Typically, only 60% or so of the 700 or so entrants finish in under the cut-off time of twelve hours. That’s a pretty high rate of attrition and should give you some idea of the difficulty of the race. I must, at this stage, admit that despite all of my whining about this event, despite the fact that I’ve spent a little time in the medical  tent (hypothermia, exhaustion) after my last two races and despite the fact that - every year - I swear I’ll never do the race again, this will be my 6th time at Leadville.

It’s also worth noting the “other” cut-off time and the difference between just finishing and taking home the coveted “Plata Grande”. It works like this: if you finish the race in under twelve hours you are awarded a very nice, sizable silver belt buckle - the kind you see rodeo winners wearing. If, however, you are fast enough to finish in under nine hours, you get the extra big buckle - the much coveted “Plata Grande”. This thing is big enough to eat off, believe me…

Entrance to the race is done by means of a lottery, but it has become increasingly difficult to get into lately, especially since both Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong have raced it over the past few years, and a huge number of racers are now turned away annually. For the last six years the race has been won by ex-national MTB champion - and old man at age 43 - Dave Wiens. Wiensy lives in Gunnison, CO so he’s used to the altitude, and apparently he just hasn’t aged much since his NORBA glory days because he has taken on all comers and disposed of them quite handily, including Mr. Armstrong, who he just rode off his wheel in the latter stages of last year’s race.

What makes the event so cool as well, is that - for us Texans at least - it’s a great road trip. We get out of our brutal summer heat for a while, hang out in in beautiful Colorado, ride bikes on some great trails, and just chill out. In 2008, teammate Beto Boggiano rented us a ranch house just outside of Leadville where a group of us from Austin stayed. Four racers (Marc Mayo, Kyle Rodemacher, Beto, and myself) a few family members and a few support people. It was just a great group and a great way to do the race. We also had a bunch of friends from Austin scattered around town - Jeff Williams, Charles Bisantz and a few others -  and after meeting and chatting, we devise a strategy for the support crews to share the work of keeping the racers going.

Another reason the race is so popular is that the organization and general spirit of the racers is just top-notch. All of the aid-stations are well-staffed and well-stocked, the race timing is always efficient, the results promptly posted and the racers are generally just happy to be there. There’s very little of the nasty elbow-to-elbow stuff that can happen at other events like this. There are easy access points for family and support crews for racers at the aid stations, so there is a little bit of a party involved in that side of the race as well. The race organizers, Ken and Merilee are just awesome people too. They deliver a rousing pre-race speech to the racers before each race - basically just saying “do not quit, no matter how much you want to”, and believe me, you really really want to quit at some stage of this marathon suffer-fest. The award ceremony the next day is equally inspiring, with every finisher going up and getting their race buckle and sweatshirt with their finishing time printed on it. There are a lot of tears shed during this ceremony by both racers and support people alike.

The course is an out-and-back, starting in Leadville, going outbound to the highest point at Columbine, then turning around and heading back to Leadville. Although it’s not a technical course, there are two sketchy descents where a few riders invariably hurt themselves every year. The climbing is epic, the scenery spectacular, and the distance and altitude make it a real physical and mental challenge. The race start is at 6am, from Harrison Street in downtown Leadville. Racers start lining up hours before that to try and get a good position on the grid. By virtue of my finishes over the past years I’ve been lucky enough to get into the front enclosure - a roped off area for the top-100 finishers from the previous year. Last year I lined up right behind Lance, the year before, behind Floyd. It’s quite a rush to be right next to two previous winners of the Tour de France (well, make that one winner, post drug-test).

After a controlled three mile start down an asphalt road, you hit the double-track dirt road, the cop car pulls off, and the race is on! After a few miles of balls-out jockeying for position you hit the first climb at St. Kevins. This isn’t a bad climb, but enough to string out the lead pack and let a few gaps start to form. I think this was the last time I saw Lance last year. Then there is a screamingly fast long asphalt descent, followed by the climb up to the start of the Powerline descent. Then some asphalt and double track leading up to the first aid station, followed by rollers on out for miles to the Twin Lakes aid station, and then the ghastly climb up to Columbine.

