Double Century Complete (and a Crazy Amazing Weekend)
Where to begin? I think I'll just sum up the long weekend (Friday through Monday) in bullet points:
Friday:
San Francisco to Anaheim Hills, CA
-decided to go scenic and drove to Sacramento first
-11 hours total of Randy driving (since I've never succeeded with a stick shift)
-to bed late around midnight after dinner and fiddling with bikes
Saturday:
Butterfield Double Century; Orange, Riverside and San Diego Counties
-wake up at 5:20
-Hit the road at 6:20 at first light
-Blustery Santa Ana winds and 61 degrees -- no arm or leg warmers
-"Hey, Kids!" and "You're both kinda young for these events" confirmed the fact that we were rolling with the grandpa cycling set
-First century in 6 and a half hours
-At dusk, with 60 miles to go, transform bikes into blinky discos
-Meet Bernd, another "younger" fellow, and stuck together rest of ride
-Cools down and Randy buys hip brown $10 fleece to warm up
-Randy navigated dark in between Bernd's super powerful lighting system and my high beam light borrowed from coach Ari
-Last rest stop we plea our cases to the riders who've SAG'd and Randy gets borrowed jacket and I get borrowed super high powerful light -- transfer my light to Randy's bike
-On the road again feeling great in cool weather, well lit roads and feeling comfortable
-Ari's light dies on bike path about 10 miles from finish, Randy again relies on Bernd and me (and suburban street lights)
-Roll into finish at 10:30 to Kathryn's cheers. 13 and a half hours riding, 16 and a half on the road.
-Quick showers
-Quest for perfect post ride meal lands us at Denny's -- unimpressed, we leave about 70% of food on table and daydream about the meals we can have the next day
-Say farewell and thanks to Kathryn, fall into bed and crash at 1a
Sunday:
Anaheim Hills to San Francisco
-Get up at 8a, eat quick breakfast, pack
-Hit the hot tub for 40 minutes -- yay!
-Load up car and drive to new age-y tasty breakfast spot in the L.A. Hills overlooking a creek (violet ray "Mother Flow")
-Drive along Highway One, zoom it up and down a Canyon Road (so many different variations of these!) and to the 101
-Run out of gas on highway, manage to slide into rest stop on vapors
-Call AAA and surprisingly seemlessly get emergency gas within half an hour
-Hit up Pea Soup Anderson's in Buellton, CA
-Randy again drives whole way
-Home at 11:40p, to bed at 12:15a
Monday:
-Get up early and hang with Fynn
-Head to the Tour of California with Randy in Sausalito
-Ivan Basso in person!
-Buy the cycling vest I've been searching for forever
-Eat brunch at Rose's near bike shop
-Home and change
-To Marin Headlands with Randy and his dog Pista and guest dog Stella
-Hike for a few hours with incredible views and crazy wind and mellow afternoon sun
-Home across Golden Gate & farewell to Randy and Pista
-Shower, eat and sleep
This is just the beginning. So many sights, stories & smiles on the road. Getting the Triple Crown Jersey is gonna be tough, but if it's half as fun as this weekend, this will be a great season.
Comments
Congratulations Tina and Randy, what a ride!
In some ways, it was my worst ride ever: 1 crash, 3 flats, 10 extra miles, and 500 extra feet of climbing. But without all of that I would not have met you guys :)
Bernd
by the way our celebration meal after we hiked up and down mt. Whitney in 15 hrs straight was also at Denny's and it was also not very good.