18.00 mile buddy ride

"Buddy Ride" -- informal mid-week ride with fellow TNTers that simultaneously build camaraderie and serve as recovery and additional training rides.

We started at the W&OD/Rte.28 and headed West. There were eight of us--Jane, Russ, Cathy, ???, Ned, me, my brother, and...Mr. Garlic?!? My Elementary School P.E. teacher? WTF! Apparently, he's known Jane for quite a while, now, and he joined us informally. Weird to see your former teachers outside of a classroom (or in this case, Gym) setting. Weirder to talk with them as equals--we both have professional and personal lives, now. I still think of him as my teacher, so much that I forgot he had a first name! It's "George"; he's always been "Mr. Garlic" to me.

My brother, Russ, and I booked it out to the general store in Ashburn, where Russ turned back and my brother and I continued on, blasting it all the way to Lawson Rd. in Leesburg before finally turning back. We picked up Russ and Ned on the way back, and then [I] picked up Jane and Cathy, and finally we picked up ??? and Mr. Garlic for the final leg back to the parking lot.

Statistics:
Distance: 18.00mi
Saddle Time: 1h9m40s
Actual Time: 1h15m
Start Time: 6:00PM
End Time: 7:15PM
Start Outside Temp: ???
End Outside Temp: ???
Max Speed: 28.6mph
Avg Speed (saddle): 15.5mph
Avg Speed (actual): 14.4mph

Fundraising's picking up, thanks to contributions from my brother and my co-workers. Just $575 more and I'll be at the half-way point to my goal of $4300. Sadly, Frank Segundo Rodriguez lost his battle with Leukemia today, and so today's ride was dedicated solely to him.

I want to attach the names of my Personal Honored Teammates to my jersey, but I need to figure out a good way to do that. Maybe some lengths of ribbon, embroidered somehow with their names, sewn onto my jersey? Maybe a patch of some sort? Anyone have any ideas? I don't wanna print them on a piece of copy paper and pin it to my jersey--that'd be lame and unfitting of their honor...