't
remember who took KOM points. .but we were all tired that was for sure. We
did have the pleasure of having a motorist yell (tell on Eric) for not
using hand signals. . .Eric. .please use hand signals and not the one finger
kind.

We came down to RD Mize where apparently much to my surprise the
intersection was not clear which caused me to hit Randy's wheel and almost
end my day. Luckily I was able to "right" myself and after stopping to
check things over was on my way while giving everyone about a 100 yard head
start. . Dave and Randy dueled it out up RD Mize hill to Caseys with Troy
and Eric behind. . I was able to catch Eric and then Troy but had to go
into Time Trial mode to catch Dave and Randy. I finally did at I-70 and
Woods Chapel with the help of a Red Light. ..

Dave, Randy and I ended up first back to Bike Stop with others shortly to
follow. . .

All in all it was a good ride with some new faces. . . Good job to
everyone. .. .

FOLLOW UP: It appears that Steve helped Charlie salvage his KOM jersey by pulling him back from Crenshaw. . . Those two do a great job. . I hope to be riding that well when I am a few more years down the road (no pun intended.