Day 3 - 06 June 2006, King City to Paso Robles

Photos from Day 3

Today's ride started out overcast and cool. I ended up having a little conversation with my body:

Me: Time to get up and ride the bike.
Body: What?!?! We just did 189 miles in two days and now you want to go again? What about those rest days we agreed on?
Me: Nope, we've got five more days until the end of this.
Body: Five days, huh? I'm so going to bonk on you today, just you wait and see.

We started as a group but got spaced out on a long flat section with a tail wind. After a bit we had to turn and the wind became a head wind, bleh! We got to a highway, turned and hit rest stop 1. It turns out we were only about 6 miles from King City at that point and we had ridden about 19 miles. The out of the way riding is to get us milage I'm guessing, but out of the way is out of the way, espcially when it takes you over rough road that could barely be called a road.

Rest stop 1 turned out to be very cold and I was getting a bit antsy so I took off towards the first big hill of the ride, Quadbuster. Quadbuster is a 1.3 mile climb that I think averages a 9% grade and is 11% at its worst. This thing is built up to a killer hill by people that have ridden before. I'm thinking they're just from L.A. It was a difficult hill, and unlike hills in the Bay Area you could see the entire thing from the bottom, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. When I got to the top I was expecting a bit more and it was there my body chimmed in:

Body: You are so lucky I didn't quit on you back there.
Me: Look, only 4.5 more days and it'll be over.
Body: That's great, now give me something to drink and rustle up a snack while you're at it. CHOP! CHOP!

It's amazing how my body was protesting at the beggining of the day but then it just sort of got used to the riding. From the top of Quadbuster it was all downhill to rest stop 2. I flew down the hill and cranked it out in the big gears at 30 MPH for a few miles. Rest stop 2 was themed as the prom. Eat, drink, pee and then off through some really pretty countryside.

There were some small climbs heading to rest stop 3. At one point along the way I stopped to take in the view of a valley and I lost it. I had been thinking about my uncle Keith that morning. How he's gone and how I miss him. How too many people have been lost to HIV and AIDS. And how I've probably waited to long to start doing something about it. I sat there, soaked in the beauty, drank some water, and then got back on my bike to get to rest stop 3.

Rest stop 3 was fairly bizzare. It was next to a trailer park with a lot of rusted out old vehicles and basically in the parking lot of a gas station in a little hamlet along the way. Leaving there we were on our way to the little town of Bradley, population 120.

Every year the town comes out and cooks hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch. They sell them to the ALC participants and with the money they raise they fund their school (28 students I think I heard) and provide a scholorship for a Bradley graduate. In addition to the burgers, dogs, chips and soda they also sell cookies and t-shirts. I had the most amazing peanut butter cookie there. The cheeseburger was the perfect food for a hot day and tastey to boot (of course that could just be the frame of mind I was in).

Riding out of Bradley was very hot and dry and I didn't have a good time getting to rest stop 4. I thought about skipping the stop and just going directly to camp but as usual I had to pee so badly that I couldn't skip it. The Mission San Miguel was a perfect setting for a rest stop. Shade from trees, a nice courtyard and intersting things to look at. The theme was an after-prom part which went nicely with rest stop 2. After the usual stop I was back on the road and cranking out the last 12 miles to Paso Robels. It was still hot but had cooled a little bit. The countryside turned from the dry, dead, and dusty out of Bradley to a little more green and pretty.

I got in pretty early, showered and then went to Sports Med about my hands which had been bothering me all day. It turns out they're both fatigued and have some muscle strain from gripping too hard on day 2 and the rough roads today (it's like holding a PS2 vibro-shock controller too much). I got some functional tape to add extra support to the strained muscles and we'll have to see how it goes tomorrow. Apparently it got to over 100F at the hottest parts today. Blech!