Day Three: King City to Paso Robles

I woke up at 5 am and rather than try to fight it and return to the dreaming I just decided to pack up my stuff and get on with it. I was developing a system, I was learning to be efficient with what I put where so I could grab and go. Efficiency is the name of the game here at least if you don’t want to waste hours waiting in lines for restrooms, food, snacks, or coffee.

There was one inevitable line again, the one to get out. One dirt road leading out that intersected with a street with actual traffic at which cyclists were making a left. This meant that it was the traffic signal from hell now. Every time cars drove past the procession stopped and waited, there was no going around and no shortcuts. At the back of the line, I didn’t know what was happening, just that we were inching along this dirt road. I wasn’t on my bike for long since there was no point pretending I was riding.

I had lots of time to contemplate the challenge of the day though: the Quadbuster. It was a five-mile climb that starts immediately upon exiting camp. The last mile is an infernal 10-14% gradient. The kind of hill that has your quads screaming in repentance. My goal was to finish it without having to get off my bike. I wasn’t even thinking about how fast because at efforts this big I have to worry more about not falling off the bike rather than beating any sort of time. Everyone around me was pedaling as slow and as steady as they could, we were crawling up a hillside. There were plenty of people that got off and walked up, which was definitely a move maybe I wasn’t above making but I wanted to give it my all first. Near the top, most of the people that completed the climb were all waiting to cheer the rest of the cyclists on. This was motivating and inspiring, but the sad human truth is now I had an audience and I didn’t want to fail in front of them. That got me past the last agonizing quarter mile. One of our team members was already there and cheering us on so I parked my bike in a bush and joined him, and we whooped and hollered until our whole group was at the top.

We all left together and as Isaac Newton successfully predicted, we accelerated down the backside of the Quadbuster, taking turns re-busting our quads but this time to go fast. In the blink of an eye we were at the second rest stop, mile 18, which for a 65-mile day was almost a good third done. The rest stop we were at was a church, and it had opened its door to the cyclists as a way to get out of the sun and relax a bit, no religion required. I took a peek inside as an excuse to get to the star of the show which was the banana bread the congregation was handing out. I took a slice of bread as well as a sprig of lavender that came with it which I stuck in my helmet for good luck and a pleasant scent. I think we hung out a little too hard here, it was 11 am by the time we left and lunch was still 20-ish miles away.

We were riding somewhere east of the Santa Lucia Coastal Mountain Range and experiencing the mediterranean climate of the Salinas River valley firsthand. It was getting hot! So when I saw the third rest stop, even though I was starting to hurt I wanted to just make it to lunch once and for all. I had lost most of the group probably because I left it all at the damn Quadbuster. That was the running theme of the week, we were not so much a team as we were a group of riders whose paths connected and intersected in sometimes mysterious ways and other times in less mysterious preplanned ways. I was always happy to run into one of them or spend time at a rest stop chatting about how different this was than riding around a considerably less hilly Long Beach. I ran into another teammate and we both agreed to just hightail it out of there before it got hotter and so we could get lunch. We set off together but pretty soon she was pulling and I was struggling to stay on her wheel. Ces’t La Vie, but we were rolling through some scenic vineyards as we approached Paso Robles so I just took it all in.

We made it to lunch and connected with the rest of the crew. This was another stop I oft heard about, the elementary school where students sold burgers as a fundraiser. They also sold postcards and keychains, it was a real enterprise. You could even pay a premium to get your burger faster and eat it in an air-conditioned room! Who’s teaching these kids about capitalism so early?! I didn’t get the VIP package but I DID opt for the double cheeseburger, and I’ll tell you what: I know they were just store-bought frozen patties but, on that day, on that ride, it was the best damn burger of my life. Not to mention it was probably the single most delicious meal I had all week. The food at camp was for the masses and had to fit that nostalgic blend of nutritional and palatable. That burger though had grease, cheese, and calories. I showered the kids praises as I left full and content.

Because the heat was approaching 90 degrees, even though I left with the group I was quickly dropped. Historically speaking, if you’ve read any of my ride reports, the heat is like my kryptonite and it was no different today. I’m not sure how the “easy” 65 mile ride turned into an almost whole day ordeal, but I had officially boarded the struggle bus. I wanted to finish quickly but I found myself needing to stop at the fourth rest stop because I was dying and my bike started making a weird noise when I braked. I sat there and just tried to enjoy the spectacle of seeing a drag miss America pageant performed while I waited for my bike to be looked at. Say what you will about the convenience or cost of doing this ride supported but that’s an experience you’ll never get anywhere else but on AIDS Lifecycle. Eventually my bike was ready to go again and I lazily pedaled to Paso Robles. I was hurting and stopping at every chance I got, including for some goats that were hanging out on the side of the road. When I finally made it to camp I felt a sense of relief, which immediately was subsumed by annoyance at having to set up my tent in the windiest section. I near passed out from the heat and exhaustion of trying to wrangle that damn tent without it flying away but eventually I got it done after anchoring it with my luggage.
That day they had Ice cream root beer floats waiting for us. I think I probably had mild heat exhaustion or dehydration and combined with my cold I felt sicker than ever that night. It’s probably not good for recovery to put my body through all that in one day but I didn’t come that far to quit then. That night I called my mom since it was her birthday, I had to miss it for the ride and she told me I sounded very sick. I didn’t let it get to me though, after a nice dinner and plenty of fluids I was feeling okay. I was even allowed back into the group tent since they decided I was *probably* no longer contagious. We talked about the day and about the plan for the next day. It was an 88 mile day but I only had one thing on my mind: cinnamon rolls at Pismo Beach.

