We pulled into the parking about thirty minutes later. "Grab your wallet. We'll go pay the entry fee and then look for Jay and Mike," Mark mumbled. After we paid our fee and got our maps, we headed back outside into the morning mist to look for our buddies. "There's Jay's florescent yellow bike," I called out. We waved and headed back to the car to get ready. "Well, here's to another adventure." Someone said, as we clipped into our pedals and headed out of the parking lot.

The sun was starting to come up and it wouldn't be long before we started looking for places to tie these extra layers of clothes. We lined up in our normal pace line formation; with Jay and Mark leading the way and Mike and me drafting off them, respectively. We headed North, on the two lane highway, out of town. We were pushing against the wind and could only go about fourteen miles per hour. It wasn't too long before we caught up to Farley and Ralph, about ten miles out of town. They're a couple of guys we normally end up hooking up with and riding together. They were standing on the side of the road fixing a flat on Farley's bike. We stopped to wait on them and grab a quick drink. Soon, Farley had his wheel back on his bike and we all climbed back into the saddles.

I decided to be the first one to break the silence of the morning with a crazy story that just happened to me the day before. "Yesterday, Jay and I rode out to Plain City for breakfast. On the way back, we were heading with the wind, so we were riding about twenty-five miles per hour. I looked down just in time to see my pump fall from my top tube, down between my rear wheel and frame. I locked my back wheel up to avoid breaking any spokes, but not before I bent my pump all up. Fortunately, I didn't brake any spokes." I heard Mark from the front of the group make some crack about me buying my bike only a week ago. "I bent the pump back into a recognizable shape and found the missing pieces before a car could run over them."

By the time they let up with the wise cracks, we reached the first rest stop, about 23 miles out of town. We woofed down some bagels and a banana, grabbed some Powerbars for the road, and topped our water bottles off with fresh liquid. As we started to pull out onto the road again, Farley said, "Wait a minute, guys. I have to fix my shoe." I looked up as he stopped, unclipped his left foot from the pedal, and fell over flat on his right side. Farley got up, dusted himself off, and said to himself, "Get off on the left. Get off on the left." Everyone got a kick out of it, including Farley. We started this chapter of our biking adventures out strong.

We finally made it to the edge of town, and formed our "cruising formation" for the next several miles. Shortly after we left town, we turned down a road that went off to our left. At least now we didn't have to combat a head wind straight on. We lined up in a formation suitable for that direction of cross wind and were able to pick our speed up to about eighteen miles per hour. The sun was out and it was starting to warm up pretty comfortably. There were still a few puddles of water standing here and there, but for the most part, everything was pretty dry.

We were starting to get into some rolling hills and our pace line soon became a chase line. We would switch to a high gear to scream down the back side of the hills. When we got to the bottom, we would switch to a low gear, peddle like mad, and hope we could make it up the other side before our legs gave out. I'm not very strong on the hills, but I did what I could to stay with them or I knew I'd be left behind. Fortunately, we had a small flat stretch, usually after every hill, where we could spin and recover from the climb.

We finally reached the spot we started at. "Fifty miles and another story," Ralph said as we pulled into the parking lot. "And it didn't even rain, which is unusual," Mark replied. We stopped by the car and Farley performed his famous dismount one last time before we headed home. "Get off on the left. Get off on the left," we heard him mumble as he picked his bike back up.