This ride featured some of nicest riders you will ever meet, it was a friendly, family atmosphere where everyone that attended was there to have fun... whether that fin was just being part of the festivities, just completing the ride, riding with other riders, pushing themselves to reach personal bests, or to see how they far with other riders and then those at the far end keeping up with big dogs! No matter your ride abilities this was the place to show case! It was a huge pleasure seeing so many smiles before the ride and the huge smiles on everyone's faces after the ride. what makes this ride different from every other charity event ride is everyone starts together and everyone finishes together some what and in the middle everyone regroups before the next leg. This is also a memorial ride in honor of Dev Pendergrass and the first stop is at his permanent place of residence. There is so much that this event does with the money like scholarships, aid to the needy and much more, oh there is funds to aid local cyclist recover from cycling accidents! What more could you ask for? Well, now to my perspective and experience of the actual ride: before COVID and the lock down I did several rides with the South Jersey Bike Crew, awesome group of riders that have come a long ways and are very dedicated and safe riders. When I was conversing with a long time friend of The Crew about getting together for a ride, he informed me of this ride, I'm so glad he did! As I said the ride started out together at a controlled pace to keep everyone somewhat together. there was a police escort the entire ride with sweep riders and sag vehicles. Going out the pace was 15-20 with a strong tailwind but you couldn't tell other than by your power meter which I thought mine wasn't working right, I even recalibrated it at the first stop. From here it was show time, show off your stuff for the next 10 miles, now I wasn't paying attention to the speaker about the route and stops, I figured I would follow the riders, the only thing I knew was how long the ride was to be. I knew this portion of the ride was supposed to be fast and I thought it was to the finish... it wasn't to the finish but it was extremely fast, race pace fast! I had not trained for this type of speed, I thought maybe they'll go up to 25 mph and hold that, I was so wrong. I got up to the mid 29 mph with the Big Dogs, I heard one of the other riders say, were pushing 30. It was nice to open up and see what I was able to get up to and I still had a lot in my tank. I was gauging myself by what I thought the finish was not to a regroup stop. I saw the police escort stopping traffic ahead and a few other event staff waving us into a field with canopy and benches, they also had a Porta Potty since we were stopping great! After everyone got in we prepared to start up again. This portion of the ride had a few twists; one much more traffic and we had to stay on the shoulder which had a lot more debris and rough road sections and the biggest challenge, 13-15 mph headwinds and several inclines nothing steep but enough with headwinds to slow you down and up you wattage output big time especially if you doing the pulling! We started out double line which was great but had problems with the lead riders rotating off in a single file manner, so it ended up single file lead with double line behind. We continued to hammer as fast as we could as the headwind lessened, the pace picked up causing a slight yoyo effect. Big Dogs all stayed strong with no one letting down. Before starting this section, the word was 15 miles to go. I assumed it was nonstop all the way in. As before I set my mind on the distance to go and as I was counting down the miles, I was preparing mentally for a sprint at the end not knowing we had one more stop, with coming up on 2.5 miles I was getting prepared, then I see 2 event staff members waving us in... once we got in I was told why we made this last stop. A nice cool down it was and it was better there was no sprint because entrance to the park was sandy and even if we ended the sprint well before the turn we could have had skid out crashes on the sandy turn. What ride with the Big Dogs!