Hello all!
Ok, I admit. This post is about 3 weeks late. For that, I apologize. I was busting my tail at work right up until the ride in hopes that I would have all my big projects finished so I could come back and have an easy couple of days upon my return. That did not happen. The 10/15 extended deadline took us by storm (blast all of you procrastinators!) and I haven’t come up for much air. After coming home from a 10 hour day I really didn’t want to sit down and type for any amount of time.
Couple that with the Xbox 360 my buddy let me borrow last week with Star Wars and Batman games, and there you go…
So here it is!
The ride was awesome. It was just incredible. I can’t wait to do it again! All I had to do for 8 days was ride my bike. That’s it. Breakfast and dinner was catered, and quite substantial, and each of our rest stops (at least 4 official ones every day) were packed with food. You could stop and get a real lunch if you wanted to but you didn’t have to if you didn’t mind biker food. People who had done it for years had their favorite lunch stops each day that they hit like clockwork every year and it was fun to join in on that a couple of times.
I’m not much of a picture taker. I got a couple but relied on everyone else’s cameras. You can check out the official ride pictures at www.californiacoastclassic.org. There’s a link at the bottom for “2008 Ride Photos”. I’ll include some of them here.
I had my Garmin working the whole time in hopes to show you maps of our route, but I was using a lap setting on it that treated the whole ride as one big trip and the graphs only keep the last 150 miles of data. If I knew that little fact I would have broken the trip into separate runs every day. Now I know for next time. Oh, well.
Mark was the only unicyclist this year, so I got a bit of notoriety by association. He’s a machine! He rode every single day this year. He maxes out at about 65 miles a day so he cut out some of the miles on our 85+ days. He’d generally leave about an hour before us. There were about three days when he made it in before me!
Day 1: San Francisco to Santa Cruz
Here's everybody
and a zoom:
We started out with breakfast at the Hardrock Café.
That’s me and my dad in the back on the left. The guy getting food on the right was Gary (I think) and he had a Super Grover jersey. I wore my Cookie Monster jersey day 2. Another guy named Therri (pronounced like Terry) had a Bert and Ernie jersey. Jerry Kruse, a guy I trained with and one of the most awesome and amazing people in the world, has a Kermit the Frog on a bike tattoo on his calf. Next time I want to put together Team Muppet.
It was wet and cold in San Francisco. There were a couple of really steep decents in the city that, since the streets were wet and my bike was heavy with my little seat-post pack (more on that later) really concerned me. I really didn’t want to crash on the first day out. That would’ve been super-lame. When we got into Pacifica a heard a car horn honk and a “KYLE BERG!!!”. I turned around and my friend Katie (who lives there) was making a trip to the grocery store and spotted me! That was really cool.
So we chugged along. It was about a 90 mile day. It should have been 87 miles but I followed a couple of wrong signs when I got to Santa Cruz. It turns out there was another event that happened that used our same shade of green for their markers. Oops!
Day 2: Santa Cruz to Monterey
This day was alright but not one of the prettiest days we had. We went a little farther inland than I thought we would. Here’s a picture of me in my famous Cookie Monster jersey. People really loved this.
My friend Justin made a bunch of Cutters jerseys for his riding crew a while back. If you haven’t seen Breaking Away this won’t make much sense to you. Breaking Away is like a cyclist’s Rocky.
A bunch of people I was training with formed Team Also Touch and made some really cool jerseys. Dwight’s (third from left) daughter died of complications from arthritis when she was 11. “Also touch” were the last words written in her diary. Check out www.alsotouch.com for a very touching story. I plan to do the ride again in 2010 and I’m gonna ride for Also Touch then.
This was a 60ish mile day. Other than windy, it wasn’t bad at all. I had lunch in this great hole-in-the-wall place in Moss Landing. Grubbin’ seafood! I had clam chowder in a bread bowl.
The Great Jerry Kruse.
I rode with him and his crew for most of the day today. We took a couple of off-track scenic routes and long lunch breaks, not to mention being the last crew out of camp! A very chill crew indeed! I rode with them until lunch, and bolted after that. There was a really big climb into camp and when I got there Mark was unpacking with a big smile on his face.
