Shattered and A Case Of Mistaken Identity...

Group rides can be as small as 2-3 people, or as large as 40. Sundays pre-ride of the Fair Hill course was on the large side. A small group of us met at fatmarc's house and rode over to meet the ride. I was shocked by the number of people in the parking lot. If I didn't know any better I would have though it was race day. This was the last chance to ride the course before the race. Todd El Presidente' took the lead for the expert loop. There were at least 40 or so when we left the lot. That is way to many people for Todd so he quickly tried to weed some folks out. The start of the ride was blistering fast. I was worried that my legs would be dead from the day before but they actually felt pretty good.

We stopped a couple of times for a short re-group then right back at it. At one point Todd took a look back to admire his work, yeah, he pretty much split the starting group in two. A few of us left the Todd group to hang back with John Williams who had flatted. Marc, Ben A, Andrew, Les John and myself. Once we got rolling again I just had a feeling Marc was chasing. Todd's group probably had about a 10 minute head start. We would have caught them sooner had I not dropped my chain for the 2nd time.

This problem kept happening, then the other problem hit. I started to bonk. Les hooked me up with a gu, but it didn't seem to help much. I did manage to stick it out and finish the loop, but I was completely wasted when we got back to Marc's house.

Later that evening I joined my lovely wife Rachael for a very fancy open house.

Walnut Green is a farm where Yearling horses are sent to get preped for sale. This was an invite only and Rachael's employers brought us along. There were some very distinguished guests, including Governer Ed Rendell, Bobby Frankel, and a bunch of other important horse industry people. The whole thing was about showing off some of the yearlings that are going to sale very soon. There are 2 from our farm there, but they were not shown because they didn't handle seeing all the tables and chairs very well. Towards the end of the evening a couple approached Rachael and I and introduced themselves, I didn't have a clue why they wanted to meet me. It turns out they thought I was Dean Richards, the Chief of Surgery at New Bolton Center, and the guy that operated on Barbaro. The couple was pretty embarrassed, but Rachael and I thought it was pretty funny. I just wish I had went along with it for a while.

Cheers,

Buddy