Day 4: I find a Fan Club and an Archnemesis

Related Posts:
Prologue: Dykes and Bikes
Day 1: A Ride Down Memory Lane
Day 2: And I'm faster than YOU, and YOU, and YOU...
Day 3: Back Pedaling

I actually managed to set my alarm right for the first time in Paso Robles, and woke up at 4:30 in order to be able to ride out at 6:30 when bike parking opened. Riding with the Old Ladies was nice because it gave me company, but now that everybody was getting tired I wanted to really open my legs up and see what I could do by myself.

I couldn't believe that there was a breakfast line this early, until I found out that I'd actually snuck into the roadies' breakfast by accident. The real stars of this ride were the roadies, I have to say. They ate breakfast at 4:30 every day in order to be at their stations in trucks, at the med tent, at bike tech, serving food, directing traffic, or on their way to rest stops by the time the cyclists got up for breakfast at 5:00. I can't say enough about the roadies, I really can't. My bag was cheap, but particularly unwieldy and had this nasty habit of hitting me in the back of the knees as I walked. More than once roadies insisted on carrying my bag across camp for me, saying that I must be tired from all that riding. Like they hadn't just loaded and unloaded hundreds of heavy bags onto trucks! I only let them do it once, but after Shane said, "Great, you found the one straight guy in camp to carry your bag for you!" I wouldn't let anyone else do it again. And bike tech was great too! In camp every day, in trucks on the course, and at every second rest stop you had a team of FREE bike mechanics. The days that I went in to lube my chain and pump up my tires at night, not only did they give me free WD-40, lube, and rags, but each and every mechanic offered to help me. When I refused, they offered me their bike stands. When I wasn't heavy enough to get my tire pressure up with the busted pump they had lying around, there was a bike tech there (who weighed more than 120 lb) to pump it up the last 10 PSI. And they always did it with a smile, and they always thanked US!

I got to bike parking just before 6:30 and waited with the dozens of other riders who were waiting for first ride out. In front of me was a guy with a single speed bike! I couldn't think of a good way to get the bike in the picture, plus I was too shy to ask for one, so I took a picture of his butt instead. As we were waiting I wound up talking to a 5th grade teacher from Santa Monica. He said that he had missed days 2 and 3 because his damned principal wouldn't give him the time off. Can you believe it?! So he came up to SF on Saturday, rode the first day, flew back to Santa Monica to work Monday and Tuesday, and then called in sick as his friends spent the night driving him up to Paso Robles (near San Luis Obisbo) to pick up the ride. The principal said he would, "Set a bad example for the other teachers if he took the time off." Can you believe that?!

My plan to avoid the crowds worked. It worked so well, that I almost missed the first turn of the day, and within minutes I was among the first few riders. Today's challenge was called "the twins", two hills back to back. I didn't so much notice 2 separate hills, but a 10-mile-long climb with a little rest in the middle. Up here with the serious riders people were passing me on the uphills, but I was holding my own with most of them, and even passed several.

When I got to the top there was the most incredible view. We'd found our way back to the ocean, and I could see the whole valley below me. Also, when I crested the top, the most phenomenal headwind started blowing. It must have been a million, billion miles an hour. No exaggeration. I tucked in tight into a praying mantis crouch and started pedaling down the hill as fast as I could. I kept expecting the next Twin to appear, but she never did. There was a sign saying that it was a 6% grade (although I'm sure it was more in parts), and it was miles long with great pavement the whole way down. If it hadn't been for the wind, it would have been one of the most exciting descents of my life. A few minutes after I got to the bottom a guy rode up to me. "You really ate up that hill," he said. "Usually I can reel in pretty much anyone on a downhill, but I couldn't catch you!" It was one of the greatest compliments I've ever gotten, especially since I can't seem to get up to the same maximum velocity as bigger people on most descents. Finally someone else was recognizing my superhuman abilities and I could stop tooting my own horn.
Before I started "eating up" the descent, right at the top of the hill, was the half way point. We were among the first dozen riders to get there, but there was already a line. I don't even want to try to imagine what it was like when the main pack came through. I stood in line, almost fell off the rock trying to climb it in my bike shoes, then almost fell again trying to pick my bike up. I held up my bike, forgetting to think about my smile because I hadn't closed my water bottle and it was dripping on my head. Then I got off the rock, got back on my bike, and barreled downhill. I was actually sad to see the halfway point. I was having so much fun that I just wanted to keep riding my bike forever. I hadn't had a single low moment, and my body was feeling stronger every minute. Couldn't I keep going forever and ever and ever?!

