SCRC chapter 494 albion hills put on a fantastic multi-chapter spring kickoff ride on april 21st, 2007!

we started out from cambridge at about 10am with a surprising 8 bikes and 9 riders - since noone had responded to my post about the ride on our forum, i thought it would just be tanker and myself, but we had a pretty good showing!

i had mapped out a route to the starting point in caledon east, but when we got to ballinafad and i looked for hwy 42 east, there was no sign of it! about 10mins later we were in erin - one of the stops on the ride - and sweet from 494 was already there getting the barbecue started! as we arrived, some of the earlier riders were coming in from the first part of the route. we wondered about staying there and just meeting up with people at double r leathers, but since i'd made plans to ride with my dad and a couple of other people, we continued to trailside bistro on airport road. we actually managed to hook up with the rest of the route i'd planned, and we all made it there together and safely before the end of the staging, so i guess my "detour" wasn't too much of a problem

the route from trailside started kinda badly - i nearly missed the first (very poorly signed) turning, and one member had to lock up his brakes, but we got on route and the rest went smoothly. a very technical section through part of the forks of the credit road, and around the detour due to the forks being closed in the middle for reshaping. got back to double r and had some lunch, and met up with a bunch of our SCRC friends. hugs all around!

it was a great turnout - over 100 bikes at least!

the above photo doesn't even show the ones parked in 2 other lots nearby! but you can see my dad in the jeans and bue & white shirt with a burgman on it

the rest of the 501 members decided to head home from double r leathers rather than doing the rest of the route, so tanker, myself, my dad, and mike, the 1st officer of 365 peterboro (along with his lovely wife leigh-anne) hooked up for the rest of the route that would take us through orangeville, hockley, loretto, and into bolton. i changed the route as it had been mapped so we could take hockley road all the way from orangeville to loretto, as that's one of the most beautiful and fun to ride stretches of pavement in our part of the province. we stopped off at the loretto inn, because my dad said they have good restroom facilities, which are not to be sneezed at! while we were there, tanker snapped this great photo of my dad and i:

and here's our whole motley crew at the loretto inn:

from there, the planned route had us chasing some roads that don't seem to have names, and it was getting later in the day, so we decided to head straight down hwy 50 into bolton, and to the end point of the ride at shoeless joe's. we weren't the last to get there, but there were lots of people to greet us when we arrived!

we had a beverage, chatted with some friends, and stuck around for the raffle drawings - which worked out great! we'd forgotten to pick up a pack of pin locks at double r, but managed to win one in the raffle. since a pack is $10 and we only paid $5 for the 3 raffle tickets, i think we made out like bandits!

at about 5pm, we headed out of bolton on a route i'd picked out on my map, and ended up riding through a beautiful, technical bit of the cheltenham badlands on our way to georgetown. a straight blast across hwy 7, with a stop in guelph to return a borrowed game to a friend, and we made it home by about 7.20pm. 306.4km of riding in beautiful sunshine and warm weather left us both sunburnt and tired, but with smiles so big our ears were cracking!

a beautiful ride on the most beautiful day of the year so far