One of the most wonderful things about doing the Climate Ride was the support. The ride is directed by Blake Holiday - he wears his name well - and supported by about fifteen other ride leaders, each with a specific role. Our meals were catered. Our gear was trucked from campsite to campsite in a Penske truck. Every morning at breakfast, Blake stepped us through the ride for the day in a friendly talk laced with jokes and encouraging tips. And then you filled your water bottles, pumped your tires, and rolled out with your friends for another stretch of stunning California scenery.
I’m home now. I want every day to start with Blake giving me a pep talk that has me laughing into my coffee, and then going over the challenges and pitfalls of my day. Mile 37, turn right at the bridge, watch the gravel! It would be quite thrilling if most days could start with a leisurely twenty mile ride with 50 of my friends before work, to the first water stop.
I remember on the bus up to Fortuna the Saturday before the ride started looking around and thinking how healthy everyone was. This was a subset of humans fit and strong enough to consider cycling 320 miles over 5 days. Lucky folk. Also driven to push their bodies, and motivated to take up a challenge for a great cause. As I got to know more people on the ride, I realized many of them were already working in the environmental industry - movers and shakers, young people with incredible energy, and veterans of decades of pushing for climate action and bike advocacy. As the hospice nurse in the crowd, I felt a bit like a fish on a bicycle, but then halfway up the endless Leggett Hill I met a cardiologist from UCSF and we talked work for a bit and I remembered that the disparate pieces of my life actually fit very well together.
I still felt very like the newbie athlete I am around this group. There was Kip, our ride photographer, whom I discovered had run the Boston Marathon course from finish to start and then turned round and ran it from start to finish! Not only that, but at the finish, he beat Lance Armstrong! That’s a lot of italics, I know, but I think he earned it. I asked him what possessed him to do such a thing. He had a convoluted story about it, but essentially his answer seemed to be because I could.
There were also a lot of veterans of previous Climate Rides, like Dave Howes, on his 10th ride and about to turn 70, and Evan, affectionately known as Rider #1, who had been the first person to ever sign up for a Climate Ride when it was conceived. Every time he rode by me (which was often), I would think Rider #1! and it gave me energy to go on.
Another thing that gave me energy to go on were the endless snacks and giant meals. I probably consumed half my body weight in food over the 5 days. On Century Day, Blake cautioned us to put something in our mouths every 45 minutes, whether we felt like it or not. I couldn’t quite meet that goal, but I definitely ate every hour. There was a giant table of snacks for us to take in the mornings and water/snack stops every 20 miles or so. And it worked. I didn’t bonk once.
But let me tell you what it felt like to actually be on the ride. Many moments stand out in my mind. If you have read previous blog posts, it won’t surprise you to hear that as I rolled out of the campsite on the first morning and headed down the quiet misty early morning road, I spontaneously started to cry. An uprush of emotion that all the months of training and fundraising had brought me to this moment; that I was actually doing the Climate Ride. This happened numerous times on the ride, usually on a mad downhill rush, or a moment of crazy beauty. There were many hours on the road to think. I was in the happy situation of belonging to a team, but a very small one - Climate One had only 2 of us to start, then Greg joined, and on the last day a few of our alumni. So I had familiar people I could ride and hang with, but I also mingled a lot and met new folks. And I rode alone as much as I wanted to. I thought about the patient I was dedicating my ride to, a young woman with young kids in her last days. I sang favorite songs to myself and thought about my life and how I would like it to be going forward. Sometimes I was just taking in the scenery, smelling the sea air, and oh yeah, trying to stay alive as aggressive motorists thundered by leaving about six inches of space between us and their F150s. We had been warned that the folks between Pt. Arena and Gualala were not very well disposed towards cyclists. This proved eerily true. But we all survived.
I’m going to publish this and finish part #2 of the ride when I can. For the moment, I just want to honor the fantastic ride organizers and my fellow riders who had done this event before me for their phenomenal support and love along the way. There are not too many things I do that I can really say are pretty immediately life-changing, but this is definitely one of them. Roll out!
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