The last ride with Alex A before he changed his duty station from Luke to some central america country. Sad to have Alex leave. We started at 1:56 AM YES that is correct. RWGPS is again 1 hr off. I was there a bit early and waiting. I saw Alex come from the right side of me, while on my left a police cruiser appeared. The officer asked "what were you doing in the trash bin?" I thought he was talking to me, but he was asking Alex. here at 2 AM the officer noticed Alex was disposing of some trash and inquired! Auspicious start. Off we went on this farewell tour and my monthly 200k ( or longer ride toward my R-12 RUSA award). He had already ridden his 200k route ( the one he designed). We both were hoping for a real dark sky and no traffic as we hit Sun Valley Pkwy and going around the Tanks. That expectation was not met. A higher than expected number of vehicles were on the road with many of them entering construction sites on west side of the Tanks. Finally we got to Tartesso and our first water stop. Those bathrooms are never locked as there is no door to lock! Off to PVNGS and Wintersburg general store. Again we were surprised at the count of vehicles for the time of day! It was not really busy, just more than expected. Turns out going south on Johnson Rd, we started seeing packs of dogs, 2-4 in a pack, and about 3 packs. None of them came out to chase, yet it was surprising as we had not ever seen that before. We surmised it might be due to it being sunrise and the dogs were aggregating? Then our turn onto Baseline and more cars. Then onto Salome and time for the "intermediate sprint section" ( to paraphrase TDF). Around mile 59, Alex was in front of me. We noticed a big german shephard dog and he started chasing Alex, as I slowed down a bit. That chase ( sprint that Alex did) went on longer than I expected as the dog did not give up. THe dog seemed to just be running alongside and not attempting to bite. When done, then it was my turn to get by the dog. The dog retreated to the south side of the road. I accelerated and heard a car behind me. TUrns out the dog chose not to come after me. Got up to Alex and he said he had reach 30 mph! No wonder the dog was tired and did not chase me! Thank you Alex. As we approached Wintersburg we stopped at mile 63.5 so I could point out options of our return route to Alex. Alex did NOT want another "intermediate sprint section" so was eager to take a detour. At the store, I got a maple syrup infused pancake , sausage, and egg sandwich. Tasty yet a bit messy. We opted for going south toward PVNGS. Alex had never been on this section. Turns out it was shift change time and a ton of cars kept passing us and heading south to the main PVNGS entrance at mile 67.3. Finally less traffic. THIS is what we had been looking for the entire ride. The part from here over to mile 76.3 and Arlington were wonderful. Heck even on Old US 80 the traffic was much less than elsewhere and we enjoyed a quiet ride until mile 91.3 as we approached Buckeye! Construction! Sections here, we walked our bikes until mile 93.4 and got back to nice pavement with no construction. We talked about when to get water, opting to get to Skyline Park first and get water after that. We ended up getting all the way to Basha's before refilling water. At Basha's I treated Alex to a cherry fritter! I had not ever had one of those. Basha's seems to over-fry their fritters, yet the sugar was nice. My last meal with Alex! Then up to Northern at mile 115.2 where the months long construction project was still happening. Neither of us had realized that this was a work day and therefore it would be hard to go into the dirt and bypass the construction. So we back-tracked a bit to get around this detour. This detour and the "avoidance of the intermediate sprint section" sure added extra miles to the route. Finally we got to WTP library for 1 last refill. I parted ways with Alex mile 125.3 as he has started up here from his house. Sad to see him go.