A Rare Two Hour Ride

I suited up at work and set out to meet the folks who ride every Thursday from a church on Route 12, where it crosses Pippin Orchard Road. Thanks to a teammate who took pity on me, I discovered this ride. It's kind of frustrating to discover after five years living in West Warwick, that this ride has been going off just 3 miles from my house. Oh well.. Apparently, these guys do this ride year round, which to me is stunning. As I've said repeatedly, Murat is a total weenie when the temp dips below 40. So there were seven of us. I could only recognize two of them, and in fact one was an ArcenCiel rider who I had met previously at the Sophie's ride about 1-1/2 years ago. He remembered me and I was happy about that. We chatted a little bit about this past weekend. It's all good. We took a route which I am very familiar with.. Hope Furnace is a road I know every square inch of.. but then we turned onto Maple Valley, going in the WRONG direction... (I've never gone up that hill. My typical hilly ride takes me up route 12, left on Old Plainfield Road, left on 102 and left onto Maple Valley, DOWN it, never up) At any rate, I could tell that my riding partners were doing this hill for the umpteenth time.. Me, I can't tell where we are on the damn thing. We hadn't climbed it very much when I realized I would pop long before reaching the top, if I tried to hold their pace. Besides, the future ex-wife was expecting me home by 6:30 and this road would take me to an ETA of 7:30. Not good for future riding "permission". So I nonchalantly woosed out of the hill, announced that I needed to go, and I doubled back in the most direct route home, using 117.. Overall I got 2 hours in, plus the 15 or so minutes where the watch was stopped. Took me 35 minutes to ride to the church in the first place, so I was satisfied. I don't mind admitting that I want to be strong enough to complete this ride with them in the coming weeks, and today I wasn't. I've not climbed anything over 1/4 mile since late February when I was in San Diego. Just glad to have found a local group ride where an ass-kicking is more or less guaranteed. Riding alone all the time only takes you to a certain level. I'll be riding to/from work tomorrow for sure.
Thanks for reading.