Friday Night Beer Ride...Northeast

Cola now has two Beer rides, the one that goes on Downtown through Fort Jackson and back to Bar None and one that starts right in my neighborhood's Town Center at Bambino's pizza. The forecast for Friday was pretty sketchy with rain, hail, lightning, and high winds but I had been planning on this ride all week and was not going to miss it. My lovely wife gave me a little extra incentive with her exclamation that "for the love of Pete, if you can't ride from our house to the Town Center you shouldn't be riding!" It is only about one minute to the Center. So I opted for the ride from our neighborhood. Upon arrival, I checked out the participants...quite a bit of diversity, from Mom and Pops to some seemingly hard core racers. I felt like I was being sized up with many glances wondering who the hell is this big oaf on the huge bike sporting his OCC team kit. Well boy's I didn't disappoint. I hung out in the back of the pack for the first several miles until I felt comfortable with the group and of course my poor pack riding skills. But it came back to me with ease. Many nervous moments with riders who need lots of practice in a pace line however. I made my way to the front slowly feeling out the riders who knew how to ride and quickly found a friend who is about three inches taller than me with legs the size of tree trunks. We were about 8 riders back on this one section when the ride leader took off on a flyer, Patrick looked over at me and said do you want to get him. A quick nod and we were off, thank goodness it was on a flat section. Before too long we had reeled him in doing about 35 mph. That was fun!
Soon after the skies opened up and down came the rain, hard pounding rain! I almost felt childish, like a 10 year old out on his bike splashing through the rain soaked roads with no cares in the world. That was very refreshing, a jump start for my batteries. Heading back in to our neighborhood, Steven the ride leader/Cat something racer indicated this was our sprint section and off we went. Again thankful the road was rather flat, I made my move from about 6 riders back all the while eating the rooster tail spray from the wet tarmac thrown up by the riders in front of me. As I passed this sketchy tri-guy on an old Trek 1000 his frame pump came loose, luckily he was able to grab it before it lodged in his front wheel. I ended up third across the line, I may have been able to take second but the slight hesitation as I watched him juggle his pump was too much. At least he kept it off the tarmac.
All in all a great ride with no drops, good people, and the attitude that hey after a good ride, good food and a cold beer. I look forward to the next ride.

Thanks for reading, Y'all tune in again soon.