Ride gets disorderly - S.W.A.T. team is called in
It happens every year... Sometimes twice... Our welcome in the fair village of Cheshire wears thin and the PoPo steps up to the civic plate... But more on that later....
There was about 45-50 guys or so on the ride tonight. Turning off RT10, Guido went straight to work by distancing himself from the others... Chris C and Hunter P kept tempo on his 50 yard gap. then Eric M came rifling by & both Chris C & Hunter P jumped on.
Eric caught Guido pretty quickly and by the turn onto Mount Sanford the 4 went to work together. The pace was pretty decent in the break and back in the field. Other Stage 1 riders, Joe K, Tall John.... All were keeping it close but the gap went up to about 7 seconds. Coming up to the turn onto Mountain, the field had gone turbo and single file, lead by Hacker and Tall John... The catch happened just as the corner came up. There was oncoming traffic that slowed all but the front group which was made up of the break and the strong men chasing.
Hacker and Hunter P took advantage of the split on the opening hill of Mountain Rd and the others latched on. By the time the ride came thru the stop sign for Higgans there was a pretty massive split in the field. Lets see if can name all the guys up front... Tho it was pretty much the crew you'd expect.
Guido \ Todd H \ Chris C \ Mike McG \ Hunter P \ Eric M \ Jesse from Keltic \ Tall John \ Mason \ Hacker \ Joe K \ Chris B \ Julio? \ Kyle F \ a CCB rider who we think is Yahor Buben .... Who else??? Probably missing some guys from that list. Sorry for that. The light at West Main was of course red and it all came together.
Onto Moss farms where Kyle K went off on his own. He held a 7 or 8 second gap as Hacker & others gave a slight chase... Nothing too crazy though. Kyle kept the gap until the turn onto jarvis where some traffic issues let Hacker and someone else (!?) slide up to to him. Todd H and Little T led the charge to bring them back on the ramp up to Marion and by the corner all was together. A couple of guys were able to use the cover to roll off the front, Tall John, Hunter P and Greg from Keltic. Those 3 covered the length of Marion together but as they entered the industrial park, the field was all sewed up.
The CCB rider, Hacker and a couple of others went to work with the pace and nearly split the field again thru the industrial park, but it stayed together all the way up to Reinhart. Mike McG was keeping it ticking along when Little T jumped out on the hill toward Schoolhouse. Hunter P jumped on and used the lead out to get to the sprint points corner first. That had strung things out a bit but going down towards Peck Ln the ride was together again. Nothing unusual for the next few miles. The ride was hit with a stiff headwind on RT10 that kept the pace at an elderly 18 mph.
Here is where Kyle had another go off the front but as and the field was coming up to the Cheshire Police department building, an officer was there to stop traffic and "pull over" the ride... Seems there was some complaints about bad pace line etiquette and down&dirty drafting tricks.... Either that or we were hogging the road... Regardless, the officer, as always, was pretty nice about it and simply requested we keep it to 2 abreast or else bikes would start to get impounded and sold off at government auction. After a background check on everyone showed that the fugitive, Anthony Parent, was not among us, we were released.
That kinda negated the Stop n Shop sprint, which Dillon P was squarely favored to take....
Nothing too exciting going back into Hamden... The finish was a bleak affair with someone getting to Shepard ave first. We arent really sure who. CCB was up there, Eric M and Rondo too. The real party was up on top of Shepard where Hunter P waited out all of Chris B's attacks and took the top o the hill sprint, with Gregg F from CCR coming in 3rd.
Great, classic ride... We will all have to concentrate on being a little more orderly it seems...
