Awesome, awesome ride. A few brutal hills in places but it wasn't too bad. Good turnout - must have been about 30 or 40 cruisers which for a mid-September cruiser really isn't that bad. I've got a pretty good assortment of photos in my photo album.

We met up around noon in behind Ride On - most of the crew didn't show up until a bit later, I don't think we actually got rolling until about 1:30 or so..

One chopper was there with a sweet set of tailpipes - he's got a flamethrower rig on this that apparently does 10 foot flames. We never got to see it do its thing but it looks like it could, that's a hell of a nozzle.

From there we headed out to Queen Elizabeth park. Can't say I was crazy about the route up there - big ass hill that never seemed to end. I don't think more than 4 or 5 people made it to the top without walking. Here's a few hauling their bikes up the hill... if you look at the fullscreen version you can see a few further down the path still hauling their bikes up. I think about half of us were up by this point.

Jonathan had a 20" Schwinn out that I haven't seen before - I popped a pic of him on it here.

After Queen Elizabeth we headed over to the Penny Lane pub at 41st and Main for a few beers. We managed to park all the bikes outside ok but it was a bit cramped.

Here's a good shot of Rod sitting inside:

Of course we need the obligatory picture of the birthday boy himself:

From there we headed over to Winona Park at about 60th and Columbia. Nobody was using the lower field so we took the opportunity to have a break. The sun felt SOO good, glad we managed to grab it while we could.

We went down to Kent avenue from there and followed the bike path East. Eventually it connects to a few smaller parks and then a nice seawall along the Fraser River. I had no idea that was even there!

We got out to the end and there was a big wooden pier - perfect spot to chill for a while in the sun. At that point I ran out of space on my camera so no more pictures... We had lost a few members of our group by that point but we still had a good sized group. After chilling there for a while we hit up the Hippo pub at Main and Marine for a while. That was pretty much the end spot for the ride - had some wings and beer there and then we hauled our bikes back up Main.

I hadn't ever ridden anywhere this ride ran before - new routes are always cool. I'm digging that bit of seawall along the Fraser River, I'm going to have to figure out a route back there some day. Good times!!