Dudley Ramble - April 26, 2023

 RIDE REPORT

Wednesday, 26 April 2023, Dudley Ramble

Ride Leader:  Clyde Kessel

31 miles, 10:00 am start from Wayland, MA

Bikers (20):  Clyde, Betsy Kimball, Ernie Glickman, Francie Sparks, Frank Aronson, Gene Ho, Gerry Sheetoo, Jim Whinfield, John Ho, John Kitchen, Joel Bauman, Larry Kernan, Marc Baskin, Renee Rees, Roy Westerberg, Susan Broome Tom Allen, Zach Woods, and first-timers Frank Calabrese and Martin Hemler.

Present at lunch:  Scott Chamberlain.

The riders started to arrive at The Chat more than thirty minutes ahead of time - such well-organized folks!  Around ten minutes before the ride start, the restaurant owner showed up and was considerably concerned that her parking lot was half full of cyclists’ cars.  I reassured her that the staff was aware of our plans (it was on their calendar) and that she could expect fourteen cyclists for lunch.  She relaxed considerably.

It was a perfect day for a bike ride, a bit cool at the start, but comfortable all the way to the end.  It was borderline warm enough to eat outdoors on the Chat’s patio, but it was closed, presumably for lack of servers.

This ride is a WW classic, created by Brett Serkez years ago.  It is full of short cut-throughs and longer pathways, all paved, which delighted many of the riders who hadn’t done this particular ride before.  The group tended to spread out, but we regrouped three times and that kept the arrows’ wait times reasonable.  Along the route, we crossed the future BFRT (phase 3?)  and saw the construction well underway.

In the past, the Chat has seated us at individual tables of about four cyclists each.  It’s not too difficult for four friends to divvy up the check equitably.   This time, however, The Chat had set up one large table for all fourteen of us, with no separate checks allowed.  It worked out well; the rider leader paid the bill on his credit card and earned $5 cash back.  Each cyclist paid the ride leader what they thought was fair and the total only came up $20 short, resulting in a net loss of only $15.  Not bad for such a large group!

Scott Chamberlain (from Belmont Wheelworks) rode his bike out to The Chat for lunch today.  He lurked and didn’t come over to introduce himself until nearly all the WWs had left.

The new app we use (Wild Apricot, what a great name) to manage rider registration is wonderful.  It makes it easy to register for a ride and easy for the ride leader to do the check-ins.  I couldn’t be happier.  I’ve also made peace with the whole concept of pre-registration - having an idea of the group size ahead of time makes the ride leader’s job much easier.

Thanks to Susan Broome for sweeping and to the small group of speedy riders who did all of the arrowing.

Report by Clyde Kessel.