Back in May 2008, my husband and I started riding the "Rails to Trails" bike trail that was fortunately built in our town just to try to lose some weight. Shortly we found the LBS (The Bicycle Shop) and made some great new friends and the next thing I knew, I was asked to be a ride leader for the bike trail rides. Our local bike club already had scheduled road rides and mountain bike rides but there wasn't anything for the 50+ crowd that wanted to get exercise plus have fun riding but not at 25 mph. Now the LBS takes down names and email addys for me and I email the schedule out to almost 100 people monthly! We have ages 23 to 79 in our group and have a great time riding! We've gone to other places together for rides and we always make sure our rides include a lunch break or the local donut shop for coffee. We even did the MS Ride together this past September for 25 miles each day and we are planning on doing 50 miles each day for next years MS Ride. A few of us do ride longer rides (50 miles) together every once in while just for fun too and I've even done my first century. That was wild!

All in all, we lucked into the sport, the group rides and our great friends. My suggestion would be to stop by your LBS because they will know more about your local rides and the groups to join. I hope you will be as lucky as we have been! Have a safe and happy holiday season!