This is a bastard of a climb. I think that from Twin Lakes it takes me about 1.5 hours to the top of Columbine and only about a half-hour to get back to Twin Lakes from the top - it’s that steep. It’s just an endless switchback climb up through some beautiful aspen groves with some epic views until, at last, you are above tree-line and can see the distant turnaround checkpoint off in the distance. It’s at this point last year that Dave Wiens and Lance Armstrong came blowing by us down the mountain going in-bound. So, you just keep turning the pedals over as best you can in this rarified air. Soon, the trail starts to get too rocky and steep to stay on the bike. A few guys dismount ahead, necessitating a mass dismount of everybody behind. We walk and push the bike probably a mile until the course flattens out enough to ride into the turnaround. Although there is food, soup and drink at the aid station and, although you really, really want to stop and eat and rest, the key here is to stay on the bike and get back down the mountain as fast as you can. The reason? There’s no damn oxygen up here - you can’t recover - I just grab a swallow of soup and begin the journey home. Once you hit the start of the steep descent, it’s really sketchy, but a lot of fun. You are going downhill as fast as you can, while hundreds of other riders are doing what you did a little while ago: trying to get up the mountain. Early on in the descent, the track is very narrow and rocky and you really need to control yourself to avoid hitting incoming riders. Once onto the wider jeep road switchback section, just let go the brakes and go, fast as you can, until the turns make you slow down. I hit 48 mph going down Columbine a few years ago - that’s pretty fast for an MTB and is a measure of how steep the track is!

Then, suddenly, you are at Twin Lakes aid station again. This is the lowest point on the course, so you know it’s all uphill from here. The next twenty or so miles are just a grind and, really, just a mental preparation for what is probably the most difficult obstacle of the race - the ascent up Powerline. Remember the sketchy descent I mentioned earlier? Well, now you have to climb back up that monster. And, although it’s not as long or steep as Columbine, it comes at mile 80 when you are very,very tired. Apparently, most people who quit the race do so on this climb. When you approach it on the bike, it seems insurmountable: the first section is too steep to climb, so you’re walking already. Everything after that is just hard: you alternate between walking and granny-gear climbing. Like, forever. It’s at this point that one questions one’s sanity and wishes one were firmly ensconced on the couch, at home, with a large alcoholic beverage to keep one company.

Once over Powerline, you descend again to the start of the very steep, very long asphalt climb. It was at this point last year that I caught up to and started riding with my friend Wooch Graaf from Houston, another Leadville veteran. Wooch had been dreading this climb above all others, telling me that this - out of all the hard stuff in the entire race - was his nemesis. His 2008 goal was to break 8:15. I think in prior years he has come close to 8:30, but this year he was feeling it, and was optimistic about posting a great time. We suck it up over the interminable ascent, grab a coke at the top at the last mini-aid station, and begin the home stretch. This is mostly downhill and we are really enjoying the respite, although I am starting to crater. Wooch yells encouragement and we keep going, finally reaching the last 4 mile false-flat hated-by-all section into the finish. This is just a tough uphill grind from mile 96 inwards, and you just don’t want to do it. I am barely able to turn the pedals over at this point despite having sucked Wooch’s wheel as much as possible for the past hour. We roll across the line in 8:27 and some change.

To put our (heroic, to us) times in perspective, I have to point out that Lance and Wiens finished about two hours ahead of us. Wow. That makes you feel mortal.

The feeling of being done is just amazing. You just never, ever want to get on a bike again. You are exhausted beyond reason, but just so, so absolutely happy to be done. Then, a few hours later, after all of your friends are in, you’ve had a nap and a shower and eaten something, the nausea has passed - a curious thing happens: You start thinking about next year…

Needless to say, we were there en masse. This was the biggest team turn out for a ride ever. It seems that beer, and not George Bush, is the great uniter. Who knew? And what a great place to ride! The beautiful Texas Hill Country, late May, not much wind, and the ride site is the Real Ale Brewery, right in Blanco.

