Leader Error on the Sunday Ride

On any group ride, if you know the roads and are also the strongest, you're more responsible for getting everyone home together than the others. Today I fell down on the job (together with co-leader John). Four of us Whisper Power riders did the fine Amerongen loop (with the Amerongse "berg" as the real target, the high point, and the turn-around), and though we were riding together well, on the hill it was clear that John and I were the stronger ones. We're also the people with the most experience on the roads between there and our Vechtstreek villages on Nigtevecht and Nederhorst den Berg. We went wrong after the coffee stop, when we were headed for Soesterberg. It's a section where it's fun to let 'er rip a little if you feel good: first you have to go up and over the freeway, then it's a few miles of flat, spacious, and usually quiet road. So I hit the "hill" with some effort (this is where we lost the other two), and once past the top John and I, together with a stranger who had grabbed our wheel, rotated on the flat section doing between 24 and 27 m/h (thereby putting even more time into the others). Our big mistake was not to wait at the end. Instead we took what the two of us knew to be the next turn, and only began to look back and wait at the next light. Nobody. We rode back--still nobody. I had my phone, reached one of the others, and it turned out they had gone straight. They thought they knew where they were, and we talked about a place to meet up. But they were lost, and my phone had run out of juice. So John and I rode home comfortably while the other two ended up looping all the way back to the coffee place. From there, they eventually found their own way home. They were good sports about it, but it wasn't supposed to go that way and it was our fault. Next week, coffee and apple pie is on the instigator of it all (that would be me).