June 15, 2010
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Friday, June 11, 2010
Day 6 – Lompoc to Ventura – 85.5 Miles
Day 6 is my favorite day of the Lifecycle. It’s got an awesome climb, a screamin’ downhill and then a gorgeous route along the coast down to Ventura. It’s also got a pain in the ass bottleneck– people have to wait at pit 2 for Caltrans to put cones around a lane so that we can make it over a bridge safely. Two years ago it was a complete nightmare because they ended up releasing people from pit 2 kind of haphazardly and it resulted in the fast riders being stuck behind and having to pass much slower riders on the 101. Yuck. It was a pain in the ass and it was scary.
This year I was determined for that not to happen again. So, when I pulled into pit 2 at about 8 AM, I politely asked who was in charge. They directed me to a nice lady. I very politely (always be polite) explained to her that I’d really appreciate it if they had a plan for releasing the riders once the road opened up because it would ultimately be safer for everybody and that I wanted to be in the first group of riders who was released (I was one of the first riders who showed up the rest stop) and that I was willing to line up an hour early if they wanted me to. She promised me they’d take care of it and I halfway believed her. They came up with a scheme where people would rack their bikes in a certain order and then the bikes would be released based on rack order. It sounded fair and reasonable I thanked her profusely. I saw her talking later to my friend Peter and learned that her name was Barbara and she was the head of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Eek! Lesson: always be polite you never really know who you’re talking to.
Alvin:
Wanderson:
Me looking a little dewy:
Wanderson and I:
The line getting ready to leave:
As Barbara had promised, the riders were pretty much released in the order they had arrived which made things much, much more pleasant for everybody. I hada great (as opposed to terrifying) ride into Santa Barbara, I got a couple of pics at pit 3 which was on the beach.
This is Maggie on the right. She was one of the few who dared to taste me when I was covered with marshmallow flavored stripper glitter the day before:
This was the best bike tech area of the entire ride:
The Santa Barbara Marina:
I stopped at the water stop for the first time on the ride. Tia was in a glamorous gypsy she-male costume:
From there I had a screaming run down PCH and got a little lost in Ventura but I made it to camp a little before 1. Scott and I headed over to In-N-Out burger for lunch. They got my sandwich order wrong and I was served a bun with mustard on it which was surprisingly OK. I was there for the french fries anyway.
I got cleaned up and had a couple of dinners. We Scott and I headed over to Duke’s which I thought would be a good idea because Ben likes it so much. Then I got cleaned up and headed off to bed. Exhausted yet again.
Bike Mileage:
Today 85.5
Week to date 425.2
Month to date 593.8
Year to date 4,434.2
To Goal 5,565.8
Over (Under) plan (4.2)
YTD Mileage vs Last Year 509.0
Rolling Year 8,401.1
Since Inception 10/1/07 25,604.0
