Our Sunday ride is turning into a crazy scene! It was a very amorphous ride.

We started out with five of us regulars and one friend-of-a-regular. Within the first five miles we picked up another rider, then another, who'd ridden out to meet us. Then the fast group from the next town caught up with us and just melded into our ride. I think there were like 25-some riders at one point. They just started hammering. We got them settled down a little bit so we could all stay together. When we got to the convenient store where we all take a break, a few more from the fast group caught up with us. Some of them turned around to go back, most of them were going to go on and do our longer route.

At that point the six of us who'd started out together decided we'd just let the fast group go. But we all pulled out of the convenient store together and it wasn't entirely clear who was doing what. The peloton started picking up the pace while us geezers were still shaking the post-break stiffness out of our legs, only to about 23 mph at that point, but it got really strung out, and the weakest rider got dropped immediately. Another one of the regulars hung back to keep him company. I chased the peloton for a few hundred yards and finally decided to just drop back with the other two guys.

Seven or eight miles later, here comes the guy who'd brought his friend, and the friend, back to join us slugs. I don't know if they burned up before or after the sign sprint, but they were burned up. So then we were five for the next few miles.

Then we came up on 10 or 15 of the fast riders trying to change one person's flat. The last of the guys we'd started with, and a couple of others, decided that there were plenty of people changing the flat, and they joined us again. I think we were nine at that point, for five or six miles.

Then one of us had a flat - one went on while the rest waited. Over the last few miles we split off for home one by one. I had 55 miles in all, a pretty good ride.