My bicycle computer is not only on Eastern time, but is set incorrectly, so morning is night and vice versa. At 18:57, I decide it is almost 5:00 a.m. Time to get going. My legs almost won't move. I reach for 4 Motrin and head off to the coffee tent. The makeshift campsite is alive with activity of the early morning crew. Great! No line at the coffee tent! Just as I get closer, I hear "I am sorry, but we don't open until 5:00." It is five. "No, it is 4:05". Oh, God. Not only do I desperately need all the sleep I can get,
I just lost a whole (precious) hour.
4-H (Hills, Heat, Headwinds, and Heart...as in keep on pumping, baby)
Today is the promised "Quad Buster" hill. Eight hundred feet high (equivalent to an 80 story building). I see it coming. Will I make it? Just keep pedaling. As I struggle up the hill, I think of all the people in my family who have died from heart ailments. Then a rational thought (or is it a rationalisation?) "none of them died on a bicycle".... yet.
I stop halfway up for four minutes to breathe...Just keep pedaling. As I crest the hill, I can't believe I did it. WOW. Then I forget to clip out of my pedals and as I slow to a stop, I crash over onto my side in the fallen rocks and stones. Only my pride and my odometer are broken, but "I did it!"
I thought it was hot yesterday
(and it was). Today is HOTTER! But that damned hill is behind me. Bradley,
CA (population 79) hosts lunch. The whole town puts on a down-home barbeque.
This is their biggest fundraiser of the year and probably the biggest
traffic day, too. Not a shade tree to be found, but what a wonderful welcome.
Warms the heart just to be here.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the first published account of what we would come to know as AIDS. Published in the journal from the Centres for Disease Control about some cases in Los Angeles, CA. So , here I am in 2001 cycling towards L.A. I can't think of a more positive, active way of marking the two decades. 20 Years! When will it be enough?
