5th ride of the year and all went fairly well.

The start of the ride was close to home (2.3 miles to be exact) so I didn't have to wake up at the butt crack of dawn and drive to BFE, which was nice for a change. This was the first year of the ride and they had routes of 10, 20, 40 and 60 miles. I spoke with Nathan the night before and he informed me that, due to being sick earlier in the week, he would be riding the 20 miler. Danny and Michele both showed up the morning of the ride and chose the 40 mile route. Since it was a local ride, I was already familiar with the roads on the shorter routes and wanted to find some more challenging roads, I decided to do the 60 miler.... plus, I needed the extra mileage to make up for the times that I haven't been able to ride in the past few weeks.

The start threw us onto the mean street of Saginaw promptly at 8am. The first 15 miles were a bit rough. There was no traffic control once we crossed Main street and I almost lost it while riding in a pack down Marine Creek Pwy, I hit a huge pot hole that was not visible until it was too late. After that, they sent us through some residential streets, in lake worth, that were just horrid! Some of the roads were tore up (Patches of Dirt) and with the thunder storms the night before there was mud everywhere (we were warned of the mud prior to the start). Once the route turned onto Ten Mile Bridge Rd, the roads got much better. We then turned onto FM730 and we were now heading directly into the wind and had some pretty good size hills for the next 10 miles. From this point, traffic control was in place at all major intersections, all of the rest stops were well placed and the few that I stopped at were well stocked and staffed with friendly folks.

I heard a lot of people bitching about the amount of traffic on the roads, but what can you expect in the DFW area? To me, the traffic was light in most areas and well behaved for the most part. As mentioned earlier, I ride in the area regularly and am used to riding in much heavier traffic. The only other problem I had was with the last part of the route. For some odd reason they decided to change the route at the last minute and sent us down a road that normally Dead End's into Hicks field, but they had the barricades open, for the riders, which sent us down the Airport Road/Taxi-way and thru to the South Entrance. We then rejoined the normal route and had an uneventful ride to the finish. I finished in 3 hours and 45 minutes. with an Average of 15.2 mph.

For the most part, the ride organizers did a great job considering it was their first time. They do need to make a few changes to the route and improve traffic control in a few places but other than that you couldn't ask for a better first ride!