Waves to Wine Ride - Day Two Early

Did I mention that the California ride was chilly? I was wearing arm warmers almost the entire time, and no one dared stop for too long for fear of goose bumps (Gaensehaut). The second day of the Waves to Wine ride wasn't quite as scenic (still beautiful, but less coast and more inland) but I got off to a good start by hooking up with Carl Jones. I'd only met Carl the day before, but it was clear he was a strong rider, and with Sunday being the last day, I could open up a bit.

Dad dropped me off in Rohnert Park at about 6:30 as we were supposed to have a group photo at about 7:00. Some folks were running late and the official photo was more like 7:25. Carl and I were on the road by 7:30.

You can tell it was a bit nippy by the fact that Carl was wearing a jacket. Neither of us had any type of bike computer, so we don't have a clue how fast we were going, but we passed a lot of people who started ahead of us and only the Grubman (that's what his shirt said) passed us prior to lunch - they guy was about 60 and tore up a hill leaving us in the dust. Although we were hauling ass, we got smoked by these two motorcycles. Gives you some perspective that even when you think you're tearing up the road at 25 mph or thereabouts, someone is bound to be faster...

Truth be told, we joined a paceline after the first stop and got dropped (again on a hill), but the maniac who was leading the line must have had some issue because we saw him talking to a support vehicle about 5 miles later and we never saw him again. Darren, who had a British accent, was the other guy who dropped us, but I'm going to rail against him for a minute, because when we caught up to him later (he wasn't as fast after he lost his maniac buddy) he didn't hear me introduce myself because HE WAS WEARING EARPHONES! I was really pissed off - he was unsafe AND unneighborly. Anyway, here's the paceline...

And, me getting dropped from the paceline...

More photos and videos forthcoming...