Hotter than Satan’s Arse

By Kevin Irwin - Webmaster and Ride Leader

It is a hard decision to reschedule or cancel a ride, especially a big ride where we have done all the pre-planning and pre-riding. The ride leader begins looking at weather forecasts on Wednesday afternoon in preparation for the Thursday morning reminder email. The forecast does not solidify until 24 hours before we ride, but we have to decide sooner to get the website updated, emails sent, and Facebook posted.

We have two general rules of thumb regarding rain: We don’t like to start the ride in heavy rain, and we don’t want to ride into extreme weather. The Marblehead and Johnson Island ride was highly likely to be ridden in extreme weather, so we moved the ride from Sunday to Saturday.

This ride has turned into a semi-regular ride for our chapter. We pick our way northwest through beautiful farmland and curvy roads, doing our best to avoid traffic and interstates. We roll into southern Sandusky and avoid Cedar Point traffic. We then travel US-2 to Marblehead to visit the Lighthouse and the Confederate Stockade Cemetery on Johnson Island. Very few people know there was a prison on Johnson Island during the Civil War.

While it was hotter than Satan’s Arse - the breeze off the lake created some refreshing moments. The ice cream at Toft’s also helped keep things cool. A special shout out to Berardi’s Family Kitchen in Sandusky. We had a delicious meal in air-conditioning. The service was outstanding, and they got us in and out in an hour!

We kept safety in mind. We had eleven travelers on eight bikes taking on high temperatures. We stopped about every hour to rest, hydrate, and check on fatigue. I was appreciative of the teamwork and how everyone watched out for each other. This is why we are a special riding group and I love riding with all of you!