So much for loyalty!

Nearly half of our weekly riders disappeared this week. What's going on? Last week nearly thirty riders and this week seventeen. Was it something I wrote? I can imagine all the excuses next week... "sorry, we went on a cruise," or "sorry, we took a friend back home to Palm Coast." Boy, some people will come up with any excuse to get out of  exercising.

All right, we'll let it ride, this time.

So here are the "die-hards."

Notice the lack of our "colors?" Oh, we had our tee's on, it was just a little too cold to go with out sweaters and long pants.

With Joan and Pete somewhere on the Atlantic with others of our group, Judy called "roll call" and Ray took the lead.  (Sure, Pete and Joan gave up on our ride to take a boat someplace, now that's a good excuse. There were others as well, we'll pick on them in time.)

We headed out of Encore Lake Magic in a shorter than usual caravan.

We lined our bikes up and headed out with Ray leading the way. About a mile out, we watched as Ray turned his bike around and headed back to the parking lot!

What the....

Fortunately, Rose took the lead position and dutifully guided us toward our first stop at the Celebration Hospital. Ray's sudden departure peaked our curiosity. At first we thought he left his truck running. Then we thought he couldn't wait for the "pit stop." Oh well, I guess this will become one of life's little mysteries. We may never know why Ray left us in the middle of the road with no leader! (I'll get my sleuths on the case.)

With Ray somewhere on the road and Rose handing off the lead to Jim we headed out from the Hospital. But just then, Ray showed up. He let Jim lead for a mile or so and then he blew by us and never looked back until our next stop.

In the above photo we gave Ray the silent treatment until he begged for forgiveness.

Off we went!

Back in "tune," and our leader at the helm our troop headed for the most enjoyable stretch of the Celebration ride, the wooden walking trails that cut through dense woods.

Checking mileage, Ray dutifully got us to our weekly goal of ten miles and we ended up in front of our lunch destination. Some of us headed to our regular spot, "The Town Tavern" and the rest headed to "The Columbia Restaurant of Florida" for a change of cuisine. http://www.columbiarestaurant.com/

Here, you can see that our members like to "sup-in-style!"

Ah, you've just got to love these bike rides!

We leave you with another (almost) daily treat common to central Florida...

the morning hot-air balloon fly-over...