Shortly after the bottom of the hill I rode into a block of that California fog: one second it's sunny, and the next you're in the middle of a cloud and you can't see 10 feet in front of you. That was why I wasn't sure what I was seeing at first. It looked like a bear... no, a cave man... lifting up his little Fred Flinstone caveman dress, and underneath he was wearing... was it a brown speedo? And stroking it? No. It wasn't a brown speedo, it was a furry brown thong, and he wasn't stroking it, he was BRUSHING it. When I pulled up I was already laughing. "Oh, it's not for you, sweety," he said, pulling his eyes off the cute guy he'd been brushing his pubes for in front of me. This wasn't Rest Stop 4, but Rest Stop 2 was going all out today too. They were all dressed as cave men (and one cave woman) and all they were doing was grunting and pointing at the Clif bars and bananas. None of them spoke a word. It was a cute idea, but it made me a little uncomfortable to have grown men (and one woman) in caveman outfits just grunting at me when they were perfectly capable of using words. I grabbed some pre-wrapped foodstuffs so that I wouldn't have to ask the grunting Neanderthals in latex gloves to hand me a cut banana or graham cracker and peanut butter sandwich. Then I hit the road again.

Next we rode through a cute, little beach town called Cayucos (which I thought was a strange name for a town, it means rafts in Spanish). Crystal had told me that the ride would be going right by her house and to call her when I got to Rafts to see what she was up to. In about 20 minutes I was at her house, only about 2 blocks off the official rout, playing with my best buddy, the baby again. I left my bike at her house and we drove to a coffee shop. Crystal apologized for the music, "Sorry, it's Nali's (the baby's) CD, it's the only way I can keep her quiet in the car. It's all about farm animals, but there's this one song that I would listen to for myself," she said. As she started flipping through the tracks that made me cringe out of embarrassment for the adults mooing and clucking into studio microphones somewhere she explained, "It's got kind of a reggae feel to it and it's upbeat..." flip, listen, flip, listen, "...and it kind of makes me want to dance..." When she finally found the song, I looked at her like she was crazy. This is what happens to people with children. This is why I never want to have children. "What? You don't like it?!" she asked.

I hit the road again after about an hour and a half, glad to have seen Crystal again, but rather miffed that I had to now pass all the pokey "regular" riders. A few miles out from lunch I saw Narine, then, a few minutes after that I found Lorraine, snuck up behind her, and called out the nat nanat nanat nanat na NAT na NAT na naaaaa! Charge! theme from baseball games before poking her in the ass. "I thought you were going ahead today with the fast people!" she mocked me.
"I did," I said. "I just found Crystal again and stopped for coffee. I took an hour and a half break. Where've you been?!"

At lunch the usual suspects started rolling in. Shane had just arrived when I got there, with his knees killing him more than ever before. Lorraine rolled in a minute or two later and made a bee-line for lunch. Next came Trish, whose knee was doing some disgusting crunching thing that she made me feel. Next came Alisa, who was NOT having a good day. She used up some precious cell phone power to call her partner. She crouched down and put her forehead in the grass and her hands around her head so we wouldn't hear her say, "Baby, I'm not feeling good. I'm so tired, I want to quit." But I could hear her anyway, it sounded so forlorn. When she hung up, I could see she'd been crying. Narine turned up while I was refilling my water bottles to leave. Also there at lunch were Kim, who I didn't feel either way about, and her faithful sidekick, Mdot Girl.

Yes, there's one in every crowd, and of course Mdot Girl was part of our crowd. Mdot Girl had a severe case of the Mike Riley afterglow. She had the obligatory Mdot tattoo (size XL) on her right ankle (the ankle you see when she passes you). She had AT LEAST 2 Mdot jerseys, which she wore whenever they were clean and dry (one, I noticed, was a 70.3 jersey – * scoff! *). And every single story she told over lunch that day started with, "When I was doing Ironman..." I'm sure that Mdot girl was a nice person, she just kind of had one of those personalities that when she first meets you you're either supposed to worship her or she'll ignore you. She was also a Marine, and told a really racist story that couldn't have been entirely true about Kuwaitis washing their hands in their own shit after they go poopoo. I chose to be ignored rather than worship her, and (predictably) decided she would be my arch nemesis for the ride. I told Shane about it, and once I pointed out the Mdot thing to him, it started bugging him too. He fully supported my ripping Mdot girl to shreds on the bike, because it meant that we could stop being competitive with one another (which wasn't fun for either of us anymore).

