St Patty's Day ride

A break from the vacation rehash... (boy, the pics turned out dark looking on the blog..dang!)

Saturday was the St Patrick's Day ride in Yankton. In preparation a gathering of sorts happened at the Clubhouse for food and beverages. Present were Cycling Cathy & Charlie, Biking Brady, Ride Vermillion, The Hammer, Kris, myself, Dawn (Mackie) and Christi (Gilly). We fueled up and headed to the starting point down by the river. We took off around 2:15 and made our way out to the Cottonwood Coral. I struggled with one of the hills in town along the bluff. My bike would not shift into the small chain ring so I got REALLY winded shortly into the ride. Then got a bad headache and stopped to medicate the noggin before heading down the BIG HILL to the lake. We were going into more of a head wind instead of a cross wind. The wind was out of the SW and we were heading west. Gust were around 30 but we prevailed! Halfway to the halfway point there was an older fella that biffed on his hybrid ahead of us. He dropped the front wheel into a pothole at a driveway to a business along the bike trail. He landed HARD on his shoulder and elbow. We helped him to his feet after we untangled his legs from his bike frame. He seemed a little shaky but was ok. Kind of scary as he had no helmet on and his rear wheel ended up in the lane of traffic. He hopped on his bike and headed across the four-lane to the gas station and seemed ok so we carried on FINALLY making it the the Coral where food and beverages awaited.

I decided that since I was tired, from the hill issue and vacation, that we would call our SAG wagon and have them drive us across the dam plus it gets really windy when riding across the dam, which I was done with. So we joined in with The Hammer cruising the Nebraska side of the Missouri River then across the new Discovery Bridge back to Yankton and on to Ben's Brewing Company for beverages.

It was a great time and we had LOTS of fun. I think Dawn might be a bit excited about riding. She has had some leg issues in the past couple years that are finally getting resolved. All I heard from her on Saturday night was how much fun she had riding and how great the people are. It was the longest ride she had done at one time and with a bunch of riders...CONGRATS MACKIE!

Check out Cycling Cathy's blog to view some of the pics from the ride.