Evil Twins, More Pizza and Janine

Day Four has a couple of highlights, both positive and negative. It is the day of the Evil Twins, two back-to=back hills, the halfway point, and a very long sweeping descent.

Again, the hills were not hard, just long and tedious. We cranked and cranked and cranked until we got up them.

Then to the halfway point. This is a pull-off on the left side of the road, where people climb a pile of rocks, hold their bikes above their head above a sign. At one point we thought it might be fun to get a half dozen folks to hoist our trike, but decided that we'd forgo the halfway point and sail down the hill.

And sail we did. We swooped past everyone as we rolled down the decline. The road was not nearly as twisty and turny as what we have experienced in the bay area, so no worries about leaning into turns, and very little braking. I didn't check the cyclometer, but I'm sure we approached 50 mph at times.

We continued the ride until we were a couple of miles from the lunch stop, and we decided though we had had pizza the night before, can anyone really get too much pizza? So we stopped at the same pizza place as we had last year. There were riders already there, and a few more trickled in as we ate.

But I suppose I discovered you CAN have too much pizza and spent the rest of the afternoon with a bit of an upset stomach. I have what Jerry calls "the dotted line." I'll try not to get too graphic. But basically, if too much goes in, or goes above the "dotted line" some of it has got to come out. And it did in fits and starts as we rolled down the road. Not the most pleasant thing, but I made every effort to make sure no one was too close behind us.

Because of the way I was feeling, we also skipped the Cinnamon Bun stop in Pismo Beach. So we got to our next climb a little sooner. Agony hill, Pismo Bitch... it goes by many names. It is not that long, but it is ridiculously steep. Cyclists were falling over because they were riding so slow. It was almost too steep to walk; besides, there was no shoulder. But once again, the trike made it up. We cranked and cranked and cranked some more. My quads and calves were screaming at me, but we made it.

Oh, and this was also the day I was not Carol. I was Janine. Seems that the daily newsletter, the Daily Spin, had an article about a pair of tandem riders, Clark and Janine. We hadn't seen it, since we had princessed, but we heard all about it. While the article was all about them, the photo that accompanied it was a picture of Jerry and me from last year. Not wanting to miss such an opportunity, I went to the medical tent at Rest Stop 1, got a piece of tape and a pen, and changed our license plate for the day so that it read "Jerry and Janine." The next day I went back to Carol. Had I seen it and known, I would have changed Jerry's name to Clark. The folks who told us about it couldn't remember his name.