Another bike ride.... another lunch!

Can you believe it, we're actually talking about how cold it is the past few days! In the mid 40's in the morning. Now that I've tweaked all our Blog Friends in New England where it's in the 20's at night, I'm sure I'll get "beat down" for that. We actually had to wear long pants and sweaters. We had to warm up our bike seats!

And so we headed to Winter Garden and another ten mile ride finishing up at another favorite place for lunch, "The Winter Garden Pizza Company." This time, our leader, Pete turned right heading east instead of west. Our five mile ride "out" was somewhat more hilly than some of us "first timers" to this trail expected. We hid our pounding hearts and throbbing quads behind smiles and subdued panting! We were never going to let on that we had to struggle up several hills that felt like we were climbing Mt. Washington.

We made it look so easy... until several speedsters in spandex blew by us as in a blur. That was humiliating... they were girls! We pressed on and made it to our five mile marker only to brag about how exhilarating the ride was. None of the "pros" in our group caught the oxygen bottle being passed around camouflaged as water bottles! Although, Judy and Jim brought along some sort of "elixir" called "syrup water!" It must have been some sort of "energy drink!" Jim turned it down but Judy did seem to ride to the lead on the return leg of our ride!

We did take advantage of one of Florida's "locals" and took a (breather) stop to admire this young six foot gator...

Funny how they always look like their "dead!" Yeah right! We admired him from afar and rode on.



The five mile return trek became a mission. It was getting close to noon and I noticed the pace quickened... for some of us! Strange the "down hills" on the way out seemed so much shorter on the return trip! By this time the sun was higher and just right to remove our sweaters. I think some of us took our sweaters off so we could expand our chests for more air intake.

We all made it in great shape (cough, cough) and bragged how easy the trail was!

Now don't take my "tongue and cheek" too seriously, after all it's all in good fun! Can't you tell by all those smiling faces? (You'll notice we are in a private room. It's soundproof, so the rest of the guests can't hear all the moaning and groaning!) Oh, wait a minute, come to think of it that might have been Judy who claimed she didn't eat an entire pizza by herself! Judy's husband Bill wouldn't verify her claim!