What a ride! There were 10 riders at the start including Sebastian, who rode 53 miles to get to the start. At 10 minutes before ride time, Jeff K. was the only person there so I thought it was going to be one of those days where people thought that it would rain and weren’t going to show up. Surprisingly, all of a sudden there were 8 more riders.

There were plenty of clouds in the skies but there was no prediction for rain. After about an hour into the ride the cloudy skies turned sunny and it was looking like a very nice day. The only problem was the wind and its direction. It was coming out of the NNE so that meant there was going to be no tail wind for the entire day. We had to earn every mile but surprising we kept a pretty good pace.

The ride was not without peculiarities. The first that happened was running into a closed road. It was tricky getting through it but we figured it out without getting too muddy. It added some fun and adventure to the ride.

All in a days work right?

The next exciting thing was the Elk ranch. We knew we’d pass by it but we stopped for a while to take a good look. For our amusement, they let us have a look at several new additions to the herd that we weren’t able to see a few weeks prior.

The third interesting thing was after leaving the area where the ranch was we noticed that the road was getting unusually rough with 4 foot wide sections of pavement missing. We then ran into a mile of this:

Yep! That’s gravel. After the gravel section we ran into a section of chip and seal and it was melting and you could feel a major increase in the rolling resistance. I believe that all of us were checking to see if we had flats. It felt like someone was holding onto the bike. I’m glad we didn’t have much of that to deal with.

The 25 miles from Wellington to Ashland was remarkable. Nice quiet roads and good scenery. We all commented on how nice it was. It seemed like it was all downhill as well. I think were benefiting from some tailwinds for the only time during the day. It was so nice I would like to do that route again.

Overall, it was a very nice day.

Riders included:

Bob Anthony Mark ScheeffDan Anthony Mark Thomas

Eric Overton Mary AnthonyJeff Kompa Sebastian

BirchJoe Ochmanski

Tim New

Newcomers included:  0

Riders 10Max. Miles 100, 121, and 173 miles

Temperature 61-67 deg. with winds at 12-22 mph with 27 mph gusts. (NNE)

Close Calls 0

Mechanical Failures

Joe O. broke a spoke at mile 90.

Bob lost his cleat cover twice crossing a construction zone. (Sorry, I needed to add this incident to pad the report)

Mishaps 0 Fixed Gear, Single Speed, Cyclocross, or Mountain Bike 0

The National 24 Hour Challenge is upon us. Sat. June 20th. http://www.n24hc.org/