Day 1

I was anxious to get started, and I felt like it was an exercise in "hurry up and wait." Fortunately, I had faith that it would not be 545 miles of clusterfuck.
By the time I made it to Nueva School, about 20 miles in, I was a little wound up. I glanced in at the lines for snacks, and decided to beat it to the next rest stop...

This turned out to be a brilliant idea. It put me ahead of over 1000 riders, and my feeling of claustrophobia lifted and I was able to start really enjoying the ride.
It was interesting to hear people around me really complaining about the hills...I found out later that 26 people had to be "sagged" (swept up in the support vehicle) from the first rest stop. Not that surprising that some folks would underestimate the magnitude of the venture...but within the first 20 miles?

From Skyline to 92 up and over the hill to Half Moon Bay...angels cheered us on and handed us Redvines as we rode...

At San Gregorio beach was our first rest stop...sandwiches by the sea...Then Rest stop 3 - where I knew my oldest friend Jim would be staffing...(unfortunately, no photo) their theme was a little loose - he was wearing a gold curtain and an olive wreath a la Caesar...but as far as I could see, no one else's costume really matched.


Rest stop 4 had a pretty tight show:
They were soon to be legendary...every day, a new and tight theme, sometimes involving performances (more to come.) Day one was a country club setting complete with a badminton court, and cute outfits, and lots of attitude.

I was really enjoying the ride, and got into Santa Cruz at about 2:45. Every day the camps were set up with clock work precision. Our bike numbers had bar codes which were then scanned...they knew whose bikes were in or out...Here the bike parking is still mostly empty.

After parking my next job was to huff it over to the gear trucks. (My stuff was always in the F truck)Then...hike it over to my spot on the "Tent Grid" it was always pre-marked, and I was always in spot F54. Generally, I was in before my tent-mate, so I would set up the tent, and she would tear it down the next day.

My tent mate was a super-sweet 28 year old from Santa Rosa. We met on-line, on a sort of personal ad site for peeps without tent mates. She was great...I was generally much happier when she was around, although she did make me feel my age. 28 is not at all like 38 (varying on a case by case basis, of course).

Unfortunately, she was injured on the second day and had to be sagged into camp. She said it was a hard thing to face emotionally, but that they did a great job of cheering the sagged folks up on the ride into camp...to remember that they are still heroes...