(Scroll down for 2 pics of the Newport Bay.) Rode with Judy, Doug, Jeff, and (a surprise appearance) Rob. We started a little late: Doug had a problem he was fixing, and I was stopped by a CHP traffic stop on the I-210. We had a tail wind to start down the SART and we rode that very fast, but ended up with headwinds most of the rest of the day. Shai was pretty much leading the front group which in the morning where we turned off of SART. At the first control, we had a couple of randos join our group from Shai's group (a red jersy, and a yellow CTC jersey from Wrightwood), but the yellow jersey was dropped when his buddy picked up the pace going up SGRT. Doug took a couple of massive pulls up the SGRT which were very impressive; I had to really sit on his wheel or I might have had trouble holding on to the group. We spent a fair amount of time at the control (#3) in Duarte, and rode over to Encanto Park to use the bathrooms; a surprising number of riders passed us while we were stopped so long, including Shai's group, We caught Shai's group again in Whittier Narrows at the San Gabriel Blvd. intersection, when we were crossing over to the Rio Hondo Bike Trail. One of the riders in that group (white kit) joined us, and when I finished a pull I almost sideswiped him because everyone in our group had gone by me - oops; glance before changing your line, David! He was a strong rider, but it turned out he had a bad habit of launching into a much faster pace when he took over the lead in the pace line. I had drifted off the back maybe 10-20 yards while another guy (red jersey) was pulling in order to adjust something or get a snack, and red jersey only did a very short pull and relinquished the lead. BAM, white kit took off and I found it too hard to try and close the gap, so I let the group go. I saw them again down at the Long Beach control, but I didn't want to wait and figured they would catch me soon enough. However, they took some roads that were off-route and either went by me there or while I was stopped at Jack in the Box in Newport, getting more water and a late lunch. As I had feared, the extensive use of bike trails was my undoing; on the bike trails along the Newport back bay, there was a hair-pin turn to the right for which I had no cue on the route sheet [evidently my error, not Terry Hutt's-so I have now made additional revisions to my route map], and I was stopped there for 5 min trying to figure out which way to go when, luckily, Shai's group came by; I was able to follow them until we made it to more familiar ground. Still, I had to go slow in a number of places in order to make sure I stayed on route, and so I was unable to just hammer away, not that I had plenty of energy to hammer any more. Speaking of our fast start, we averaged 24.0 mph for 13.4 miles between miles 6 to 20, and a nice 30.0 mph for 1.6 mi around mile 14. (See annotations.)