Ride leader: Steve Palincsar
Members: RitaZ, Randy Sim, Larry Peed, Janell Saunders, Emily Helmes, Dennis Benson, Lou Dallorso, Jessica Hirschhorn, Joan Oppel
Guests: Lynn, Kurt, Darrell, Bruce and Sarah
Weather: sunny (until late in the ride, when it clouded over), windy, high 30s at the start and low 50s by the end of the ride. Brisk for sure, without a doubt a Polar Bear ride, but thanks to the sun very pleasant and comfortable.
Route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18249505 45 miles, 1865' of elevation gain
Mishaps & mechanicals: none (that I know of, anyway)
AMS: 12.5 for the leader, faster in the lead group.
15 riders drawn from Oxon Hill, Potomac Pedalers, the Wednesday Irregulars and the Arlington Babes & Babe Magnets On Bikes converged on Gwynn Park HS to bid the old year "Goodbye and Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish" and get in those last few miles before heading home to ring in the new year. It turned out to be a wonderful day, brisk, cool, sunny, with a noticeable but (aside from a few miles on Croom Road between Nottingham and Baden Naylor that several skipped, turning on Nottingham to shorten the ride by 4 or 5 miles) not really punishing wind (it was pretty bad on Croom, though).
Some of the guests had never been to the Brandywine area, some only once when I led there this year for the Wednesday group, and one who'd been to the Rural Legacy. Everyone enjoyed the route and the lovely rural winter landscapes.
The ride name was a call-back to a series I did back at the turn of the Century, where I introduced turns we never used to take and went on roads in directions we never did, all in the cause of trying to surprise riders. And as it turned out, not only were those unexpected turns surprising, but there always turned out to be other surprises as well. And so it proved today.
I stopped using Gwynn Park HS as a ride start mostly because there were no rest rooms any closer than the recycle center on Dyson at Missouri, but went back there for today's because they'd removed the portolet from N Keys Park for the winter, and it being a Saturday, the recycle center was open. And surprise, today, there were two portolets on the school grounds! Some surprises are good ones.
