Weekend UpdKABOOOOM!!!!ate

Yeah, it was fun riding in the thunderstorm on Sunday, wasn't it?

But first!

Saturday was a good steamer of a day, and we had, uh, uhm, er, a bunch of us riding, with about 1600 of our closest buddies. The Holland Hundred appears to have been a smashing success, with by far the largest turnout ever. Special thanks are due to Herman Miller for the facility (with bracingly cold showers!) and the tents and the whatnot, and to the volunteers out on the course and at the rest stops, and to the Macatawa Cycling Club for putting the thing on and letting us benefit. If ya worked, you'll get paid $15 an hour, though I'm not certain when you'll see that money in your ride tracker account - we'll let ya know.

Sunday we had really excellent turnout for the team ride; in attendance were:

Amy FF, the hostess with the mostess-t

SGS Laurie (I think)

Mel and Scott W.

Katie and Steve C.

Becky and Chris M.

Mister Jasker

JD

Tom M.

Tom and Mary S.

Scott and Linda P.

Kaat

Chris R, who may have a T-shirt for you

Nick M.

SGS and ACTW Kirsten

SGS and ACM (that's Assistant Coaches Mom) Ginger

aaaand Chief Meteorologist Me.

From our absolutely gorgeous start at Amy's parent's house in Mona Lake, we rode south under lovely skies to Miss Lisa's Ice Cream in Ferrysburg, and then I checked the weather radar on my phone and wondered if my coach's liability insurance covered lightning strikes 'cuz DAMN that was a big blob of red coming. So, we bagged the longer loop and raced north, hoping to stay dry.

We failed.

Badly.

I don't think I've ever been that wet without actually being immersed in a pool. It was hard to breathe.

Well, none of us melted, at least, and none of us got zapped, and really the storm passed through pretty quickly and was replaced by nice puffy clouds and blue skies. The food came out, the grill came on, and there was eating and cameraderying and stand-up paddling and footbiking and then a really, really nice pontoon boat ride out to Lake Michigan for some swimming. This ended up easily being a top-10 list team ride, once it was all said and done!

Our next team ride will be August 1, hosted by Mike Howard - more information to come!

Thanks for coming out Sunday; you folks define rocking!