Organized by Willie Hunt for the PCH Randos. I made it to the ride start a couple of minutes after the official start--no great surprise there. But what was a big surprise was that no one else had started yet! WTH? LOL! The route: From north of Irvine, down to Laguna and up the coast to Newport for the SART. All the way on SART to San Bernardino/Redlands, then south to Perris (around Lake Perris), Hemet, Temecula, Rainbow, Valley Center, Bonsall, and Oceanside. From there, up along the coast to Dana Point before "heading for home", so to speak, the final 18 miles having 1600' of elevation gain on a lot of rollers to the finish. The path around Lake Perris is well worth it; wonderful scenery! There were only 6 of us to start, Russell, Daniel, Greg, Stacey and Sherilyn. They all started well before me, and left together a bit after I arrived at the second control. I caught Russell who was suffering from a stomach issue and I sort of marked him for about an hour, riding ahead and having a Coke, and then catching up and riding along for a bit; gave him an "acid reducer" hoping it would help, but he ended up having to withdraw. The others made good time and I didn't see anyone again until I Daniel came over from a different restaurant at the Hemet control to let me know there were there, and that Stacey and Greg had gone on. I caught Daniel later on before Temecula, and he wasn't feeling well. I never saw the other three, and found out afterwards that I had just missed seeing them at Temecula where Daniel had caught up with them. ============= I accidentally cut 0.4 miles on the transition to the San Luis Rey River Trail from Hwy 76 at approx. mile 196. I was sleepy and just did not notice until I saw the street sign for College Blvd, which is the more usual transition for me from Annie's and Planet Utra's routes. Really surprised by how much stopped time I accumulated, 4.5 hours! It was a conscious decision to stop and eat in a few instances, like In-N-Out in San Bernardino, and the Subway in Hemet. In Temecula, I bought a burrito to go at Del Taco to save time (< 14 min), but I lost a significant amount of time with my detour around Lake Perris taking pictures, and after leaving Temecula with some bad luck. My trusty taillight died for the second time in the last couple of months, and I will have to consider that the battery life has deteriorated, and I need to replace it, or maybe just carry two of them; perhaps the 10-13 hours burn time is too long? I don't really think so; I think it used to last much longer. Anyway, while that stop was only 6-7 minutes to rig my backup, I was nervous and constantly stopped to change the function when I was in low traffic areas vs. high traffic in order to make sure that the back-up did not also die during the ride. Then, just before getting on the I-5 N from Oceanside, I had a rear flat tire and started to feel a little chilled standing out there in a breeze. Turned out the flat was caused by a tiny Michelin wire that had penetrated the tire and worked its way through to the inner tube. I could feel it, but couldn't see it, and I couldn't pull it out with my fingers or finger nail, and I was afraid I might break it off, flush with the inner surface of the tire. I had to dig out my headlamp to be able to see it, and some needle-nosed pliers to be able to grab it, and it was still difficult to get hold of it. It's the second time I've experienced this, the first time during a CTC event last year (Solvang Autumn). Tricky little buggers!!! Regardless, I really don't know how I leaked 4.5 hours of stopped time.