It was a perfect day - 70 in the parking lot just before the 10:00 am departure, rising to a comfortable 80 during the ride. Sunny, blue skies, gentle breeze increasing as we approached Breezy Point (guess that shouldn't have been much of a surprise), in all a perfect day for cycling.
In the "wake at a reasonable hour" group joining leader Steve Palincsar were Ken Tucker, Kenny Statom, Chantal Briere, Bob Thompson, Herb Pruitt, Linda and Paul Bankerd, Al Manley, Tom Short, Deborah Bowman, Tracy Krulik, Tom Dillickrath, Mike Bivens, Teddy Macauley and Danny Lewis.
Today was another one of those "Vanishing Peloton Syndrome" days, where the group motors off, getting smaller and smaller and finally vanishing from sight until the next rest stop where they would be waiting.
The route was a reversal of Annapolis Bike Club's Labor Day Bay Country Half-Century, modified to add some roads not usually included. The terrain is rolling (although some might call it "hilly") featuring 13 "peaks" mostly going from 50 to 150' elevation and back over a 4-5 mile distance, but with an unending stream of small 10-20 foot spikes; a total of 3,000 feet of climbing in the 53 miles, but nothing that would qualify as a "hill" by the standards of the Piedmont (or Bike Virginia 2011). In a way, a bit like 53 miles of Croom Road with seashore and sea breezes.
Rest stops were at North Beach -- alas, no link-up with John's Dawn Patrol, they must have come through before us -- and at Bowen's Grocery in Huntingtown. Bowen's was once famous as a rest stop for the ice cream, hand scooped from those large cylindrical containers (just how big are those, anyway? 3 gal? 5 gal?) but no one had ice cream today.
"Lanterne Rouge and DB Straggler" finished with 13.7 mph averages, returning to a nearly empty parking lot after a pleasant, uneventful ride. How'd it go up at the front of the peloton?
