AIDS/Lifecycle: The Grand Finale
Day Seven: Ventura To Santa Monica
I woke up early from the sheer adrenaline of it being the final day. I took the opportunity to go foam roll my legs again. I still felt a tightness and soreness but at this point it was no longer debilitating. Today’s route was traditionally supposed to be a quick scenic cruise down Pacific Coast Highway but due to the Palisades fires that had just occurred the road through Malibu was closed. This meant that instead of the victory lap we would have gotten we had the added challenge of climbing up to the valley by way of Oxnard and then back down into Santa Monica. I didn’t dwell on it, how could I? At this point I was an automaton whose only purpose was to eat, pedal and track time. There was an implicit trust by now too, that the ALC crew knew what they were doing with the route and I didn’t have to think about whether finishing was practical or achievable but had to assume it was. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I didn’t think about it at all, I had already surrendered to the flow.
I left early and somewhat miraculously there was no bottleneck to head out, probably due to the proximity to PCH and many highways coupled with the open nature of the camp people were smoothly riding out. Riding through Ventura and Oxnard was fast. Oxnard was very flat and since it was still early in the morning there was almost no wind, which is the usual trade-off with this kind of terrain. Usually Oxnard would lead straight into PCH, riding along the coast to Malibu but instead we eventually started a long climb into Thousand Oaks through Camarillo. I skipped the first stop, no reason to poke the bear now, and I stopped briefly at the next two since my goal today was to get out of the valley before the temperatures started to really climb. As I was riding through Calabasas and Tarzana the constant hills were beginning to tire me out but lunch was in Van Nuys so I pressed on. I got there way ahead of schedule and I was able to just relax a bit while the group caught up. I took a spot under a stand-in for a Bodhi tree and blew bubbles out of a bubble wand I received at one of the stops like a child monk.
There were only 20 miles left and it was barely 11 am there was no stopping us now: the end was here and it felt bittersweet. My life had become the ride and now with the end in sight I lamented losing the purpose and motivation that I had found on the road from San Francisco.
Eventually we stretched and left the park where we had lunch, the only challenge left was a climb out of Sepulveda Pass followed by a descent straight into Santa Monica and the finish line. It wasn’t easy, nothing was anymore, but it went smoothly as we crested the climb we were rewarded by a very cool, in both senses of the word, tunnel that launched us into Los Angeles proper. We were flying adjacent to the 405 and passed by the Getty on our downward collision course with destiny. The streets got a little dicey as this wasn’t a bike-friendly road but what else was new when riding in LA? I felt the warm comfort of home having to think about the cars, the street lights, and my life potentially being in jeopardy again. Before I knew it I was in Santa Monica, rolling down streets I was used to seeing but I was never as tired and they were never as exhilaratingly climactic as they looked today. I wanted to finish with the group and I hadn’t had a cappuccino in seven days so instead of crossing the finish line I waited at Primo Passo Coffee. One by one my friends rolled in and we enjoyed a delicious cup of third wave coffeehouse espresso. It felt like summer camp was ending and we were all waiting for our parents to come pick us up. After talking elatedly about the ride and the adventure we decided it was time to put the cherry on top and roll through the finish line at Santa Monica Pier.
We left in formation and it was a short skip and hop to the end. As we pulled into the finale we were met with raucous cheers, applause, screaming, pure joy. I knew that somewhere my friends were probably calling my name and cheering me along but the sensory overload was too great all I could do was smile and enjoy the energy as we got to the end. It felt like we were gladiators returning from some foreign land, or like Odysseus returning home after being thought for dead. For that one brief moment we felt like royalty it was a high that is indescribable unless you’ve done something as unreasonable as this (looking at you long distance runners). At the finish line all our friends from the Long Beach Cycling community were there to share in the spoils of the party at the end. I had stuffed pretzel bites that I devoured having not had any hot and salty junk food for a week. I was hobbling at this point while walking and I wondered if the ride had gone on for one more day would I have been able to continue? I think maybe I’d be able to ride forever but would lose my ability to walk.
That’s the whole gruesome 560 mile affair. In the days after the ride I felt something akin to grief: I had adjusted back to a life of comfortable routine. The love bubble had popped and my regular life took on a grayness of mundanity. Yet within days I felt back to normal, and that is the truly scary part. My injury, if you could call it that, went away after a couple of days and with that the last physical manifestation of that seven-day adventure was gone. I was left with only memories and the knowledge of what I had done and what I could accomplish. I know that every day there’s people out there doing amazing things, setting out on adventure, finishing one, experiencing tragedy, strife and suffering on a scale far beyond what I did. Yet, for a guy who spent 90% of his life in a sedentary stupor this is an astronomically positive outcome.
A year later I still refer back to this ride, it’s like reference material for my life. The lessons I learned have sneakily found themselves into the rest of my hobbies. I went to watch War and Peace, a seven hour soviet-era film, and though the challenge would be too great for the general moviegoing audience, I just thought “7 hours, that’s like an hour for each day of ALC I can do it”. Recently I’ve been on a hiking kick as I get ready for an expedition to Machu Picchu, and since hiking was never in my wheelhouse some of the elevation gain on the hikes seemed daunting at first but I thought back to all the excruciating climbs on ALC and how I was able to just give in to the process and now I can tackle these with a clear head. I have taken a big step back from incredible feats of endurance cycling to focus on other things like film, music and work (that one mostly involuntary) but in the back of my head there is always a nagging thought now: “If you did all that, couldn’t you do more?”. Tour of Europe 2027? We’ll see where the flow goes.
