Colonial at 8:00. Crash has been away in Oregon for a while. Good to
have him back.
I had tried to work out the meeting place and timing intending to hook
up with the 8:00 triangle group and it worked out to perfection. We
reached the LIE at Lakeville at exactly the same time (8:10), so we
hopped onto the train and blended in for a while. They're always
slower at the beginning, but before long there's a contingent that
starts pushing the pace. It was fun to ride in a large group, even if
only for a short while. We kept at or near the front, both to push the
pace ourselves and in order to stay out of trouble.
By the time we reached Woodbury Road the group had grown to about 50
riders or so, as we kept picking up other joiners along the LIE, then
they all suddenly slowed down, probably trying to decide where to go.
They typically split up into separate groups at that point and don't
have a pre-planned route, so the four of us just took off and did our
usual West Hills, Lawrence, Snake, Huntington, Stillwell portion of
the ride. Crash predictably whined about going up Lawrence, which
always baffles me, because he typically drops me like a bad habit on
any climb, even though he hardly ever rides.
Before long, Twitchy started struggling on the climbs. Probably still
tired from yesterday's 75 miler. The rest of us had fresh legs, so we
waited for him to catch up a number of times, but eventually he
insisted we not wait for him. I had trouble keeping up with Crash and
Dubya too on some of the climbs, but I was still able to keep them in
sight and catch up to them on the downs and flats. (OK, so I've been
putting on a few lbs.)
We skipped the deli stop and we bypassed the campus. Just as we
reached the LIE we picked up a rider who, turns out, had started with
the 8:30 triangle hammerhead, but had obviously been dropped. That's
life in the fast lane.
At the turn back onto Lakeville we ran into a few Wheelmen (Jon Grumpy-
Ol'-Man Dobbs, Amos Weinberg and Joe Brescio), so we stopped to say
"hi." Apparently, the word is out that we now go by the name
"Renegades." I think there's a mole in our midst. Perhaps it's Isaac.
He'll ride with either group. I think I'll nickname him Slut.
We did about 55 miles or so, and averaged 18+ MPH. The weather was
perfect. I hope Twitchy made it back OK and will be joining us
tomorrow. Crash said he would too. I have confirmations from Bob and
Stitches. See you all at Bob's at 8:00.
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