Originally Posted by jeneralist

More fun while I'm doing it? Probably the group tours. The Bon Ton Roulet and the Ride Around Washington gave me people to chat with who were experiencing the same thing.
But I find I get more "story points" out of the solo rides -- when I tell my co-workers I rode 400 miles in New England, solo, schlepping my own gear, *that's* when I get the "Oh my God!" reaction. And there have been rides where I wanted more time alone with my thoughts and less nights of entertainment with 200 of my closest friends.

The C&O/GAP ride in 2010 was probably the best. It was the summer after my weight loss surgery. A lot of things were changing in my life, and I was really looking for some time to think, alone. Proving to myself that I could *do* something like that was very important to me. Less than a year before, I needed to pull over and suck wind multiple times on an 8 mile flat commute to work. Plus, I fell into a rhythm with a group of four friends doing the same path at the same time. We weren't riding together, but we kept running into each other along the way. So I was alone, but I still had someone keeping an eye out for me.