I went on a small group ride today, with a leader who is known in our leader circles as rather strange. He promotes his rides incessantly, by Google groups, not just the regular place where we post our rides on the AMC site. I've heard that he's kinda angry and that once, on an after work ride my friend was leading, he was punched by a rider in another club, because this guy was in the middle of the road and no one could get by.
Not to digress, but the ride was weird. It was advertised at a moderate pace, and it was going into a hilly area, so I said, sure. Found the group at the meeting place, which was not clearly described (lots of parking lots on this road), interspersed with the high school x country skiers getting ready to do dry land training on Oak Hill. Without going into boring details, the guy had sent links for 40, 50, 60 miles, so I downloaded the 60. At one point he told us to go ahead, he was staying with a slower woman... of course, he had no sweep, and no safety talk, either, totally against our rules. My GPS went off to turn, but the 4 guys I was riding with went straight, since he told us to wait at the stop sign. We did, and then he arrived, he says, "We're lost." How can you be lost with a GPS/cue sheet that you did? I was familiar with the area, not the road we were on. They wanted to ride to the NH border, it was getting dark and windy out and rain was predicted. We got back to a main road and I led them to a good restaurant. Oy. The other riders were very nice, but I felt like I was at the MIT Nerd bike club. Sorry, and no offense to any MIT grads here, but... they complained about riding on a busy road, but hell, I did not want to get rained on. We did about 5 miles after lunch on a bike trail, which I hate. Other than that, there were some cool roads, a fairy tale house in Shirley, MA, where there's book characters on the roof, and only moderate climbing for this area. I ended up doing 41 miles, so I am happy, but I am going to talk to the bike committee about the lack of following our rules.