Where's Herb?

The Pineland Cruise ride that I do out of Bordentown always draws a bit of a crowd. It's easy flat 65ish mile ride that is always fun. Being one of the hottest days of an already hot year I thought that only a few die hard people would show up but I ended up with 14 people crazy enough to think that riding in 95+ degree heat was a good idea.

Because of the heat I started the ride at 8:00am and cut the ride to just over 50 miles. I tried to kept the pace easy so we would have something left for the end of the ride. Our first rest stop is a Wawa in Brownsmills and always has some interesting local characters going in and out.

It was hot but the riding wasn't too bad and everybody keep cruising along. Right before Vincetown Big Joe had a flat caused by a cut in his tire. We will probably be busting Joe for a few years about this since the cut in his tire wasn't new and for the fact that 4 miles later it blew again. Then a few miles later at the rest stop we put in yet another tube. Joe has these Campy rims that are almost impossible to get the tire off of and it was only with the help of Laura's super strong metal reiforced levels that we were able to get the tire on and off 3TIMES.

At the second rest stop Herb ended up leaving a few minutes early to get some Gatoraid at a deli a few miles up the road. Because of the 3rd change of Joes tire it was around 30 minutes before we headed out of the second rest stop to meet up with Herb. When we got to the deli we didn't see any sign of Herb so we figured that he gave up on us and headed back to the start. But when I got back to the start there was no sign of Herb. Crap, since I drove Herb to the start I need to find him because I didn't know how to tell his wife that I lost him.

I waited at the school in Bordentown for about 15 mins before heading out, by car, on the road to try and find him. I though that he might have gotten back to Bordentown and saw that we were not back and then decided to ride home. I knew which way he would have headed home but before I was going to drive that route I decided to retrace the roads back to the deli where he should have been. By the time I got to Chesterfield I saw Herb on Chesterfield Road and picked him up.

It turned out Herb was in the bathroom in the deli when we went by there which was unexpected because they never let us use the bathroom there. It as a strange coincident that caused us to miss each other. Herb ended up doubling back to the second rest stop to find us then realized we missed each other and headed back to Bordentown and would have ridden home if I he had to. Luckly we have ridden a lot together and know how each other thinks so I knew one way or the other I would find him or he would make it home.

At the end of the day despite the heat, flat tires, and loosing Herb it was still a good ride that gave us another interesting story to tell.