This was a weekend of firsts. First time riding my bike "long" distance. First time trying homemade lemoncello. First time inviting 30 relative strangers to my house. It was an interesting weekend to say the least.

The ride was challenging. Ejdo and I got up and going by around 5:40, so we were able to get to the ride site before the suggested 8:00 start time. There were already a few people there, but most arrived after us. That gave Ejdo plenty of opportunity to flash people when he dropped his towel not once, but twice, while changing.

This was billed as an "easy" century route, but man did it hurt me. The fact that we were riding into a constant 10 mph headwind didn't really help, and the rain was pretty annoying as well. Add that to the fact that the temperature dropped about 15 degrees while we rode, and it wasn't the most comfortable day on a bike. So we all decided around mile 36 that we would "bail" on the century and go for a metric instead (100k). Here's a shot of us making that not so tough decision.



A ride tradition is the carrying of the pacifier. The first person to whine gets the pacifier until someone else whines. While in posession of said pacifier, you can whine away. Right after making the decision to bail, we started riding uphill, into a headwind, and the rain picked up. I stated "You gotta be fricken kidding me" and recieved the pacifier a few moments later. So I carried that for the remainder of the ride. Why the remainder? Because I was too far away from everyone to hear anyone else whine. I sucked. But thats what life is about right? Feeling crappy and still moving on. Thats what I was trying to tell myself anyway. Basically no pictures from me on the ride. I was just trying to keep up.



After the ride, all these people that we just met came back to our place for some burgers and beers. We had a great time. Sawyer was very well behaved with 30 new people in the house, and all the loungers were fairly well behaved as well. We laughed a lot, drank a lot, ate a lot, and poked fun at each other a lot.

All in all, it was a great day. Rode 68 miles, met a bunch of "new" people, and had beer multiply at our house. Started the day with 2 cases, ended with 3. You gotta love that!