The ride today was both a great success and a collection of minor disasters.
On the up side:
- Eight people, including a few people who hadn’t been riding in a while.
- A casual-pace 29-mile ride, with successful climbs of many winding hills and a few thousand feet of elevation gain. People got tired of me saying “I think this is the last hill.”
- Port Costa was not at all sleepy– there were 100-200 motorcyclists (of the Harley / leather / chaps persuasion), a live band, and more loud-exhaust bikes rolling in every few minutes. It was a scene.
- We’d heard “the motorcyclists are taking over the Warehouse kitchen for the day” and it felt like a private party, so we weren’t sure we’d be able to get food… but they encouraged us to help ourselves to the spaghetti, salad, and bread, for free!
- A few interesting (and also large, and strong) beers.
- All in all, about everything I wanted out of the post-birthday ride, thanks everyone.
On the down side, members of the group experienced:
- Five flats of some sort, on two bikes – one bike ended up disabled.
- A painful allergic(?) reaction leading to swollen eyes and the need to get rescued half way through the ride (hope you’re okay!)
- Completely unrelated to that, a bee sting that puffed up a bit (edit: and the next day resulted in a visit to the ER and an IV drip).
- Three vulture-like birds circling above us while stopped at one point (no joke).
Photos to come…