Day 3. Yikes. Not only did we get to discover that the bad roads held over from yesterday like a canker sore that just won’t go away, we also got to experience them in the blistering heat! Yay.
Good news: We rolled at 6:29 am and got into camp at 1:30 pm. We fairly easily kicked ass up the worst hill of the whole seven days but not without it getting in several good licks just to make us miserable. But we KILLED the descent afterward. Flew down Jolon Road back to the 101 in record time. (My Garmin said top speed of 58.7 which is absurd, but I did glance at it once while scorching down some hill and saw it hitting somewhere in the 40s, so yikes… maybe possible? I don’t know, cause mostly I’m grabbing onto my completely impotent handlebars and staring at Scott’s shirt, and in between pre-verbal prayers wondering if the next thing I know I’ll be waking up in an ICU). Good times.
Seriously though, they are good times. The bike handles like you’d expect a golden retriever to act if it was made of steel and had two saddles and seven water bottle cages. Like this bike would rather DIE than let us down. Rock solid emotionally and physically, it carries us up and down hills and over roads that look like an Indonesian earthquake without a rattle or a shudder or a complaint. (I said at one point that I should have waited on my recent tooth extraction and saved the money because the roads were certainly going to loosen every tooth from my head.)
Scott takes incredible care of our steed. Washes and lubes it every day after we ride. Tweaks and dials in the derailleur so the gears shift smoothly. Polishes it with a diaper (kidding, but he would if he could.) And it shows. This is a happy machine and it is taking care of us back.
All that having been said, it was a rough day. I woke up at 3 am or so in our (sorry) shithole of a hotel in Greenfield (that I booked in defiance of the heinous surge pricing that always happens in King City) with two words echoing through my head: Bed bugs.
EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWW. Not that we had them, but this place was fucking textbook for an infestation. I crept around the room with my phone light on, peering under the mattress and into the corners, and then hiding out in the bathroom for about an hour reading all about them (YUCK YUCK YUCK) and then trying to find the bed bug database that I knew existed. Bupkis. Finally I had to start getting ready, my next dilemma being whether to tell Mr Psychosomatic Husband about my fears or not. On the one hand, he could potentially calm my stresses about this new What Else Can Go Wrong issue. On the other, he could start scratching until he hits bone mass. Luckily, it was the former, and even more luckily we seem to have (MIRACULOUSLY) been in a room without them.
I then cancelled our shithole hotel in Ventura and booked something a lot more expensive, money being the lie we tell ourselves that protects us.
This has nothing to do with bike riding but it started my day off shittily. It was also cold and I developed a weird super uncomfortable shiver that didn’t go away until I ate a Starbucks breakfast sandwich and downed a half caf. I was pretty edgy all day actually.
We got to lunch at Bradley at 10:15 am!!! Unbelievable. Scott wasn’t into the Hundred Dollar burger, which made me sad, and I know Roger and I could’ve gone in. But we didn’t and that’s ok. We got to hang out with Seth Eric Cutler a bit which was such a treat!
We rolled out around 11 and the heat was rapidly building up. We only had about another 20 to go but they were hot, rough, baking miles, punctuated by the occasional rando short steep mofo hill that just didn’t make sense. Who wrote this episode??? We were annoyed.
Watched the drag show at San Miguel Rest Stop 4 and rolled into camp — sweaty, crusty, and (speaking for myself) brain dead — at 1:30. My back was of course killing me so badly that I couldn’t walk to sports med, or massage, or even to the street, so a nice staff guy offered me a ride in his Rivian to where Roger was parked. Hosanna!! The angels sang!! I was deeply deeply grateful for that act of kindness.
At the hotel, the miracles continued. The pool and the jacuzzi were just what I needed, and even though my feisty little SI joint is still pissed off at me, it did get some R&R and I spent a blissful hour or so basking in the sun after soaking in the water. Yay!
Tomorrow: Day 4. The day I’ve never finished for a whole bunch of reasons (mom in crisis, spasmed hamstring, bad timing choices, etc) Tomorrow, if I ride every mile, the ever-elusive goal of riding EFI (every freaking inch) is within reach.
Stay tuned.
