unexpected ride opportunities

This weekend was the in-laws' montstroboso 5-birthdays-in-March celebration, which was set for Sunday afternoon, and all week I'd been seeing rain predicted for Saturday, so I wasn't sure I was going to get ANY riding in: grump, grump, grump. And sure enough, Saturday started out grey and wet, but after my post-lunchtime nap, I awoke to sunny skies and surprisingly warm, so I got a quick 20 miles up to Colonial Park in Franklin, NJ. The GPS wasn't working (more later), but I was pretty fast, and a backache which had made its presence known earlier in the day was much improved by the speedy ride.

Sunday, it turned out the birthday observances were later than initially expected, so I showed up for Winter Larry's ride (Laura OLPH had a ride scheduled, but I would have been back too late from that one). My back pain made itself known again; it was hard getting on & off the bike, and I've since been using one of the specimens in my cane collection (and isn't it sad that I have a cane collection?). Started with a still day and seven riders, and went off to Battleview Orchards on this route. Even before the break, we had one that wasn't keeping up, but I kept him in my mirror; I saw him at an intersection behind me where he MUST have seen us turn right... but the road curved, and he never came around the curve. Two of us went back to find him (that's that little appendix you see at the bottom left of the route at Perrineville), but he was gone. We figured alien abduction, perhaps. We left a message on his cell, but didn't hear from him again for the rest of the ride. I was cranky; he's only the second person I've dropped when I was trying to keep track of 'em. I spent the rest of the ride complaining to myself and pushing hard into the wind. Still, it was a good ride.

After I got back, I got an email from the other rider who had left the cell message: he'd heard back from the missing rider, who said he had called out he was turning left where we turned right. Yeah, like I could have heard that. Still, he got home OK, so I guess that's most important.

At the very end of the ride, the Garmin GPS turned itself off. I had charged it the night before, and it turned back on when I hit the button, and it connected the ride data, but if you look at the last little bit of the ride route, it looks like we're not keeping to the roads (which I assure you we did). I have the invoice saying I bought it in July; we'll see if problems continue. I'd like to be sure it's OK, but I also have a habit of making permanent solutions to temporary problems.