We finally managed to get on our first organized ride this season! June was a bust due to rain and other conflicts. The Gold Coast this year did not disappoint. We had beautiful, sunny weather..in the 80's. The nice thing about this ride is that it generally draws a smaller crowd and there are nice long stretches where we're riding alone. Here is Stu at the start of the ride at 8am.
Last year, we said that the first 8 miles were the most difficult....that's still true although there are many challenging hills throughout the ride. The 2 first giant hills are at mile 2.4 Mill Dam Road (0.6 miles) and mile 3.8 Cove Road/Youngs Hill Rd (?). After the first rest stop at Southdown School (mile 8.1) the next giant hill is in Seacliff: Albin/Prospect/Shore/Scudder Rd (mile 28.3). Here we are at the first rest stop:
Our next rest stop was in Roslyn and it turns out that Tina saw us on the road turning onto Willets Road! What are the odds of that? Shortly after though, we missed a turn (we think at Muttontown Road) and took a 5 mile detour. Thanks to Stu's iPhone, we found our way back to Berry Hill Road to join the others. Here we are at the Roslyn stop:
So we got detoured a bit on Old Hempsted Turnpike, Jericho Turnpike and Northern Blvd. We got thrown off because the roads have several names! We finally made it to the end...60 miles in total. It was a great ride and hope to do it again next year! Here we are at the end with our free Mister Softee ice cream cone!