Those faithful fans of the B+P cycling blog, who spend many hours a day on this site, will no doubt be wondering who the spandex-clad magnificent athlete in the center of the team of other magnificent athletes is. That, my friends, is none other than the good Team Doctor, the Beef in Beef and Pie - Mike Woolf - and let’s not kid ourselves: the six-pack is the only reason he’s here. I’m having a hard time believing it myself: His Beefiness typically regards our cycling activities as mindlessly stupid forms of torture, only marginally more productive than banging one’s head against a wall repeatedly for a few hours: You feel much better when it’s over, so why do it in the first place?

Back to the beer: It took a lot of cunning strategy to get Beefy up, pre-dawn, on his way to a massive bike ride. Weeks of idle chatter about the lovely hill country, the scenic route, how short his ride would be (only 15 miles!) and then , the coup de grace, the fact that it was being held at the Real Ale Brewery, purveyors of an array of fine brews, long-loved by the folks at B+P Global HQ… And so it was, that long-time teammate Joey “the Cuban Missile” Machado, Beefy and myself found ourselves joining Beto and Allen in the sleek Pure Austin Airstream for a pre-ride cup of Beef and Pie “On The Rivet” blend about an hour before the start. We get our race packages as hundreds of riders start to arrive at the brewery and traffic backs up onto the highway. Beefy puts on a Beef and Pie cycling uniform which, I suspect, is the first spandex he has ever worn. Then Joey explained the whole “chamois” concept.

This did not go over too well. But the thought of beers won the day, and so Beefy suited up and joined the proud ranks of other Beef and Pie athletes who were rolling in gradually. Richard and Andy joined us soon, planning on 60 miles, ditto for Beto, Allen, John, Adam, Colin and Adam. Some pix from before the start:

The ride was pretty epic. I did the 80-miler with Joey, so we didn’t see much of our teammates until after the finish, but everybody seemed to have a good time. The day couldn’t have been nicer, the countryside was truly lovely and the route challenging. Then came the reward: lots of Real Ale and some BBQ to replenish the system. (Thanks for driving home Joey.)

I’m up before sunrise. It’s 38 degrees. I’m in the middle of the desert surrounded by hundreds of cyclists. I’ve got a warm Lone Star in my pocket and I’m wondering, “what the hell am I doing here?”

There’s really only one reason I could be in such a situation – Pie.

Here he is. He’s the guy in the center looking at Joey’s nipples

For a long time Andrew has talked about a bunch of us going out to Terlingua for the bike race. “It’ll be fun,” he said. “It’s a big party in the desert,” he said. “They give everyone free shots of Tito’s Vodka after the race,” he said. And after a couple years of this I said, “sure.” What could be more fun than a West Texas road trip?

Well it was a few weeks before we hit the road when Andrew explained to me the concept of “handups.” I think the quote was “you’ll do handups , right Beefy?”

Sure, handups. That probably meant handing the guys (and Ponies) cold beers after the race around some gigantic fire. No problem.

It was mere days before the race when he explained what handups actually meant to me. Turns out I have to be at - designated places - among the yuccas in the desert to hand him EPO filled drink bottles as he rides by. At specific times. Let me repeat – at specific times. If you know Pie you know that punctuality is rather important to him. Sort of like how oxygen is important to breathing. I started to get tense.

When Andrew gets focused on an idea – especially about cycling – he’s a pretty formidable force of nature - and I don’t mean a rainbow. I mean an avalanche. A pitbull with a baby in its mouth. Like trying to contain the Big Bang in a burlap sack. It’s simply unstoppable. I feel the Eye of Sauron upon me.

Working alongside Pie, I realized long ago that you can’t stop the ocean. So I embrace by job. I’ll be the perfect pit crew. I’ll get to that handup station in the desert no matter how many poisonous snakes or personal hardships I have to overcome. I’ll be there for my team!

That’s what led to this chicken scratch.

