A few weeks back we took a group ride with our HOG Chapter. We were sitting at home bored, Scott didn’t have a ride planned, and I wanted to ride. I was pushing him to come up with a destination but he didn’t want to have to think, lead, make decisions on turns or food. Sometimes you just want to ride without taking responsibility for other riders and I can appreciate that!
Scott pulled up our Chapters calendar and behold: Cranfills Gap! As I’ve stated before, this is always a good ride destination. At first I was hesitant about going. It had been quite awhile since I went on a Chapter ride and I am not used to riding in larger groups. However, once we arrived at the dealership we noticed some friends of ours, Bill and Beth. That was the turning point in my hesitation. They are a wonderful couple and we have always enjoyed spending time with them. They had not been to any rides for a long time and this was the first in many months for them. We figured this was one of those “it was meant to be situations” since both Beth and I are somewhat new riders and both happened to show up for the ride.
All of us lined up for group 3 so we could stay together for the duration of the ride. The day was beautiful, our road captains did a fantastic job of leading and trailing our group. We had plenty of break stops to hydrate since it was pretty warm. As always, the food at the Horny Toad was wonderful. The ride also took us on some roads Scott and I had not traveled before and that was nice in itself.
A side note to one of the reasons I don’t like large groups is parking. Our road captains are great about getting everyone parked correctly and safely but in the end you either have to control your bike and park it or have someone help you. After a year of riding I have finally gotten the hang of parking but you don’t want to be the one to cause this huge domino effect of falling bikes when you try to back in. As we approached the parking area I began to get nervous but I was determined to back my bike in by myself! Guess what, I DID IT! There was a little too much room between my bike and Scott’s but I still did it!
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