Willie's show, a point-to-point ride that he fully supports by shuttling the riders to the start and then driving them back to LA/OC. My second year in a row; for some reason I don't understand, no one has signed up for the ride a second time before. LOL I convinced TJ, Pete, Kim, and Judy to sign up, and Kim brought a friend, Dennis. Doug Church drove so that Willie could ride, but he started very late after helping Doug set up support for us after we had already started. One other rider signed up, Veronica, who is from Europe and was riding a standard crank and comes from an area that only has flat riding; she did quite well, considering, and finished 80% of the climbing, pulling out after doing 100k and 70% of the climbing (probably 11,000'). We got a late start again, about 8:36AM, but the weather was exceptionally kind in that it was considerably cooler than usual along the Kern and the lower parts of the climb up Sherman Pass, so I was able to make the climb faster than on any prior ride when the heat typically sucks all the strength from me. All of my crew, including Kim's friend (Dennis), finished, which is a much better showing than last year when only Jay, Stefan and I finished out of 9 starters. This being the first Saturday of October, the Kennedy Meadows General Store was again hosting a spaghetti dinner for the locals, which follows a little hike they do on the PCT, and the owner of the store again invited me (and Pete) to join in. I thought it would be rude to turn down such a nice invitation a second straight year, so Pete and I enjoyed the dinner with the locals before heading on to the finish. (17 minutes of my 38 minutes accumulated stopped time on this ride) I had a mechanical where my chain dropped off the outside of my large chainring and passed by the pin that is supposed to stop it from wedging down into the crank. It happened twice, and Pete was able to force it past the pin so I didn't have to use my chainbreaker tool to extract the chain. After the second time, I just left the chain in the small chain ring, a significant hassle for me since I do 90% of my riding in the big chain ring. Everyone seemed to love the route as much as I did, although it is challenging. The support was a bit of a problem, though, in that Doug was waiting at each stop until the last rider made it before moving to the next stop. Most of us had passed by a stop and were at the top of Sherman Pass without water. A few of us went on, while TJ and Dennis waited something like 45 minutes for Doug to arrive with more water. Having been up there several times before, and having researched where water was available, I had already filled up just before the start of the climb, and Pete filled up 8 miles past the climb after riding a considerable portion of the Sherman Pass climb without water. 128.5' per mile