“You look very chipper! Have a good day on the uni?”
“Yeah! And I beat you in!”
That you did, Mark. I’ll give you that!
Day 3: Monterey to Big Sur
This was a cool day. They opened 17 Mile Drive to us! I’ve driven down it before but I’ve never ridden down it. You see a lot more on a bike. 17 Mile Drive is where Spyglass golf course is, which if you’re not a golfer is a really fancy course that costs about $34 million to play half the course. It has huge houses on it where a bunch of stars have houses, and by “houses” I mean “sprawling mansions”.
I saw the Bid-a-Wee motel, which is a place where my grandparents used to spend the winters. There was a really great place a couple miles from camp where you could get a brew and soak your feet in the COLD creek. It felt awesome!
I got into camp and set up everything for both me and Mark. The night before he got in so late he had to rush to get set up before dark and get into the showers before they shut down. That’s no fun. I figure if he’s busting his butt on the uni I can at least set up his tent. Plus, while I was in there I’d steal his iGo so I could charge the Garmin!
The sacrifices we make…
Day 4: Big Sur to San Simeon
Two-Turn-Tuesday! Turn left out of camp onto Highway 1, ride 65 miles, turn right into camp! Totally my favorite day. This stretch of Highway 1 is right along the cliff-side beach the whole way. This was also the biggest climbing day so it gave a lot of people some difficulty. Jerry had us training on a lot harder climbs than this, so I had no problems. I liked it, but when I ride I like the big climbs that pay off in fast descents. Mark did all but a small section of the last big climb this day. He is a machine.
Camp was on Hearst beach, “right across the street” from Hearst Castle (you could kind of see it in the distance if you knew where to look). The beach was gorgeous and I went for a swim in the ocean. It was freezing cold in my little biker shorts but well worth it.
I had a big revelation at camp this night. We were halfway through the ride at this point and my favorite pieces of gear were getting dirty and “needed” to be washed. I told Mark I was going to try and do laundry tonight. I asked if there was anything he needed washed and he gave me some shorts. I got into camp at about 3:30, then I had to stretch, then I had to set up my camp then I had to set up Marks camp then I had to charge the Garmin, then I had to take a shower. Now I gotta get some food and do laundry. It’s 7:00 and the last van back from laundry leaves at 830. Not enough time! Oh my God there’s a huge line! I know, I’ll wash my favorite shorts by hand and throw them in with someone elses drying! Brilliant! Sorry I can’t do you laundry, Mark. I love you but not enough to hand scrub the butt-sauce out of your spandex. Drying’s done. Grab the shorts, catch the van, go back to camp. Set out clothes for tomorrow. These are my new Arthritis Foundation shorts, but I don’t recognize these black shor- OH CRAP I GRABBED THE WRONG SHORTS!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Woah, Kyle. You need to settle down. Big time. This is not a big deal in the least.
I had a realization that I am a crazy busy-body. This shorts thing was really bothering me and the only reason I could come up with was that I had nothing to worry about and that was freaking me out. Breathe. Relax. Calm down.
So I think I’ve got an idea for a tattoo. In high school and college everyone was getting inked and would say “what would you get, Kyle?”. I’m sure I didn’t know, but I knew if I did get one it wouldn’t be in a binder in a tattoo parlor somewhere. It would have to mean something. It would have to remind me of something.
I may not have mentioned this but I wrecked coming down Diablo on September 6th, two weeks before the ride. I busted up my helmet and tore up my left side side. My shoulder looked like Westley’s in the Pit of Despair from The Princess Bride. I even managed to slightly dislocate it. It was hot and I was tired and there was a sharp turn at the top that I came into too fast. Had I been on my game I probably could have leaned deep and took it, but not that afternoon. I couldn’t stay on the road and wiped out on the gravel in the shoulder of the road. There was a 15 mph turn sign that I didn’t even see.
So here’s the tattoo.
Just a blank Caution sign. Slow down. Watch where you’re going. Pay attention. Breathe. Stay calm. I could write in it with a permanent pen if I needed to convey a message. When I have kids someday and I’m in no mood for they’re crap I can write “Grumpy Dad” in it in pen. I could draw a squiggly line in pen if I was feeling silly.
