Memorial ride for a guy I never knew

A few weeks ago I was taking the long way to work, and I noticed a ghost bike along the way.  Which kinda freaked me out - I've only seen one other ghost bike around my area of town (which is a GOOD thing).  I stopped and read a poster of what happened.

 Checked out the memorial website and it looked like a freak accident that just happened to take the life of this guy.

There was a memorial ride this morning in his memory.  At first I thought 'no, I didn't even know this guy at all, so what good would riding this do for me?'.   But I thought otherwise and it seemed that if I did know this guy, I would have liked him.  There were a couple hundred people that rode, which was a LOT more than what I was anticipating.  Obviously this guy was well liked.


The route itself was a decent 10.5 mile jaunt.  Had some 6-8% grade hills, so it wasn't too easy.  I was happy that I was passing some people up while climbing up hills that were half my size.