We had about 15 riders on our Pamo-Mussey classic route last Saturday.

Larry and I rode from home and met a group at Springmeadow, including John Moran and Guido. Hodges was already on the course, riding.
We met with the rest of the gang at 7-11. Rick Bienias showed up on Elliptigo and did a few repeats up SPP. The pace up SPP was lead by the other Rick, who broke away with Guido – Larry, Rick B. and myself tried to chase them and only caught them at the very top. It is very nice to draft behind Rick B. on elliptigo, by the way! Proulx and Rick left us soon to do their own workouts.
We regrouped briefly and got to Mussey with rotations and some impressive pulls by our favorite cop, Rick. Strong and frequent.
We kept rotating nicely through Mussey descent, and there were a few brief attacks – the most impressive one by Sheehan, I was barely able to latch on to his wheel as he took the sprint points at the "finish line" before road gets too rough. On the way up Larry and Zach lead us up to the top. Sheehan and Boyle turned back, but we picked up Hodges.

The clouds were gathering and we just kept rotating through along Dye – nobody went for the sprint on Dye Road, we just kept on riding. It was humid and we stopped at the gas station to get some more water – the gas station attendant said flooding was expected in Ramona with a fair amount of rain. This was news to most of us, I stopped checking weather forecasts since moving to San Diego, definitely not expecting rain in August. As we descended down Pamo clouds got even more ominous (and also kind of cool) – the lightning struck nearby right as we were descending! It started drizzling as we climbed Pamo back up to Ramona – it was actually kind of nice, except for the wet roads. On the way back there was actually some battle for riding at the front, as that minimized "splattering" effect of riding behind someone else and literally eating their dirt.

I made a snarky comment to Larry that someone surely will flat with the wet roads, but I never intended to jinx Larry himself – that day he had the most misfortune by suffering multiple flats (N flats where N>1) – let’s just say we finished together but with no tubes or CO2 cartridges left. I don’t think I ever remember Larry flatting before, not even once.

Definitely an epic, memorable day in the saddle, despite a bit of (unexpected) summer rain.

You should have come.

More photos:

https://plus.google.com/photos/109410926478548321411/albums/6043075032416530305?authkey=CIfFhefQgc7oYg