Sunny Lake, originally uploaded by Aunt Christina.

Just got back from a 30 mile Patti's Paladins training bike ride. Whew! Much farther than I usually go this early in the season, but I've gotta get my rear in gear sometime, so it might as well be now. Kevin and Lisa and the other Kevin arranged the ride, mapping it out for us with as few hills as possible (kind of impossible in this area but they did their best), all around Twinsburg to Aurora and by a nature preserve. What they couldn't plan for was the WIND! Good grief was it windy. Makes it much harder to ride. Beautiful sunny skies, just gorgeous, but also chilly--the high today is supposed to be 60, but it was 45 degrees when we started and only got up to 52 when we'd ended. Brrr. This lake was our halfway point, at a very nice little park called Sunny Lake Park. Along the way we saw lots of farmland, houses (much of it was through suburbs or higher traffic roads), the wetlands nature preserve which I would have loved to walk through, and a couple of alpaca farms.


They're pretty popular around here as an income animal--people sell their wool and also the animals for breeding. (Do they make good sheep-guard animals like llamas do? I'm not sure) So of course I had to stop and take a photo of some. They're so cute! And I think these had been recently shorn of wool, because they really looked extra skinny. I left my big camera at home so I only have the cellphone pics, or I would have taken closeups of their cute fuzzy heads.


Then we ended the ride (pretty much--only 4 more miles to go back to our cars or homes) at the Twinsburg Fire Station where they hold a weekly all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast til 1:30pm. We got there at noon and chowed down, mmmm! They were light and fluffy and there was sausage. It was really hard to get going again after a 45 minute leisurely rest, though...ugh...especially with a long hill right after the stop. I sure got a workout today, and I have to thank Lisa, Kevin and Kevin for being willing to slow their pace for me, and for stopping so frequently at the tops of hills to wait for this slowpoke to putt putt her way up to the top. Sigh. I made it, but they could have ridden rings around me and not been winded. (The one Kevin has ridden across the country, and has even ridden a bike TO GUATEMALA from here!! I am so not worthy to be next to his spokes...)

Animals observed on the trip: a great blue heron, red tailed hawk, and osprey all flew overhead or beside us. Roadkill seen: turtle :-( and possum :-( among others unrecognizable. Traffic wasn't too bad since it was a Sunday, but it was still a lot of single file riding with cars whizzing past. Short stretch on bike path was most enjoyable. We'll have to do this again sometime!