August 27th ride - Tree City rolling tour

This ride is sponsored by the Greensburg YMCA, in my hometown. It includes a 13, 26 and a 62 mile loop (perhaps next year they'll throw in a Century). I rode the metric (62 miles) which is touted as very hilly, it did have some rough hills. I made it up all the hills with the Musashi stock gearing. I even manged to pass a few df's and one tandem on some climbs.

The sponsors had a little pre-ride talk about how thankful they are on the money raised to help the Y help local children through their programs and also explained why the metric ride was changed at the last moment. After the talk they took a picture of all the riders (68 registered) Then the ride officially started. I was waiting for some friends to get ready for the ride when they noticed, we were the last ones to get started, the parking lot was empty of other bicyclists. A few minutes later we started riding. They were only doing the 26 mile route so, since I was planning on riding the metric, I rode with them only a couple of miles before saying goodbye and leaving them behind.

I stopped once at the Lake Santee sag stop to refill the water bottles. By this time I had passed all the riders doing the metric route (as far as I could tell). I had ridden with a group of 5 riders for a few miles, but then two of the better riders decided to drop the rest of us on the backside of Lake Santee. They rode close and hard, I kept a small distance behind them. Once I was ready I gave my "on your left" voice signal and rode pass them. I'm not sure if they were surprised that I kept up with them or not ( I think the two of them thought they were alone)

Even though I didn't start fast or first, I was from what I heard, the first one to complete the metric ride. I heard a lot of exclamations from various riders about how well I climbed the hills. But I think there were less then 15 riders that even tried the metric.

Conclusions:
This was a fantastic ride, the roads were in great shape, the one sag stop I used had plenty of supplies and there was a lot of great scenery in some very hilly terrain. I thought the roads were very well marked, I didn't get lost once (I often get lost since I don't look at the maps and only go by the road markings) Although one rider mentioned he'd rather have the markings further ahead of the turns, I didn't have any issues. The three sag stations I rode past were clearly marked, although I only saw one station (Lake Santee) that actually had anyone manning them. That wasn't a problem though since I wasn't planning on stopping at all until I started running low on water. They even had a masseuse giving out free massages at the finish line. This was a great ride that I would recommend to anyone.

Videos
Now that I have the GoPro HD camera I'll try to upload some videos of the ride highlights and link them here. The camera only lasted for the first 2 and a half hours, so I don't have the complete ride but most of it recorded.

Here is the covered bridge:

Here is a few minutes of us riding around Lake Santee:

And below I am catching up with two riders that tried to drop the rest of our group:

Chip seal of Hamburg Road
There would have been even more big hills on the metric, but the ride had to be rerouted since the county had chipsealed Hamburg road south of Buena Vista a week before the ride. They seemed to have put way too much gravel when they chip sealed, leaving in some places a couple of inches or more of loose gravel making it very dangerous for motorcycles and bicycles; especially with all the hills on that road. It actually looked like they were trying to change the road into a gravel road.

Link to detailed ride stats


Ride summary with elevation map to show the hills: