34.8 degrees, late March, aren’t we just a bit past that sort of thing? The positive side is the lack of rain. We earned this dry spell! Quite a few of this this morning; I’ll try the roll call thing- Kevin, Kevin, Eric, Karen, Marcus, Andrew, JR and yes, even George showed up! Haven’t seen George since he became an age-category hot-shot in the bike racing scene. He’s still young enough (about 60 I think?) that the age-category results still indicate someone really, really strong. At some point it gets a bit silly, like those who look forward to turning 75 so they can dominate the 75-80 group. It’s been a very long time since I looked forward to getting older.

I felt surprisingly good this morning, at least for the first half of the ride. Even kept up with the fastest guys up to Huddart Park, after which I lost their wheels and ended up in that “place in the middle” for a while. Younger Kevin caught up with me at the half-way point (I had naïve ideas that maybe I could keep up, an old man’s fantasy I guess), and gradually everyone else caught up and passed me by the time I got to the top. That’s OK; I felt pretty good and this was my 3rd time in a row under 30 minutes.

From that point on, it was a surprisingly civilized ride, everyone in a good mood, lots of talking, nobody doing anything silly like going to the front and pushing the pace. I could use more rides like this!  –Mike–