If not for the pandemic we would have hosted the annual Orinda Pool Party & Ride by now. The Orinda Pool Party & Ride started in 2009 but longtime club members know that from 1997 to 2001 Sue Melly in Walnut Creek hosted the first East Bay Pool Party. We resurrected the event and we’ve held the event every year except for 2011 when we were too busy riding our bikes in Austria. Well, now it joins the list of missing-in-action club events for 2020.
The ride is usually the Pinehurst loop, a well-known training Berkeley training ride, or a near-variant except in 2017 when the Canyon bridge was out due to the previous winter storms and we rode towards Walnut Creek and Alamo rather than up to Skyline. If we had held the OPP this year we would have been able to ride Pinehurst over the not-quite-completed new Canyon bridge which is currently being repaired from the storm damage of winter 2017.
The ride has always been followed by the pool party and lunch when those who don’t want to bicycle could instead demonstrate their breast stroke and professional CPR skills at the pool. Until last year we had always served the same old, same old—homemade pesto with pasta, a Caesar salad, and Aidell’s sausages. Last year Roger got a hankering to smoke ribs instead, and since we were changing the menu we went ‘whole hog’ and subbed in homemade potato salad and cole slaw just to Make Brunch Great Again. Who knows what we would have done this year although last year several people approached me afterwards and opined that they did indeed miss the pesto. This year we also grew a big batch of Italian sweet basil just for the Pool Party only to have to hoard it for ourselves. Sigh.
Hopefully next year the pandemic will subside and we have vaccines and better treatments so that we can host the OPP yet again.
“L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim” (oops, Orinda)
The Chain Letter 