Bill Richards

I host a 600k brevet each year and towards the end of it the riders pass John Cuchessi's ghost bike near San Onofre. I am saddened to say there are now two ghost bike's on my 600k brevet.

On Dec 29th Jim Richards, a popular local cyclist and RWBTC club member was riding on Calimesa Boulevard in the morning when an oncoming vehicle crossed over the entire road and struck him head on. The driver fled the scene leaving Jim lying in the road, critically injured. He died of those injuries two weeks later. Some good police work has identified the suspect who will be charged with felony hit-and-run with vehicular manslaughter. If past experience is anything to go by he will only get 2-3 years, assuming he is convicted. I assume he was texting or on his cell phone.

Yesterday I rode on the Phil Richards memorial ride together with about three hundred other cyclists. We rode out to the site of the "accident" where we dedicated a ghost bike. Those of you riding either the 400k or 600k version of my brevet will be riding past it this April. it is just before the intersection with Singleton Road.

We then rode on to Beaumont and met with his family and other friends. It was quite a turnout. He was a popular guy.

After that ride I drove down to Anaheim to ride with Amber. She was supposed to have a new dynamo hub set up but she didn't have the light mounted yet so we'll have to wait a little longer to test it out. We just need to get a test ride in before the 300k in SLO next month.

This time I remembered my arm warmers and leg warmers. Backwoods BBQ in Seal Beach was even busier than usual so we ate at a Thai restaurant across the street. Amber had a wonderful chicken curry with a creamy curry sauce over chicken and vegetables. Really good. I had the wok stirred chicken which was pretty good, but not as good as Backwoods BBQ :-(

There was some kind of demolition rally event going on at the Anaheim Stadium and as Amber and I rode past we noticed some really interesting vehicles parked outside. There was the DeLorean from Back-to-the-Future (looking very shabby), a Scooby-Do van, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles van too. We tried to take photo's but both our cameras were having problems because of the lights from the Angels sign.

 

 

Overall a 92 mile day - not bad.