AIDS Life Cycle - 2012: part 2
Margaret-and-Steve.org Steve Benting -- Home Me, Myself, I, etc. Obligatory Links Page Pictures Ann's graduation |
Well, it
started out as a nice day. But
let's switch to
the G+ post again: June 4 -- Santa Cruz to King City Day two of ALC was... interesting. We knew it was the longest day at 109 miles, but at least it was pretty flat. We rolled out of Santa Cruz around 6:45 and slogged through traffic lights and stop signs for the first hour or so. Then on to the Salinas Valley towards King City. But as we got close to lunch in Salinas at around mile 50, the weather was getting cooler and it was starting to mist. Then at lunch it developed into a real rain (not really heavy at least) and the wind picked up. It was cold enough that they started handing out mylar blankets at the medical tent. When we got to the tent, they had three left -- so I got one for Margaret and we both huddled behind it while we ate and shivered. Like many people, we got the blanket under Margaret's jacket to help keep her warm. And once we got riding, it got better since we generate a fair amount of heat (even though the rain got worse.) At least we had a tailwind. Even in the rain we were holding at 18-20 mph once we got out of Salinas. All the way up to where we found the ambulance. A rider ahead of us was apparently cruising on this same road and tried to make a left turn too quickly and hit some gravel. (We later heard that he had broken a collarbone.) All of this led to them shutting down the route behind us at the lunch stop and busing the other riders in. At the last rest stop, we heard that only a few hundred off us made it all the way out of 3000 riders. [We later found out there were actually 2200 riders or so. -Steve.] Which is too bad since the rain died. (We were at the third rest stop when a brief bit of sun shone through. There was a spontaneous cheer!) Then we just had wind to deal with. I took about a half-mile long right turn just to stay on a straight road at one point. But finally, the wind turned with us, and we could cruise for many miles at almost 20 MPH with very little effort. And after the last rest stop, we caught a killer tailwind on a 1% downhill. I ran out of gears at around 35 MPH and we had a fantastic ride in! Legs were still pretty good even after 190 miles over those first two days, so we appear to be judging our pace well. More on today's ride in a later post. Meanwhile, here's a photo of Margaret's fashion statement...  For comparison, here was a stop earlier in the day...  And here's the day two profile: June 5 - King City to Paso Robles So on to day three -- which was drier, at least: Today started out with a nice, slow climb of about 1% for the first 9 miles or so to the start of a climb known as "The Quadbuster". That's a 1.3 mile climb at a peak of around 10% that I noticed. But it was followed by almost 15 miles of descent. Lunch was in the town of Bradley, where the whole town shows up to put on a barbecue for the riders. The kids are all singing and cheering for the riders and we all repay them by buying lunch even though we have free lunch available. This sponsors their athletics program for the year. Then it was only one more rest stop before we made it into Paso Robles for the night --so we were off the course quite early today. Our hotel rooms weren't ready when we registered at 3, so we got a milkshake and then tripped over some people setting up telescopes in the park by our hotel to show off the transit of Venus. I had expected that we'd need to just give this a miss, but we got to see it just start and then again as it was halfway done! Now to bed soon before we start the climb up to the "Evil Twins" and the ride's halfway point before finishing three day. Only 97 miles tomorrow...  Day three profile: This was a nicer, kinda quiet day. Good prep before a long day four. This page by , using KompoZer. Last updated on 23 June 2012. |