There are easier ways to celebrate your 80th birthday than hopping on a bicycle and pedaling 50 miles, but Archie Richardson and George Fuller had a few friends who wouldn’t have it any other way.

And so, on March 30, the Saturday before Easter, a perfectly glorious spring day in Mobile, they and a few dozen well-wishers set out from the River Shack, a restaurant in the shadow of the Dog River Bridge. There was a gentler 40k option, but for Richardson and Fuller the route was a full 80 kilometers, one for every year. From the River Shack riders looped south and west before taking a roundabout path north around downtown, then back through the Brookley Aeroplex and down Bayfront Road, battling a headwind blasting up Mobile Bay from the south.