[ORRando] Anniversary Ride

[Susan France]

We have 25 riders and 22 finishers for our RUSA 10th Anniversary ride.  First thanks to the volunteers for this ride:  Lynne and Cecil pre-rode and fixed the 200k route for me. Cecil also came out to keep me company during rider checkin.  Michael Rasmussen, helped with checkin and provided ice, water and signature authority at Crown Point. Thank you Phil for convincing several riders to switch from the 200k distance to the 100k distance.
The 100k riders who finished, did so in fairly toasty conditions, maybe the nineties, nothing like the 100 degrees that 5 200k riders experienced. Most of those riders came in with empty water bottles. FWIW, I thought I was just fine yesterday, chilling out in the big shade trees of Wilshire Park... but during the evening and night I was clearly experiencing symptoms of dehydration and heat exahaustion... I never would have survived actually riding in those temps.
Our farthest traveled riders included 2 Texans... Fred Huntley was from Midland Tx and said he flew here to ride our 100k and John Kramer's toughest-in-the-US-perm (oh and visit some family too), and Gary Smith drove over from Tri-Cities to assure he had one of those soon-to-be rare 10th Anniversary medals.
During yesterday's events, another was put on the schedule. Herr Johanne Kramer will be hosting his third Bingen Bikenfest the first week in October... the start, Bingen of course.  Two sets of volunteers came forward to host the November populaires: Marcello and Kathy Napolitano will host the Verboort Sausage ride and Phillip Andre will host the Wine Country ride.  Thank you, thank you for hosting these final events...

Susan.