newbie shmewbie

My social bike club is trying to reach out to those who are "emerging cyclists" AKA newbies. Doing my part, I've decided to lead at least 1 newbie ride each month. Today was my third such offering. I've seen it happen too many times where a good rider starts leading newbie rides week after week and instead of the newbies improving the leader loses fitness and becomes a newbie. ;-I

In an effort to avoid that, and to entice those with more skills to join these rides (built in help!) I always add some additional miles/climbing outside of the newbie portion.

Today's ride began in Hillsboro and we commuted over the West Hills to Sauvie Island where we were to join 22 newbie riders for a lap of the island then we seasoned riders would ride back to Hillsboro via Rocky Point Road.

Well, it was raining overnight, a sure sign that we'd have a poor showing of newbies.
I checked the RSVP list just before leaving home and noted we still had a full list.

But as expected, not only do newbies not have biking skills yet, they don't have basic politeness down yet either. I had 4 folks show up at the island. 4 out of 22!
I don't care if a person doesn't want to ride if it is raining. If you don't ride in Oregon if "it might rain" you severely limit the days you can ride however. But really bothers me is if you say you are coming you had better be there. It's just being polite. (oh well, I'll get over it)

We didn't have so much as a drop of rain on the 12 mile commute to the island. We had a dry lap of the island with the newbies, saving about 2 minutes of hail right at the end of the 12 mile lap.

Once we said our good byes we three "commuters" headed northward on Hwy 30 to Rocky Point Rd and began our climb.

Our dry weather luck ran out as we made our way over the 1400ft summit. We had about 30 minutes of rain but it wasn't all that bad, all three of us were prepared for the weather.

By the time we got back to Hillsboro the rain had stopped and we had about 50% blue sky above us.

It was a good ride.

..........road bike.......rollers.........mtb.....lifecycle.....total
Today........51..............0.............0..........0......... 51
Jan.........474..............0............21..........7.........502
Feb.........530..............0.............0..........0.........530
March.......354..............0.............0..........0.........354
YTD.......1368...............0............21..........7........1396