Rick & Lori: September 4, 2017

We had a long Labor Day holiday weekend in the mountains with Vince and Amy. Friday, we skipped riding, did some shopping, and ate at Mad Jack's. When we finished, the homecoming parade came down Hwy 82, crossed over to Burro Street, and went back to the school. The entire student body was involved, and there were floats and a large variety of interesting parade entries. It was pretty cool to watch.

Saturday, we did a relatively short ride on 8 mile road and ate a bbq lunch at Cloud Country for the James Ridge volunteer fire dept annual fundraiser. Vince, Amy, and I later hiked the Osha trail, then we shopped some more and hung out at the Lodge on the patio for a while. I saw on Facebook that a high school friend of ours who lives in Arizona but rides bikes regularly was in Ruidoso, so I contacted him and invited him to ride with us on Sunday.

Sunday, we met Oscar on Burro Street, and Rick, Oscar, Vince and I rode a long loop beginning on the Rim Trail. Oscar didn't have a lot of time, so we had Amy pick him up in High Rolls at the Apple Barn and give him a ride back up to Cloudcroft. Rick, Vince, and I continued on to La Luz Canyon road for a 2500' climb back up to town to end the ~33 mile ride. It was extremely challenging, and Rick cratered at the end. We made it back to town and to the pizza place at the ski resort just before they closed up for the summer and year. I think there were only 6 pizza doughs left when we ordered.

We headed home on Monday--I had an extremely rare day off on the holiday! It was a good weekend.