” There is no ‘fear” in McPherson” (Mc “fur”son)

Hello everyone,

The ride to McPherson on Sunday marked the first day that I felt recovered from whatever malady affected me. Jim, our retired physician from San Diego thought at least part of it may have been dehydration. Got to keep drinking….. Almost every morning has started out cool with possible threat of rain so we start off with a rain jacket and arm coolers (not cold enough for warmers).

A rather cool development from the riders is everyone now sportsman american flag on their bikes. Kevin and I found some flags and distributed them to the entire group. Even our fellow riders from across the pond are flying the red white and blue. In past years was just I and or a couple of other riders and now the entire group is flying the flag in honor of Memorial Day.

WE still have groups who star at various times which are typically 7:00, 7:15 and 7:30 am depending on how fast one tends to ride. This morning we started an hour later due to the relatively short and flat riding day. The whole group has lessened up considerably and we often have some form of music playing at the van before departure. Larry (Tracy’s husband) was dancing in the back of the truck to a Beach Boys song and Richard asked  “If his wife knew where he was?”. It was pretty humorous in that we all tend to teaseLarry about getting trouble with the “boss”. One morning he h=gave us all permission to leave 1/2 hour early only to be overruled a little later. tracy has us leave at different times to maximize the teams ability to track and service the riders. If we get too spread out, it becomes more difficult and if anyone has a problem, it may take a lot longer to solve.

Anyway, we were riding at a pretty good clip into the first SAG at 30miles or so. Once again we had favorable winds and the temperature slowly raised so that we could shed most of the extra clothing at the SAG. The Sag was at a DQ and we lingered there for quite some time so that nearly everyone was in the SAG at the same time.

Once we started riding again, a group of us really picked up the pace and as we encountered some climbs we raced to the top. It was quite fun and hard work and some of the riders didn’t want to keep up that pace. As we pulled into the outskirt of McPherson we had arranged to meet at a coffee shop. We stopped at a convenience store and most of the group caught up and we proceeded to a little coffee shop in town. Kevin had asked a lady in the store about the town of “McPherson” and we were told “first of all there is no “fear” in Mc”fur”son. Overall it is a thriving community.

We convened at the coffee shop and had food and drink. When we headed to the hotel which was several miles away, it looked like a big storm was brewing so we made haste to get in. It did storm later but everyone was either in or holed up in town. Later that evening it cleared and cooled when we went to dinner.

We are getting a little spoiled by these shorter rides but after our rest day we hit a big one of over 100 miles and more than 6000 feet of climbing. We have been blessed with the wind and weather.

Thanks for reading

~Chuck