What a weekend!

A sunny MDA Live Ride! Who would have thunk it…..

Saturday, was absolutely wonderful….almost cloudless. Blue skies everywhere.

Registration here at Anchorage City Church and Denali HD went smoothly.

We had XRock 96.3 and Kool 97.3 at ACC with XRock doing the live remote to the Soldotna Sports Complex.

We have a "honor guard" group that ride with the sidecars (last year the "VIP" group left the sidecars with the MDA Kids behind!) all the way to Soldotna.

We have 14 groups of 8 depart after the honor guard.

Judge Roy, Sirock, Minx and I were the last out since we were in charge of getting the groups together and on the road.

Road to Girdwood was uneventful. After Turnagai Pass, is where things started to get interesting….

You can brief riders and ride leader till they are blue in the face…but <sigh>.

Nothing like new riders. We had LOTS of new riders and lots of people who obviously do not ride in groups. We had a group that would not move to the right when we came up on them to pass. Then one of the riders would leave the group and ride the right lane!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So we ended up having to literally move into the group in a leapfrog to get past them.

However right after that is when we came up on the group that encountered the bear cub. Long story short, a group had a bear cub run out in front of them. Half the group were able to avoid the cub, but three could not. Read the story here.

So…taking it slow after that we made it into Cooper Landing. Had we not decided to take a break we would have been ahead of the first group <grin>!

We decided that since we had so much time, we'd hit a favorite stop for the three of us in Soldotna….Lucky Raven Tobacco! Cigars and ciggs at GREAT PRICES! I love stopping in as they have my favorite Brazilians and Dominicans at 40+% off!

So, after a good cigar purchase…off to the Sports Complex.

Thanks to the bridge being finished the ride to Kalifornsky Beach road is a easy ride.

At the complex everything is going great….games inside, LOTS OF FOOD (so much so that I'm full without going for seconds), live music that doesn't outright suck!

Except for the lack of a bike wash…it's a damn site better than last year!

The parade of heroes was also great! We has twice as many as last year able to ride inside the complex. As before I give my slot to someone else as to me it's about the kids…not riding around inside the complex.

We wait to find out who wins…it's not me again, so off we go to Homer.

You read that right…off to Homer! There was Hagen Daas for desert, so we're so full we decide NOT to stop at the DQ!!!!

We arrive in Homer OK…except for the usual weekend tourist idiot traffic…the ride is great. The roads are still…well…the roads to Homer (tar snakes, frost heaves, broken pavement).

Party at the driftwood, continuing to Duggan's Pub across the street for more partying and dancing till the wee hours. I hear there are pictures and if I can get them I'll post them with accompanying blackmail instructions <EVIL grin>.

We get rain starting @5am. We depart a wet, rainy Homer @10.

Breakfast at Anchor Point, gas and then the road home.

I want to mention that it's at Anchor Point that we get the word about Heather Williams….

When we get just past Cooper Landing we end up in stalled traffic. By the time we get to the Seward/Sterling Junction, we see traffic backed up on the Seward as far as the eye can see.

First thought is another accident, but as we pass the trooper managing the junction we learn from him that it's road maintenance! A rainy Sunday is a hell of a time to regrade the construction zones.

We end up at Summit Lake lodge @6:30 so we sit down for dinner.

We then roll to Girdwood and home, arriving home @9pm.

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