That about sums up day’s 3rd annual Algonac Pickerel festival ride that took us 40 miles through scenic and flat St. Clair County rural roads, with a bonus ferry ride and a ride around Harsen’s Island.
Our BikeFitness.net/Blazing Saddles group of seven did the 40 mile route. There’s also a 2-mile loop that is pretty much just around the island. Weather was perfect. No clouds, barely a breeze.
Here’s our route:
We started a few minutes before 8 and were glad that we were out early. The temperature was climbing fast and by the time we finished a little after 11, it was 82.
There were a couple of negatives, though. This is the third time the Algonac Lions Club has put this race on and you’d hope they’d ironed out the bugs by now. I rode the first year and remember the route markings on the road were small and hard to find back then. This year, it was the same. The 25-mile route markings were red. The 40-mile route was in purple. Those colors are hard to tell apart. The turn arrows were very small, maybe six to eight inches or so most places. And on a couple of intersections, they were very hard to spot at all.
Worse yet, especially given today’s hot weather, was a lack of adequate SAG support. They had no permanent stations and claimed to have regular roaming vehicles working the routes. We only saw one the whole route. And organizers gave riders a phone number and said to call if we needed water and that a vehicle would be right there. One of our riders did just that and he says nobody showed up.
Still, glitches aside, it’s a great ride. They do a fall version on October 2 and I think I’ll do that one, too. It’s a terrific course that, come fall and color time, should be even more beautiful.