I gulped down my lunch quickly and didn't wait for the Old Ladies to set off again. I was tearing off down the road when I saw a couple of guys standing at the side of the road. As usual I asked if they were okay as soon as they were within earshot. One gave the thumbs down. I stopped. "What do you need?"
"A cell phone. He doesn't have one and mine's Canadian and won't connect to an 888 number." They'd given us an 888 number on our wrist bands to call if we needed a sweep vehicle. I said I had a cell phone, and the Canadian took off. Once the other rider was off my phone I asked him what was wrong.
"I got a flat and my spare won't hold air."
"I've got a spare tube if you need it," I said.
"Won't work. I've got the deep-rimmed wheels and I need one with the super-long stems. I keep hoping that someone with Zipps will come by..." This wasn't the kind of crowd where a lot of people were on Zipp wheels. He encouraged me to go on now that the sag van was coming for him, and I rolled off again, feeling like I'd paid back at least a little bit of the karma for all the times I've had spectacularly catastrophic flats. I also took just a little bit of satisfaction in the fact that this is what happens to the snobs who buy a set of wheels that cost almost half as much as my whole bike.

In the next chunk it was getting pretty lonely. We were riding through strawberry fields and you could smell them every once in awhile, but it was also hot, and dusty, and hazy. I kept passing this one guy with long, grey hair down to his waist. "Hey! It's that girl again!" he would call every time I passed. Then a few hours later, "There she goes again!" I don't know how I managed to pass them so much, or how I kept winding up behind them. Pretty soon I recognized him too, and we had a short conversation. After that, every time I came up behind him I would call, "C'mon, Fan Club, let's go!" and we would ride together for a little while. It was when I was riding right behind Fan Club that we turned a corner and we turned into a cross wind that seemed like it was being blown from God Himself. It must have been going WAY over 25 mph. We rode like that for about 5 miles, and I wish I could have taken a picture. Fan Club and his buddy's bodies were straight up and down, but their bikes were tilted about 10º to the left. When we turned into Rest Stop 4 (today dressed up as Air Force pilots and playing the soundtrack from Top Gun), we turned directly into the wind and I nearly came to a dead stop. It was incredible.

Kim and Mdot girl were in the rest area, and I sat with them for a few minutes, more because I wasn't sure if it would be rude not to. "(Iron)Man, it's been such a beautiful day, and we're doing such an incredible thing," she said, "and I bet you anything when we get back to camp all anyone's going to talk about is complaining about the wind." She had a point, but the bigger point she wanted to make was I, Mdot girl, am better than everybody else in the world.
"We've been so lucky with weather!" I added, making a point to say something positive so that my archnemesis would not have anything to use against me. "For every mile we've had a crosswind, we've had 10 miles of fast tailwinds!" But I did not want to be sitting with Kim and Mdot girl, because if I did, then I might have to ride with them. So when Fan Club left at the same time as us, I followed Fan Club.

Later, when the Old Ladies got to Rest Stop 4, Alisa had a meltdown. I'm allowed to talk about it, because it's all she talked about for the next 24 hours. She got off her bike, flung it to the ground (fucking up her handlebar tape and throwing her brake hood off-kilter) and burst out crying. According to Shane, she threw a full-blown temper tantrum, and it's only because of Lorraine and her amazing ability to inspire and coax people into absolutely anything that they got Alisa back on her bike. Trish suspected she hadn't been drinking enough water. "And you know what happened?" Trish told me later. "We were riding, and Alisa was out of water, so eventually she asked some woman with 2 full water bottles to share some of her water. We were only about 5 miles from camp and the woman REFUSED. Can you believe that?!" I don't remember the full story, but I don't think this was just some stranger either.

Back to me, who was still having the time of my life: And now I had an entourage. Don't ask me how it happens, but I always make friends with straight men over 40 at every event I do. I wouldn't remember their names until Day 7, but my Fan Club had 3 members: Ricky, the one with the long hair and a Latino accent; Robert, with a handlebar mustache and a ponytail of his own, who looked like he would have been more at home on a Harley than a Trek; and Thomas, who I secretly called Thomas the Tank Engine, who (in his sun glasses) looked so much like Mark Allen that I spent the rest of the ride home trying to figure out if it was possible if it really was him. I have a Mark Allen phobia.

