I agreed to lead the Humane ride for the Peninsula a couple of weeks back. I want to thank Larry and Louie for their assistance. I learned a few lessons, it will be a long time before I lead another ride that I have never ridden before in an area I am not familiar.
It was a very mixed group. Beyond the Advance riders who left and were never to be seen again, there were a couple of Advance Intermediates who followed them. So, there were 7 of us at the start, 2 people I had never met before.
We started off to a rocky beginning, immediately looking for a bathroom for one of the riders. Within the first 3 miles, we got separated. I went back for a couple of riders, missed one, so kept riding back. By the time I turned around, the group had gone ahead.
I thought I would meet them at Woodside, hoping they would be waiting. But they weren't. Fortunately, I ran into Larry, who had just arrived. I rode with Larry and one of the new people till we finally caught up with the others.
The Peninsula ride has a feature I'd not experienced before in any of the Yellowjacket rides: You go up a canyon, and turn around. I didn't understand, so some of us thought the map was wrong.
We asked other riders familiar with the area. They told us how to get to Artrascadero, so we kept going, up and over. The others did turn back. Louie said he remembered from the prior year that you turn around. We eventually met them again at a bathroom break.
We all got back safely to the start, but not without some help. Larry had to chase me down at one point, because as usual, I turned the wrong way. And it turned out that Feliz had only 3 wheels on her Corolla when she returned. She got there with 4.