I hope you had the time of your life

See why I used that song lyric? Last Seinfeld episode….Its time again for me to summarize the event and let you go back to your lives until next year, I think. Another song quote that I almost ended on was from Show of Life (yes, Trey): It’s been perfectly planned, it’s completely insane, it’s a revolving cast, but it’s the same old game.

By that I mean–well yes, it was perfectly planned based, once again, from the ever valuable advice from Mr. Martin aka the 6 P’s: Proper planning prevents piss poor performance. I can’t tell you how true that is–I also refer to it as solving for success. Which we did meaning the ride was long enough to be a real ride but you still felt great when off the bike which was helped along by our fabulous team AND the ridiculously nice weather for the week. Its pretty hard not to be happy when its 85 degrees and this is your view for the day:

And to the rest of the lyric: it’s a revolving cast, but it’s the same old game–that refers to the change of the group for this years ride vs last year. Both were fabulous but we did miss Maust, Dom and Bobby J.

But we replaced em because that’s how we roll on RR’s! This year we added Joe and Andrew:

Yes, they are the ones with the beards. This generation is all about the beard. If I grow one it comes in totally grey and, as my Daughter Sarah said, “you look super old with that”, so Shred and I refrained. Andrew did day 2 of the ride and is a wonderful young lad with Joe taking on the work of 2 men (well for RR2 it was 2 Dom and Maust) to run the entire support operation including driving the highlander! We couldn’t have done it without you and thanks for safeguarding our high end technology that we used for the ride! Both Andrew and Joe told me their favorite movie is The Highlander, favorite town is Del mar AND favorite food is Robertos. I concur gentlemen I concur.

For the riders we lost Bobby J but picked up Reinecke and Shred. Reinecke cut out a day early so missed the gala dinner hence not in the photo but was with us for the rest of the awesomeness. Additionally, Shred drove BOTH ways with me (including to and from my house) so he is a solid sport which will be remembered during next years cuts for RR4!

The main differences from last year was we did the ride about a month earlier which meant–warmer days/longer days AND a much more robust crowd scene as we moved down the coast. At L’auberge there were 4 weddings during our 2 day stay which sold the place out. Man those Del Mar people are a good looking and wealthy bunch. I clearly did not fit in but could see us living in a lovely house OVER looking the cool crowd…the biggest regret for the trip was not getting a better picture of Larry David–we got QUITE a few angry emails about that including this one: “You suck” Signed Tom Tierney. Ok he always did get straight to the pt.

Before I get to a plethora of high quality pictures lets get to a few recommendations shall we:

Good shows/movies to watch on the wars overseas (this comes from my near career in the Navy Seals) mixed with other shows I like: Restrepo, Battleground Afghanistan, The Fighting Season, Korengal, Narcos, The Wire, War, Bomb Patrol Afghanistan, The Night Of, Both Fargo seasons, and just to keep it brief I will stop with the book Zero To One . For Alaska shows Life Below Zero is great, the Last Alaskans, Ultimate Survival Alaska, etc.

Q&A: Will you do it again next year. Probably. But like the calendar nobody knows when I move onto the next thing!

Would you consider making the ride bigger? Nope. 5 riders is the max and 1 is the min.

That seems like a good place to end it. A bunch of pictures and we call it a day. We start with Nathan making some emergency fixes to the rack–luckily he brought his travel Arc welder.