Things did go well today, no crashes and no breakdowns, sort of. :? We all met up for breakfast and had a good time. We met up with some new faces and some old friends that I haven't seen in a while (moorepower and nattydrez!). I came back out from breakfast and it seemed the maintenance glitches were coming upon us with a vengence. One rider needed air for their tires, one guys' bike refused to start across the street, another rider was missing a bolt in his kickstand, and I had to make group adjustments. To explain further; last year it was always chaotic to have riders select groups by pace. We would have some select groups by ego and not ability and crashes would result. Other times, we would have 11 in one group and 3 in another with not a lot of difference in pace. So, this year since I know a bunch of our riders, I have been trying to place them in equal groups in a pace they would like. This our second time doing it and it's been working pretty well. This month was a challenge because folk that said they were coming didn't come, we had maintenance issues, and others show up that didn't say they were coming. So, I had to regroup folk while troubleshooting some of the maintenance issues as well. Fun times.

Today's lunch was a hoot! As always God continues to bless me with some cool chapter members and friends. We met at Geno's steaks down in South Philadelphia, one of the early makers of a local Pennsylvania delicacy called a cheese steak. It's located in a crowded neighborhood on a triangle of a lot, in a neighborhood that has a lot of Italian heritage. For Frindle and I it was a challenge to get there, we encountered traffic and numerous traffic lights, but we made it there safe. Once there we met up with johnric42 and his friend Steve, Seven and his friend, Michelle, Ron w, jlasure and Vivienne. We had a good lunch, but we had a great time hanging out and catching up. We do have some cool things coming up, thanks to jlasure, so stay posted. Once we finished lunch we had to "answer the call of nature" so we stopped at a local Philadelphia fire station who gladly let us use their bathroom. This is an acceptable practice; in Philadelphia, all fire stations are public buildings. While we were there we chatted with the firefighters who were all genuinely friendly. We were sad to hear their engine was disbanded due to "budget cuts". Quite sad that politicians have money for their pet projects but not for protecting their citizens, but I digress. After leaving the fire station, a few of us topped of with gas and then left the city by way of the river drives. All of us dodged and weaved through traffic following that "hoodlum" johnric42. We parted ways near 309 and the rest of us headed north. Along the way we picked up a Pennsylvania State trooper as a follower, but no tickets were issued. Once we entered Montgomeryville we encountered a great deal of traffic, so we went through a shopping center then detoured through Bucks County back up to Sellersville. The rest of the guys went north on 309 and I went west. This was big fun, I can't wait until next month!