Fantastic Weekend at 2010 MS City to Shore

The forecast for the weekend looked good; Saturday 84 degrees with significant wind but from the WNW; Sunday cool with wind from the ESE. So much for the accuracy of weather forecasts!

Saturday morning Team Squash met at 6:15 for our team photo and eight of us taking the 100-mile route pedaled off into the morning. It was comfortable, 68 degrees, but we soon discovered that the 16 MPH winds were not at our tail, but headwinds; that makes for a lot more work. As it warmed up my thermometer kept climbing reaching a high of 95 degrees. Despite the wind and heat we kept a blistering pace. The incentive that kept me going the last 20 miles was a cold beer waiting form me in a cooler at the finish.

Great day riding with good friends! Team Squash always has the largest and loudest cheering section at the finish line and this year it looked even larger; even Wayne and Penny were there (word is Wayne took notice of a tandem…).

Sunday morning it was a nice cool 62 degrees, perfect for cycling! The nine members of Team Squash that were riding today met for breakfast and then headed out of town for the 75-mile ride back. The route out of Ocean City has two bridges and after the second bridge, there were only four of us together. Again, the wind was in our faces but today only 10 MPH, the group of four kept going as we expected to keep a more rigorous pace to finish early.

Today the clouds kept the temperature down, my thermometer never got over 69 degrees, and we were able to work comfortably. As we neared the finish we caught a large peloton of very fast riders; we sucked onto the back of that pack and raced into the finish, exhilarating! Two miles from the finish we could feel drops of rain; but we finished dry (route on RidewithGPS).

Another great event; Team Squash raised over $27,000 and the event over $4.5 million for MS!  Thanks to all that supported me.

MS City to Shore

This weekend is the 2010 MS City to Shore and I'll be riding with Team Squash again this year.  Saturday we'll be taking the 100 mile route to Ocean City and then returning on Sunday via the 75 mile route.  I'll follow up next week with a story on the event.

Ramapo 500

The Ramapo 500 has become a summer staple for a large group of my motorcycling buddies.  This two day event is run by the Ramapo Motorcycle Club and as in the past, they again did an excellent job choosing a wonderful selection of beautiful roads (less traveled) and preparing great cue sheets.  This year they added an option of downloading the routes to GPS devices to assist in directions.  I took advantage and downloaded the routes to my Garmin Zumo 550 as did everyone else in my group with a GPS.  I lead the ride for our group and still had to read the written directions, but the GPS helped to eliminate second guessing turns.

The ride registration is cut off at 400 with a wide range of brands and types of motorcycles.  With everyting from sport bikes to touring bikes to cruisers, one of the "rules" is when a faster motorcycle or group comes up behind you, move to the right to let them pass.  Every year we seem to encounter some folks that fail to read this section!  More on that later...

We meet at the crack of dawn, well not exactly, but when the Brass Ring opens on Saturday morning.

The ride starts up in Rockland County New York and right after a hearty breakfast we race up north to begin our day.  Keeping a group of ten motorcycles together is challenging, particularly when you are riding with 400 others.  We keep in touch with communication between myself and others in the group via our CB radios, but sometimes, particularly in the mountains, we lose communication.  About mid-morning on Saturday we had been passing through other groups of slower riders and got too far in front of some of our own riders.

Here we are discussing where the hell the others could be after waiting over 15 minutes!

The club likes to throw at least one gravel or dirt road into the mix and that appeared on Saturday afternoon (Hell Hollow Road).  I saw it coming up on the directions and we were stuck behind one of those slow groups that didn't read the move over and let faster groups pass instruction.  I kept riding up to the sweeper in the group and trying to signal him to let us pass; he didn't get it.  We got to a fairly straight portion of road and I moved left and began to pass the group in front.  Just as I get past the leader of the slower group the pavement ran out and we were in gravel.  That made for some interesting passing behind me by the rest of our group.  The road was not paved, had lots of huge potholes and at one point was dirt only; but a blast none the less!

There is camping available at the half way point but our group "roughs it" at the Hampton Inn for the night.

All in all a great event and fun 2 days of riding!  Pictures courtesy of Joe Holden, thanks Joe!

The motorcycle goes back into the garage now as I need to resume my training for the 2010 MS City to Shore in September.  Again this year I'm riding on Team Squash with John Ball.  Check my MS City to Shore Website and maybe contribute to the cause.