Day Four: Paso Robles to Santa Maria

Again I woke up early as I was having fitful sleep. Yet somehow I also felt refreshed and re-energized, my body was learning to use the times between rides more effectively and finally fighting off the damn cold that plagued me. I was up way earlier than the rest of the group, I was ready to roll out while some were still waking up. I decided to just go ahead and get a head start because if there’s one thing I was certain of it’s that they would all catch up to me.

The first part of the day consisted of crossing back over the coastal mountain range so we could ride down the coast proper. I was thankful because it meant getting out of the heat and back under the nice overcast marine layer. I wasn’t thankful that to get there I had to get through “The Evil Twins” first. To get back across we had to go over the mountains using a route that had one big climb, then a descent that lulls you into a false sense of accomplishment (evil) before running straight into and even steeper climb (twins). The first rest stop was right before the twins began and I just zoomed right past it, at that point in my life I didn’t need first rest stops. This was an example of a bigger change in attitude I was experiencing.

It was the 4th day into the ride and I was beginning to feel that flow state of Wu Wei. The ride was hard, the climbs were hard, the weather could be against us or with us and it all just started to blend into one experience. I started to feel that with the proper nutrition and sleep cycle I could pedal forever, a perpetual motion machine powered by chicken, rice, Oreos, gummy bears, mac and cheese and an occasional double cheeseburger. Whereas normally I would obsess over the minutia the route: all the elevations, efforts, rest stops I started to cede control over to fate. More specifically my confidence that I could overcome any obstacle had grown and that whatever was thrown my way would just be part of the experience, I was beginning to act without doing. I knew that eventually I would surpass the evil twins, since my style of kung fu was superior, and get to the much celebrated halfway to LA point at the top.

That I did, but once again I was met by my bureaucratic and logistical foe: the line. Lines! Was this a bicycle ride or a waiting-in-line-thon?! I could have kept riding, which would have been the more Taoist approach, but I also firmly believe in the modern philosophy of Instagram permanence. It was a photo op I would not dare miss. So I got into line thinking I was so far head of the rest of the group that they wouldn’t be here before I got my photo and they could cut in front of me. This thought summoned an instant pre-emptive strike from karma because to my horror three members from a different team in front of me slowly let the rest of their teammates cut one by one until there were 20 or more, all taking photos individually AND as a group. I gaped at the gall of luck that had befallen me, I was not feeling the Zen of yin OR yang at that particular moment, rather I felt the sting of suffering due to my attachments and preconceptions of what it means to be in a “line”, the Buddha would be pissed. I bit my tongue and waited. It was fallacious of me to assume that moving to another line would be time wasted yet I held my ground until this massive team was done taking photos. The funny part is that even though holding the sign was cool, the normally majestic backdrop was completely covered up by fog due to how early I had gotten there. In the time I spent waiting, the rest of the group caught up. In a way getting waylaid by that initial group set up the Long Beach crew’s photo so going with the flow proved beneficial once again.

We left together and once again it was a matter of descending from the mountain as fast as possible. This time we went West back to the coast then turned South towards San Luis Obispo. We got to Cayucos which was a big party because there were several bakeries. This is where I had my first non-camp coffee of the week. It’s crazy to me that I wasn’t doing one or more coffee stops per day but normally we were riding in such remote environments that our options were non-existent or limited. No wonder the streets here were overrun with cyclists they also got cookies from the Brown Butter Cookie Company. I indulged, it was a nice little halfway celebration. After that stop I was back in known territory as we passed through SLO and Morro Bay, Morro rock was still a sight to behold and I felt satisfied to have closed the loop from the training ride I had done. I pushed on to Pismo beach. It wasn’t as hot as the last couple days and somehow I was feeling great. This is the exact moment when my health turned around on the ride, conveniently at the halfway point perhaps but I’ll ascribe it to the glorious cookies I ate.

Unfortunately, I was not to have a second dose of medicinal pastries because when we rolled up to Old West Cinnamon Rolls it was swarming with cyclists. The line for rolls was down the street and around the block. That most despised and evil of foes, the line, here reared its ugly head once more to rob me of my most coveted object of desire. Can man do battle with a metaphysical entity?! Would that I could greet it on the battlefield of reality or cast down curses upon it that no person should have to wait in a line ever again! This was why ancient civilizations anthropomorphized concepts into deities, so that we could HATE them! I swallowed my disappointment and moved on to the next stop; I had already burned time with the earlier lines and the cookies. I ate some sad consolation pop tarts instead and kept going. I had 20 miles left and I just pushed through, skipping the 4th stop since I was feeling good for the first time at the end of the day that week, 340 miles in and somehow I was getting better.

That night camp proceeded as usual and as we were hanging out underneath the large tent where dinner was served, about to head to sleep, something truly serendipitous happened. Someone with the roadie crew came by asking if we wanted leftover cinnamon rolls from Old West! Apparently the crew bought them in bulk and had leftovers, lots of them! The roadie exacted payment from me in the form of a physical offering to him, a hug, and left us with a box, no lines required! I grabbed some decaf coffee and my dessert that night was one of the best cinnamon rolls I’ve ever had. It was a good night, my health had turned around, and fortune favored me. I was beginning to think maybe things were turning up Jairo. The next day was the 40 mile “rest” day, which is something only a cycling junkie could consider restful.