The Junction is closing for good Oct. 25th and this was going to be a farewell ride but when we got there, it was packed. They also had a limited menu and burger and fries weren’t on it so we bailed and decided to have lunch in Livermore. This was the first triple digit ride I’ve done in four months and really I’ve been mostly doing shorter dirt rides. I wasn’t sure how my legs would feel at the end. The weather today was perfect although we heard it was going to be cold up at the top of Hamilton. I wasn’t going to bring any extra layers but everyone else did so I brought my vest and none of it was needed. On the way up to Mt. Hamilton, we saw a tarantula. And on Mines there was another tarantula and a tortoise. The ground and hillsides from Mt. Hamilton to about halfway up Mines was pretty extensively burned but luckily, it seemed like any structures in the burned areas were okay. After the last climb on Mines we caught up to the two guys that had been dropped from their group. We helped the last guy catch back up to the second last guy. They were a little squirrelly so I decided to just go for it, a little too early because I thought we were closer to the descent than we were. We ended up doing a bunch of rollers first. Sonny caught up to me and then those two guys did too and we kept going over the top of each other and trading places. We dropped Bob pretty bad. The two guys had better legs than me on the climbs. I was way faster on the descent, especially in the corners. My closing speed in the turns was actually a little scary. Although they were ahead at the start of the descent proper, I managed to reach the bottom first. Lunch wasn’t until mike 73 and we were all pretty hungry and tired. After lunch it felt noticeably warmer and I really didn’t want to go that fast. Playing on Mines hurt my legs. Pretty much the whole way back to Calveras and climbing it, Bob was setting a pace faster than I wanted to go. There were a couple points when I thought I was going to cramp but luckily never did. On the way down Calaveras, there were a couple of riders on horses that crossed as I was flying down. And a little later a guy made a right turn in front of me and didn’t really speed up. I was eyeing him in his side view mirror. I was about to yell at him to go when he accelerated. We all made it back feeling not totally wrecked. Given how little long rides we’ve done, I’d say we did pretty good.