"Cold Start" or "How to Take Down The King"

The Giants just won Game 1 of the World Series a few minutes ago, so it's time to blog. The bad news is, I did not get to see the game, either live or on TV. The good news is, I have access to a laptop once again! Hooray!

In  my last post, I mentioned how not-so-great a place Laytonville was. Well, besides the bad food and weird crowd, what I forgot to mention was the fact that Laytonville was a bad place to spend the night, strategically. Why? Because it is high up in the mountains, so it was really, really cold there this morning. Of course, "really, really cold" is a relative term, so I'll let you be the judge: it was in the 30's.

We had some cold mornings earlier in the ride, but nothing like today. Unlike Jody and Joe, however, I had yet to bust out my full-finger gloves. Today was the day, though.

We hit the road at about 8:30 again, but after only about 30 minutes of riding, Jody, who was in the lead as usual, pulled over. At first, I thought there was something wrong with his bike, but when I approached him, he said, "I gotta warm up."

My ears, fingers, and toes were absolutely freezing at that point, too, but all I could think about was getting the heck off of that mountain. The last thing I wanted to do was stop. Since Joe decided to stay with Jody, I took the opportunity to keep on pedaling to the next town, Willits, about 20 miles ahead and much lower in altitude.

I arrived just before 10 a.m., found a place to get some coffee and food, parked my bike out in front [whenever one or two of us makes an unscheduled stop, we put our bikes in a highly visible place for the following rider(s) to see], and waited for the other two.

As you can imagine based on some of my other posts, I was pretty surprised that Jody was so bothered by the cold. Granted, it was "really, really cold," but still, this is 10-time-Ironman-Jody we're talking about...

Yeah, so while I was pedaling down the big hill, by myself, ahead of Jody, the thought certainly crossed my mind at least once that I was actually stronger than Jody in this one little respect. Or better. Or braver. Or dumber. Or whatever. I really don't know. Don't get me wrong: Jody is the man. But not in the cold...

Anyway, when Joe arrived about 15 minutes later, he was by himself. After another five minutes or so, there was Jody. Beaten. Destroyed. Frozen.

One of the first things Home Slice said was, "Now you know how to take down the king."

He also mentioned that while he was pedaling down the big hill, he was imagining me riding through the same brutal weather in my underwear and thinking, "Ironman is failing! Ironman is failing!"

The other story of the day was flats, yet again. No joke.

As soon as we left the cafe, Joe got yet another flat. Luckily, there was a bike shop just up the road, however, so we left Joe there to get set up with new tires and tubes.

And then, one mile out of Ukiah, at just under 1500 km (about 950  miles) into the trip, I heard that really loud, dreaded "chhhhhhhhhh" sound blasting away from my rear tire. Jody called it "the world's longest tire change," but no matter; we got it changed and got rolling again. (Thanks for the help, Home Slice!)

Since my rear tire now had a gash in it to match my front tire, it was high time I got some new rubber. Jody used his handy dandy "it-does-everything-but-give-you-a-massage" phone to locate the nearest bike shop, which, thank you lucky stars, was only about 2 miles away. While I went into town to get set up, Jody played lookout at the exit and waited for Joe.

The boys at Dave's Bike Shop (yo, we told you we'd give you a shout-out!) got me back on the road in a jiffy with a set of Bontrager Hardcase tires that were described to me more or less as follows: "These are so thick, nothing gets through 'em."

Well, as luck would have it, that only lasted for 55 kilometers (about 35 miles)...

Going uphill, I thought I heard an "air" sound coming out of my tires. That's when I said to Joe, "My bike is making a new sound." His response: "My body is making a bunch of new sounds."

A few minutes later, Joe noticed my rear wheel was slowly going flat, so we pulled over. Joe helped change my tire for me (big thumbs up to Joe!), and he even found the little piece of incriminating wire that had popped my tube...

The rest of the ride went well. We actually got off of the freeway and rode quite a bit on the Old Redwood Highway, for instance, which prompted me to say, "Geez, no freeway? Are you kidding? Where are the trucks? Where's the danger?"

Joe jinxed himself by replying, "Yeah, but now we got 'clip crashes.'"

Sure enough, a good hour later, very close to the end of the ride, at a red light, down went Joe, victim of a "clip crash." Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it, because I had put my camera away when it started drizzling earlier in the day. Joe handled himself like a champ as he went down in slow-motion, finishing with a huge grin on his face that was simply priceless.

I think what made today's ride so tough for me was that I just wanted to get here so badly...

Petaluma, which is on our way.

And a big thanks to Richard and Olga for hosting us tonight! What a great meal and such fantastic hospitality!

Oh, and Tom, we're glad you're having fun up in Oregon. Too bad you won't be joining us for the rest of the ride, but it's like Olga said, "You're on vacation. Why do you want to suffer? You should be on the beach!" So enjoy!