Day 6. Long, delayed, harrowing, beautiful, frustrating, done.
It was kind of a motherfucker of a day. It was an 89 mile route, for starters, which translates to a (best case) 9 hour day. Which is, you know, long. But a traffic accident on the 101 at Gaviota Pass held us up at our first rest stop for two hours until it was cleared up. The rest stop is at the top of a long 17 mile stretch of climbing, after which we barrel down a fast descent (mercifully repaved) and then flow onto the 101 freeway to scream (literally) through the Gaviota pass.
CHP regulates when and how our 1400 riders are allowed to do this as the pass is a very fast, narrow, and highly trafficked truck and automotive artery. They don’t want big clumps of riders jostling for position on the skinny shoulder so they let us be released 20 riders at a time from the top of the hill. Normally this causes some delay but the accident kept us up there for two full hours.
The whole camp ended up there at the top of the hill. A long line of cyclists waiting to leave snaked through the rest stop with riders periodically breaking off to go stand in the porta potty lines, lines within lines, all waiting. All the rest stop snacks were all consumed. A wild dance party formed and dissipated and then reformed again sporadically. Our muscles got cold. People started huddling in Mylar to keep warm. Time ticked by. We had 70+ miles to ride and the announcements just kept coming: another 15, another 35, and then when we started to move it was 20 riders at a time, which meant it would take another hour at least just to get us out of there.
And of course all I could do was find places to sit because I can’t stand for long. So my vantage point for the whole duration was from either the hay on the ground or a chair I mercifully was loaned by a roadie angel.
(To be continued!)
