Its OK, Woody- not everyone knows how much of a super pro I am at changing tires!
Just like Woody said, we had a general loop laid out thaat would have been 60-ish miles of gravel, all around the Cottonwood Falls/Matfield green areas. We started to run across a group of probably 150-200 DK'ers literally after our second turn, southwest of Teterville. We continued on at a slow, courteous pace, and made our way to Teter Rock, which lance had never seen before.
We hung out there for a bit, and took pics of the mustangs and all that jazz, then continued on. I was concerned that the DK course had picked some of the same roads I had, and sure enough, our next mapped turn [headed north on 50, immediatly east of Teter Rock] was marked as a DK course turn, and we saw another 50 cyclists coming down that. So, from there, we threw out the map, and just winged it. None of us wanted to be riding against the racers all day, if we could at all help it.
We started meandering further East, looking for a promising road headed north. We were still trying to reroute our way back over, and meet up with Asis. While doing so, we ran across a cool old brick building, which looked to be a small church. It was a great place for a rest and regroup, and thats where i was when I sent Asis the text about having no idea where we were at, lol!
As we were sitting there, some rain found us, and started doing rain things. We boogied north from there, and rode out of the rain after 5 miutes or so. From there, we started trying to get back west, with minimal success. We got to some highlands just immediately north of 35, where i got a pinch flat.. lame. While I was changing that, some freindly locals rolled up in a razor, and shot the breeze with us for awhile.
I got the bike patched up and we continued on, hoping to hook up with cottonwood falls, but some local town just north of CF had a parade, and wouldnt let us pass through! ugh!
Que up a 45 miles slab reroute to Florence for some gas and a break, and to survey the weather ahead- which looked foreboding. We made the call to head down 77 to El Dorado, and we succesfully skipped the worst parts of the storm- but we all got totally soaked anyways.
All in all, it was a fun ride. Total was a bit over 200 miles for the day. Thanks everyone for coming