Thomas the Tank Engine took off, and I did my best to keep up with them for the last 10 miles into Santa María. The wind was back at our tail, but still, we were holding about 28 mph for several miles. Santa María really is a godforsaken place surrounded by dusty farms, and with nothing but ugly homes and warehouses in town, so I wasn't missing much. Mdot girl and Kim were lightyears behind me. I fantasized that maybe they would expect to catch up with me and then secretly lose heart, since I was clearly out of their league.

When I got to camp I picked up my stuff and did a quick run around camp. It was only .85 miles, but I was feeling really good and could have kept running. I was just afraid Shane would come back and think it was fucked up I didn't put up the tent. When I got back, Shane still wasn't there. I picked up his bag, and pitched the tent. He STILL wasn't there. It wasn't until I was leaving for the shower trucks that he finally rolled in.

The shower trucks were separated into male and female even though there were stalls and it wasn't gang showers. For the first time ever in my life, the women's lines were shorter because there were so many fewer women on the camp than men. I found a truck with a short line, and just then Lorraine walked up, who called Alisa over, who let Narine know, who called over Trish, who Kim saw, who ran and got Mdot girl. Suddenly the line wasn't so short anymore. As we were waiting for a stall to free up, a bunch of guys came over. "After you ladies are finished, this truck is going to become a men's truck, okay?" he said. It was still early, and the line for the men's trucks were already about 15 people deep.
"Fine by us," said Kim.
"Why don't you just come in as stalls free up rather than waiting for all of us to finish?" piped up Alisa.
"You guys wouldn't mind?" the chief guy said.
"Fine by me!" chirped Lorraine, who's straight.
"Woo-hoo!" said Trish, who's straight.
So as I was putting conditioner in my hair, the guys started coming in. "Here we come, ladies," they announced. "Now don't you all go peeking!"
That wasn't the only fun shower story. Shane saw (and heard) some pretty strange things in some of the men's showers. "I saw one guy putting deodorant all over his whole, entire body!" he said. Other stories are not appropriate to repeat. But Meg (who, apparently does shower, despite evidence to the contrary), has the best shower story from 3 years ago:

Tracy Chapman was doing the ride that year. Meg was in a stall which had a curtain for the shower, but was missing the separate curtain for the little outside changing area. Her towel was one of those super-absorbent ones that doesn't have to be larger than a hand towel, but Meg had it tied around her waist for modesty. She was trying to get her sports bra on, which you ladies know can be very tricky when you're wet. So Meg is all tied in knots with her arms above her head and her sports bra wrapped half way around her face when she sees through an armhole in the sports bra that Tracy Chapman has just walked in. At that exact moment, the towel falls from around Meg's hips. So she's standing there with her sports bra entangled above her head, and naked as the day she was born, "Oh my God! Tracy Chapman just saw me naked!" For most people this would be part of their inner dialogue, but this is Meg, so she said it OUT LOUD.
Then Tracy Chapman says, "Don't worry, I wasn't looking." Meg's conclusion to this story is that as she walked by, Tracy Chapman's hand grazed her butt.

When I got back I found a treasure at the bottom of my duffel bag. My Boston Marathon jacket! I'd forgotten I'd packed it! (It could get really cold at night). Later that night I ran into Kim and Mdot chick at the information tent. "Oh! I didn't know you ran Boston," Mdot girl said. It was the first time she'd acknowledged my existence in any meaningful way.
And this is the point where I would like to kill Mindy. I would have loved to just say, "Yep," but noooooooooo. I promised Mindy I would tell each and every person who commented on the jacket that I ran it as a bandit. "I didn't qualify," I admitted. "I just showed up."
The wall of superiority went back up. "Oh. Well I'd qualify." Right, of course you would. "If you tried to do that in a race like New York, they'd kill you."
"What are you talking about. I know people who've run Boston AND New York as a bandit. No one bothers you after the corals." Okay well I don't KNOW someone who did New York as a bandit, but I'd met people... "And anyway, I'm so far off qualifying, that I won't be able to do it for years..."
"What do you have to run to qualify?" asked Kim. We don't hate Kim. Kim is neutral.
"3:40."
"You can do that. Hell, even I've done that," encouraged Kim.
"I will someday, but it would take so much focus that I don't have time for right now..."
Mdot girl had already started walking away from me. I was still talking and she was already walking away! Over her shoulder she said, "Yeah, well next time, you have to qualify." Like I hadn't thought of that.
When they were gone Shane said, "Wow, yeah, she's obnoxious. You so have to kick her ass now."

Total miles: 98.06
Total time riding: 5:30:23
Average speed: 17.81 mph
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