It would go on my left shoulder where the skin is all white from the crash. I’m gonna sit on it for a couple of years and see if I still like it.
For the rest of the ride I didn’t worry about wearing the same ride clothes again if they hadn’t been washed. I’m sure I won’t get sick from dirty clothes for the next couple of days before we get to Solvang. I’m sure I’ll live.
Day 5: San Simeon to Pismo Beach.
This was the wackiest weather we had the whole trip. It started off freezing cold and people said it was going to get really hot in a half hour. I packed up the big seatpost bag with my gear and left. This was my usual strategy. I’d load up this pack with stuff I thought I needed and then once it got hot I take off my leg warmers, leaves, jacket, whatever, strap it to the pack and give it to the sag wagons to haul into camp for me. Then I could ride into camp light and swift!.
Today it got hot at about 10:00. I shed my layers and turned my pack over to the sag. Then a half hour later, BAM! The cold front came back in and I was freezing! I wasn’t the only one. At the next stop a couple of people asked if we could get our gear back. They made arrangements to drop it off for us at the halfway stop about 7 miles up the road.
At the halfway stop I grabbed my leg warmers and my new Arthritis Foundation jacket, a lightweight PVC windbreaker that didn’t have much insulation but kept the massive amount of energy I was producing in the jacket. Gold!
This was all I kept for the rest of the ride. I could take off the leg warmers and and jacket, roll them up in a little ball and keep them in my center pocket on the back of my jersey if I needed it for later. This was the magic combination!
I stopped at the hot springs and soaked in the water for about an hour before finishing the last 5 miles into camp.
Mark got in before me on this day, too.
Day 6: Pismo Beach to Solvang.
This was the hardest day for me. I started off the day without eating much and got under-caloried and under-hydrated. Once you’re there it’s hard to get back to where you need to be. This was a hot, dry ride, and it zapped me pretty bad. On the plus side we stopped at a winery with a huge chess set in the yard. Wanna play? Pick a hand.
This was a big day for Mark. He works in Solvang and had a really big turnout for his ride in. We went back to his and Robin’s house that night and slept in real beds and woke up to clean clothes the next morning. Does life get better?
Day 7: Solvang to Ventura
This was another long day. I got stung in the head by a bee while riding! That was an experience. The poor little bastard got caught in my helmet straps and sting me in the temple. That wasn’t fun, but no big deal.
At checkpoint, I head one of the big mucky-mucks from Amgen, Jeff Bass, talking about this awesome seafood place in Santa Barbara. Later on, I took the liberty of inviting myself to join him and his crew at the place. Turns out Jeff’s a gozillionare who made his first couple mil from selling a software company he started in college while earning his second doctorate maximizing his benefits from the GI bill from serving in Vietnam … A very interesting guy, as you may imagine. He was kind enough to buy me an ahi tuna melt (very yummy…) and when we tried to pay him back he said “if the money’s burning a hole in your pocket donate it to the Arthritis Foundation.”
Day 8: Ventura to Santa Monica
Here we are! All done. This last day was pretty mellow. I waited for Mark at lunchtime but got impatient and headed off. It turns out he rolled into lunch about 3 minutes after I left. That figures!
So I rode in by myself, about an hour or two after the main group did. I was hoping to stop about a half mile before the finish line, but I came through without really realizing that I was done. Kel went to got find my brother, so they didn’t see me. Robin said “go around the block and come back!” so I did. This time to a much grander welcome which gave me some time to pose and celebrate. After hugs and the like I went back to look for Mark and escorted him in. Three times across the finish line. I guess I like attention.
Here's Kel, me, and my brother Dave.
A fighter escort:
and the whole gang:
Thats Lisa/Bethy on the left. She's super awesome! Drove out all the way from Carona to see me finish. I guess crossing the finish line 3 times was to give her more bang for her buck! Then Dave, me, Kel, Kel's mom Robin, Kel's brother Dan, Mark (Kel's dad) and Claire, Dan's wife.
