Team Ride Report 6-19

Hello everyone,

What a great turnout! We started out with 40 or 50 riders. The pace to Ventura was brisk but friendly. Unbelievably, we made it down the freeway with that many riders and not a single flat tire! In fact we made it the entire 95 miles without a flat! That's a miracle! Although the ride did have it's share of mishaps.

After the lake group split off we were left with about 20 riders doin' the full monty. The Ventura boys showed us the bike friendly way to get thru town and then got us out onto some nice flat farmland. Right at the base of the Santa Paula climb we had our first "incident". Brett Harrison and Blinger crossed wheels at a stoplight and suffered a low speed crash. More of a fall over on top of each other than a crash. They both emerged unscathed and were able to continue to our first regrouping spot at the Summit Store.

I was kind of expecting sunny skies and high temperatures on the Ojai side of the mountain instead we got rained on! It wasn't heavy rain but it was rain...on Summer Solstice...go figure. Climbing up Denison grade into Ojai we had our 2nd "incident". Bob Wilcher was mashing a big gear up the climb as usual when his left pedal snaps off! Instead of crashing or falling over like a normal person he decides to be a dare devil and plays chicken with a car heading in the opposite direction! He won, but it scared the crap out of me...figuratively of course....not literally. Luckily we were close to the Testrider.com international headquarters... (Ben's house) so I offered to push Big Bob over the rest of the climb and the two miles or so along the flats to get there and switch out his pedal.......which I would have done........if I had been able to catch up to him!

So after Bob drops half the group with one leg, Ben saves the day and replaces his pedal and we're back in business. We make our way over the Casitas climbs and back into town at a nice steady tempo and we arrive back at Rusty's at 12:05 and since we left at 7:05 our ride time ends up at exactly the predicted time of 5 hours! That' a first.
95 miles, no flats, free pizza, good friends...that's a great day!
See ya soon,
Matt Benko