3 am and awake since 2. Typical Day 1 start. We leave the hotel at 5, opening ceremony is at 6, route opens at 6:30. Then we ride for about 8 hours over the hill to the coast and then down the luscious rolling hills of Hwy 1 to Santa Cruz.
Name of the game today is gratitude. SO many people were instrumental in getting me to this moment in my life. There were my ride ancestors who nurtured and taught and inspired — shout out to the indomitable Megan Reilly — and my ride family Chris Eisenberg, Mel Embree, Doreen Cyclist Gonzales, Anthony Zamudio, Augusto Jose Ferriols,… omg I could sit here all day listing the people I love so fiercely that I’ve met and ridden with on this ride… Kim Stone, Nicolas Daily, Traci Kempa, Deirdre Hollis, Robin Erler, Jeffrey Boyle, Nikki Attinello… and many more.., so grateful for our miles and tears and laughter….
And donors! What a great gift you have given to people you’ll never meet. Together ws raised about $8000 this year (and counting! donations are still being accepted through June 
). That’s amazing! Such generosity of heart and spirit. I will carry your names with me down the route.
Most especially grateful for my life partner, Roger Nolan, who schleps me to one camp every morning and then scoops me up every night after I crawl into the next one. Could not literally do this without him.
And this year, also so grateful to my tandem riding partner Scott Alumbaugh. He has been amazing in getting me/us trained up to ride together.
I could go on for a long long time. The gratitude to all the people in my life is deep and profound.
And that gratitude stretches far beyond people. I’m so grateful I can still do this (I hope!) So grateful to all my health care providers – it’s like introducing the band after intermission — Dr Ryan Lee on bones, Steve Polito on musculature, Boonsita “Stretch More!” Tang on exquisite torture (I e deep tissue work), and of course the unparalleled healing arts of Tia Hem, on needles.
It’s a litany. It’s a ritual. It’s an early morning prayer of thanks and acknowledgment. I do this hard thing every year. And it has nothing to do with ME and everything to do with the people in my life.
Thanks for listening to this weird FaceBook invocation. It feels like a good ritual with which to start this journey of 500+ miles. None of us goes through life alone, even though it sometimes feels like we do. We are connected in a web and that web holds us together, and builds us up, and saves us like a life net in so many ways.
Now, time to get dressed and actually start pedaling. Hope I remember how! 
