Tailwinds, Levi and Paella

Up before the crack of dawn yesterday to head to Santa Rosa for the Gran Fondo, a ride sponsored by Levi Leipheimer, which raised funds for a couple of groups, including animal rescue.

We had signed up for this ride months ago, and at times it almost became an afterthought, but our Road IDs arrived this week and the ride became more real. I hadn't realized there would be 3500 riders, so we drove to Santa Rosa with at least a bit of trepidation, wondering what a mass start of that size would look like.

We arrived early enough for me to exchange the meal tickets-- they gave us the wrong ones-- and wander around a bit. Ran into some friends, and the next thing you know, it was time to climb on the bike.

And wait. And wait some more. They released the riders slowly, which certainly was a good idea. Although I think perhaps they did it backwards. They had the self-identified slow riders in the back. I know at least one person who had to be swept because he lost time waiting to be released. But I kind of get why they had to do that. The fast riders would have steamrollered over the slow ones. There's probably a solution, but since this was the first year of this ride, there's time to work out the kinks.

Jerry and I pushed off about 45 minutes or so after the "start," but we were not doing the 100 mile ride, just the 62 mile ride, so we knew we'd be fine.

It did seem kind of funny having lots of folks lining the first couple miles of the route to cheer us on. After all, it was just a day's ride, not a week long ride to LA, and while we were raising money, there didn't seem to be anything monumental about the whole thing. But I suppose it's good that the Santa Rosa folks were excited by the ride. I'm sure we caused much havoc on plenty of people's Saturday routines, since there were road closures and cops stationed along the route waving us through stop signs and red lights.

It was a sunny, chilly day in Sonoma, and Jerry and I wore our ALC jackets and we were glad to have them. There was also quite a bit of wind, sometimes making the pedaling difficult.

But the most difficult pedaling came at Coleman Valley Road. We had never ridden that particular stretch of Hell, and until I'm strong and am not coming off of being sick, I don't want to ride it again too soon.I neglected to mention I was pretty sick on Friday and had gotten dehydrated. I decided I would see how I felt Saturday morning. If I still felt crummy, I was going to send Jerry to Santa Rosa on his Bianchi. In many ways it was good that I went. His Bianchi does not have the gears to climb the worst hill we've ever rode. Or walked part of.

Yes, for the first time ever, we walked part of a hill. Never on White's Hill. Never on Quadbuster. But we walked perhaps a couple hundred yards of Coleman Valley. It was just too steep for the tandem. And we certainly weren't alone. There were some riders who appeared to walk the entire hill.

Occasionally, a tail wind would appear and give us a little boost. That was a godsend and we only hoped for more. They were few and far between but oh so welcome when they arrived.

After the worst part of the climb there was still some more climbing, and by then the winds had shifted and we had more cross wind than we would have liked, But we persevered and kept riding while others walked.

Once that was over it was smooth sailing until we hit a gravel path. I figure they took us off roads because the good citizens of Santa Rosa could only take a morning of bicycles taking over their town, but the gravel path was hideous. By then our butts were incredibly sore and the bouncing on the gravel surface made those few miles unbearable. So glad when we got back on pavement.

Shortly after, we arrived at the finish line and could dismount. There was a long line at bike parking, so we decided to risk leaving our bike unattended with no ill consequences.

Then, meal tickets in hand, we headed over to the supper tent. We had three choices: Mexican, Italian and Paella. The Italian seemed too generic, Mexican risky on a recently ravaged gastro system, so we went with the paella. Definitely a good choice. It was fairly bland, which normally I'd complain about, but it was like a big plate of comfort food. There was no sausage, which was fine with me, and the rice was incredibly comforting and filling. We had a coupon for a free beer, which I gladly handed over to a tablemate. We had sparkling lemonade to complete the meal. Just fine by me.

We did a little walking around the festival, visiting with one dog up for adoption and a bunch of bike-related booths. But after just a little while we knew it was time to head home.

Back at the house, we forced ourselves to stay up until almost 9 pm, but justified the early to bed time by remembering we had been up at 5:30 am and had ridden the hardest hill we had ever ridden. Next year on the AIDS ride, Quadbuster will look like a piece of cake. With no chocolate frosting.