AIDS Life Cycle - 2012: Part 4
Margaret-and-Steve.org Steve Benting -- Home Me, Myself, I, etc. Obligatory Links Page Pictures Ann's graduation |
Getting close now!June 8 - Lompoc to VenturaDay six was an 85-mile ride from Lompoc to Ventura. We started with a roughly 18-mile climb of 1000 feet or so, then had 4-5 mile descent back to sea level. Unfortunately, we lost a couple riders on the descent when they appeared to have hit some gravel and wiped out. When we've passed riders down, generally the first riders on the scene call for help and direct traffic around the area so they don't have to move the injured riders. Fortunately, we only saw three incidents on the whole ride. (One slipped in the wet on day two, another apparently dehydrated and fell on day four, and these two fell on day six.) In every case, both ride support and emergency services were there quickly. Then most of the day was on the coast -- so there was a lot of flat riding. Quite a bit was on the shoulder of highway 101 - which was fine for most of the day since the road was smooth and there was generally room to pass when needed. (We appreciated this given how much time in the saddle we had spent...) But later in the day we hit a patch where it was a little hairy - with traffic running faster and closer. But the revelation of the day was that we had really recovered with help from the short day five. On the way to lunch I kept pulling harder and Margaret just kept up with me. We both felt better than we had in days. It also helped that we knew that we only had a couple days of riding and that even the 85-mile ride didn't sound all that threatening in comparison. Oh, and Santa Monica made serious bonus points today. They set up a separate stop to give the riders ice cream and fruit on the city. Not that the regular rest stops were bad at all. Themes for the afternoon were Smurfs and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome...   Once again, the profile. (But again, I forgot to turn off the computer until we'd gone a few miles in the car towards our hotel...) June 9 - Ventura to Los Angeles (Final day!) Last day. We went out of the camp and had a 20-mile flat stretch. We cruised along at a pretty good clip and made it to the first rest stop in just under an hour and a half. Then it was a lot of riding on PCH, which was mostly OK -- although they told us not to pass coming out of the rest stop. But much of the time the traffic was clear and the shoulder was quite wide -- and there's a lot of speed difference between riders on this trip. (There are racers who do this kind of distance all the time, people who have never ridden more than 40 miles or so, and everything in between.) So many people ignored it while most of us seemed to try hard not to pass -- but would do so when it was safe. Rest stop two was themed "Everything Must Go!" And that's where I ate my last banana of the ride. (Thank goodness! I got kinda sick of those, but they are really good ride food.) Rest stops had developed into a standard pattern. We'd take off our gloves, stop by the porta-potties, then use alcohol wipes and hand sanitizer (no shortage of immune-compromised people there, of course) then to the line for food. (At each stop, I was eating almost 400 calories or so. But then, I was using something like 2000 to 5000 calories per day according to my computer.) Then off to the water station to fill bottles. We both mostly drank the Gatorade they had, but we also made sure to keep a bottle of clear water as well. We had been carefully been timing our ride to make it to the end at 12:30 or so since that's when we warned everyone that we'd arrive. The first few miles on PCH after lunch were pretty hairy since there wasn't a lot of room on the shoulder and many cars parked on the sides. But we made it without incident, climbed the last hill, then made it to the Veterans Center and the finish line -- where a few hundred people were cheering on riders! Margaret and I rode in together, and John got a little video for us. It's been an amazing ride and we were relieved to have made the whole distance. And we raised a lot for a very worthy cause since much of the money goes to the care of people who have AIDS and don't have money or insurance. Not to mention AIDS research, which has forced us to learn so much about the immune system -- and is paying back in other medical research as well as the obvious benefit of helping to come up with new AIDS treatments. That's the short story. There's a lot of miles of training down and some amazing people that we met along the way. In fact, meeting the people who rode was almost as important as the personal challenge of riding from SF to LA in a week. Again, if you're at all interested in doing the ride, we definitely recommend it. And many, many thanks to all of our sponsors!  Now here's the last profile: And now, for a few final thoughts. This page by , using KompoZer. Last updated on 23 June 2012. |