What a beautiful day! Once we got through the registration fiasco, that is. SadieKate and crew met up with jobob and crew early enough to avoid most of it, but V and I didn't get there until about 7:30 (which is NOT late!) and the line was about 45 minute wait. This made me cranky. I ended up forgetting to put sunscreen on my neck, forgetting my extra packet of chamois butt'r, not getting to stretch, etc., etc. I was all discomboobulated after that but got better once I started riding.

We don't have a beginning ride group shot for you (yet), but here's Little Red herself, making sure we all know the rules of the road:





We were staggered at the beginning but ended up finding lots of AV jerseys later. Veronica, who took off with my friend Death-March-Martha (that means she rides hard and fast all the time, no exceptions), smoked us and then we never saw her again! But SadieKate and I ended up riding stints with aka_kim, jobob, TrekHawk (sandbagger!), cindysue, and my friends Cyndi and Yau Ming. We also ran into SadieKate's friend Marty, CyclaSutra, Lifesgreat, and sulis at the lunch stop:


(l to r, aka_kim, SadieKate, jobob, yellow, cindysue, Marty, and CyclaSutra)


(l to right, yellow and Lifesgreat)


Because the line for lunch was so long, we decided to go ahead and ride into Idaho first before wiping out the sandwich bucket. But we needed to do a little map verification of where we were before we ventured out. Very serious stuff here.



(SadieKate & jobob)

And some bike maintenance:



(cindysue)

Once we took off, the vistas returned. Here's cindysue admiring the view:





and here we are at the state line, smiling after recovering from having to repair FOUR flat tires (among the riders), TWO of which were aka_kim's, who incidentally had no pump. Thank you cindysue for the rescue!



(l to r, cindysue, aka_kim, yellow, jobob, TrekHawk)



(l to right, aka_kim, cindysue, yellow, SadieKate, and jobob)

Everyone (that I saw) was still smiling at the end and we all agreed that it was a fun ride. We'll have to see how aka_kim rates it, as she bases it on food and since I don't really eat the food at these things, I can't judge. Veronica says that they need sodas and pretzels at the lunch stop.

We didn't talk about next year at the BBQ. We mostly sat around and yakked. Tater and Mr. Tater joined us and we got to hear all about life in Idaho and we ate and drank lots of carbohydrates. As you can see it was dark by this time...we didn't get around to eating until after 9 pm. This threw Mr. Yellow off. He was hungry and wanted to eat earlier. My reaction? "Hey! This is about us LRRH riders!"



(SadieKate & aka_kim)


Thanks for such a fun day, ladies. I am fundamentally a social rider and love happenings like this. What's next?