The End of the Road

Day Seven

While the Ride for me is almost a spiritual event, this year I was actually looking forward to it being over. Though I knew I would miss the community, the not-the-real-worldness, I knew I really wanted to get off that trike.

It's ironic, because in some ways, the trike is easier to ride. No sore butt, never having to stop on hills, and oddly enough, easier to park; that's because, when we'd pull into a rest stop, the roadie at the entrance would look at it, look at us and invariably say, "put that thing anywhere you want."

But I hated its weight, its slowness, its ungainliness. Perhaps when Jerry and I are octogenarians we might want a trike to tool around, but for now, as soon as Jerry is ready, we are climbing back on the Co-Motion.

We discussed that today, and we decided the best way to make the ride even better, would be for us to lose weight. We're seriously investigating Weight Watchers. While we can get stronger, the easiest way for us to climb hills better is to get lighter.

But back to Day Seven.

As usual, we were up early and hit the road somewhere around 7 am. Our plan was to get moving and get close to the ride finish and stop for lunch.

Much of the last day is spent riding on the Coast Highway. The ocean is beautiful, but most of the time Jerry and I are on the lookout for car doors, surfboards and cars making u-turns to zip into a parking space. It's a pretty stressful ride.

We stopped at the lunch spot to use the Port-a-Potties, but ultimately got trapped there. There were not one, but two bike accidents on PCH, so we were held until helicopters could land and take the cyclists to medical facilities. That ruled out lunch elsewhere, so we collected our sack lunches and parked ourselves on a bench. The lunch stop was on a ball field, so we were behind a fence. Our friend Duncan joined us. We ate, we chatted and waited to be freed.

Finally, we were allowed to continue. We got to the Va Center, with the road lined with well-wishers, cheering our arrival. Rather than taking our bike to the corral to wait for closing ceremonies, we took it straight to shipping. We had decided to skip closing ceremonies this year. We had to catch a shuttle by 5, but we thought that we might even be able to get on an earlier flight.

After we dropped off the bike, we went and picked up our "victory" shirts. We were deciding what colors we wanted this year, but discovered, due to budget constraints, all the shirts were white. Then, we discovered the typo on the back. The website reads: aids lifeycycle. If it was the printer's fault, I hope they get the shirts for free, or at least for a substantial discount, and I hope they lay claim to that website!

Shirts in hand, we headed to the gear trucks, and then to the shuttles. We caught a shuttle pretty quickly, and arrived at LAX much earlier than our flight. Southwest wanted to charge us an exorbitant amount to change flights, so, we headed to the Food Court instead.

The Food Court quickly turned into an ALC reunion. There was quite a crowd of us there. We drank cappucinos, beers, and I even had a lemon drop, graciously bestowed on me by a rider I didn't even know.

When we finally got on our flight, there was a host of white victory shirts. Our friend John Hershey sat with us, which made the flight home wonderful.

We got home that night to yowling kitties and a real bed.

Despite what I have said about this not being the ALC of my dreams, Jerry and I are signed up for next year. To rejigger a cliche-- the worst week on ALC is closer to Utopia than the best week anywhere else.

And there still is no cure for AIDS, there are horrendous budget cuts coming to AIDS programs, so we'll keep riding and doing whatever we can until there's a cure.

I want my HIV positive friends to die of old age.