Change of Plans

As of Saturday night, I’ve ridden 100+ miles in a single day twice in my life.  We started from Miranda’s house in Arcata at about 9am.  The weather was cold and overcast to the point of misting.  By the time we got through Eureka things cleared up, but we hit a gnarly patch of roadway that was under construction.  Not the kind where there are flaggers and stopped traffic, but the kind where there’s about 3 miles of torn up, bumpy-ass road.  It was hell to get through, but we made it.

The agenda shows yesterday’s planned route, but we wound up getting off 101 for about 30 miles to ride through Ave of the Giants, a redwood-laden two lane road with much less traffic than 101.  The detour added about 5-10 miles to the ride, pushing us to the century.

In the afternoon, we ran into other riders headed for the same campground as us, making our destination reasonable.  Jas went ahead as usual and made it to camp, breaking a spoke somewhere along the way.

I didn’t get up the hill to the campground until after dusk.  I picked up some food at the store across the street, and by the time I came out, it was dark.  The campground had tree canopies, so it was even darker in there.  I started whistling when I thought I was near the hiker/biker section, and Jas yelled out my name to lead me to the camp.  So I made it, but just barely.

When I arrived, Jas notified me of the spoke and that someone had offered him a temporary spoke bungee.  He put it on before going to bed, but didn’t try to true the wheel until morning.  While he was truing the wheel, the bungee snapped, and with it went Jas’s motivation.  The nearest bike shop was 20 miles behind us, and riding without a spoke would bend the rim, possibly to the point of destruction.  Luckily, we were close enough to santa cruz that Jas could get Cat to pick him up.

The whole ordeal put me at a late start, but gave me time to investigate an issue I had been having with my middle chain ring while the cassette was in a higher gear.  It turns out that one of the teeth in the middle cog had snapped off completely, and two neighboring teeth were bent, causing the chain to nudge towards the large cog every pedal.  I tried straightenning the bent teeth with a pliers, and that seems to have solved the issue for now.  After the trip I’ll have to get a new chainring, but it should be fine to get to Santa Cruz.

Today’s ride was incredibly strenuous.  The day began with a climb to 2000 ft. (starting from about 750), then an incredible downhill back to nearly sea level, then another steep climb up to about 800.  The second climb was deadly, and the descent more dangerous than the first (more sharp U-shaped turns), but the reward at the end of the descent was epic: the Pacific Ocean.  I finally made it to the California coast on hwy 1.

The rest of the ride was rolling hills and unfortunately strong head winds.  Since I was fairly exhausted from the climbs and Jas wasn’t already 10 miles ahead of me, I decided to take it slow instead of hauling ass to make Gualala.

So here I am at Russian Gulch State Park writing up the details.  It’s only $3 per person for hiker/biker, but their showers are on the fritz, so I’m sleeping with road grime on my legs.  Fun.

By the time this is posted (probably in Mendocino proper), I’ll be on my way to Bodega Bay.  San Francisco on Tuesday.