It’s the night before the big race. After many Lone Stars and this awesome Mexican Tequila called Senor, he explains when and where I need to be to coordinate my handups to him, Ponies and Joey. I started to get so nervous about being late and going out the night before and waiting with a frozen bottle of Gatorade in my hand.

That night I don’t sleep much – I cuddle with fear. I wake with that long forgotten feeling of the first day of school. I brew a French press to fortify me for the dawn. I see Pie and Ponies off and reassure them that I’m ready for my mission. Enter Betty. Thank goodness for Betty. Not only is Betty a close friend she has all the qualifications for the day ahead –she’s a local, she has a truck and she finds and counts Peregrin Falcons for Big Bend. She’s also knows how important it is to pour a little tequila in you coffee for a day like this.

Together we drove out to the starting line. And I have to say it was quite a beautiful sight. As the sun rose over the Chisos and the lead biker donned his wresting mask

the Beef and Pie team was a sight to behold. I’ll never know what it’s like to ride 100K but that moment I burst with pride as I watch my team rush to the toilets for one last pee.

And then they were off! They leave is different sorties depending on the category. Andrew first. Joey second. And Karen third. And that basically negated the times scratched onto my map that I’ve already worried the ink off of.

Oy.

But the race is on. What can we do but drive out to the first drop point and hope we don’t miss them? This is not as easy at it sounds. There were some cryptic signs to guide us.

We put Betty’s bird watching skills to use as we search for the rendezvous.

Then, in the middle of the Chihuahua Desert we find a table of snacks. Yeah! Free bananas. I eat about a dozen. Mmmmmm.

It’s kind of quiet. It’s pretty cold. We look at each other and wait. I scan the horizon for someone in a Beef and Pie kit to magically come out of the ground. And damn if I don’t see Ponies peddling over the hill. She has a big smile of appreciation as I shout her name and hand up her specially prepared bottle of synthetic adrenocortical (cherry-flavored!). We laugh, take pictures and wish each other luck as she rides off to tackle that mountain in the background.

Imbued with the confidence of nailing my first handup I start to relax. This euphoria lasts for about 15 minutes until Pie comes shooting over the hill shouting run Beefy run! I realize he means “alongside him” and not into the desert. As I jog alongside him the instructions come fast and furious. “Fuck”(translation: hi!) “I dropped my drink bottles!” (translation: I dropped my drink bottles!) “Next stop I need electrolytes! Electrolytes!” (translation: Next stop I need Starbucks! Starbucks!)

And just like that he was gone. I was left with a stomach full of bananas and anxiety. What was I going to do? It’s like a four hour drive to El Paso and there’s no guarantee the Bucks has made it to the Border. I decided to pop open that Lone Star in my pocket and have a think. He probably did mean electrolytes and these coolers are filled with them. They taste pretty good too – we’d been mixing our tequila with them since we arrived.

A few minutes later I nailed the handup to Joey. He was polite and considerate as he accepted the red water bottle I’d found on the ground and refilled for him.

Betty and I consult the map with the misleading times and head back to the starting point. Ponies is supposed to finish first, then Andrew would come through for a second lap and his “double tall mocha” handup and then Joey would finish his race. So we return to base camp and scour up some coffee from the Desert Sports crew who have the sense to bring a portable espresso machine. And then sure enough Ponies comes coasting through the finish line.

She’s euphoric because she finished the race in second place (!) and found that it wasn’t nearly as painful as the training ride she did with Pie and Joey the day before!

But now it’s getting close to handup time and I’m stressing. There are two different coolers with different beverages. I know Pie is going to have a preference, hell he’s got a carb-to-whey-protein preference. So I figure I’ll offer him a buffet of Gatorade. I fill one bottle with the pink and one with the yellow. The time keeps on marching and there’s no sign of him. I realize I’ve got to stay focused. I start practicing my handups to people in the crowd.

The leaders come steaming through and I know Pie will be close on their wheel. I catch him in the binocs and run to the hand off. Without breaking stride I explain his beverage choices. He grabs the pink. And I ask what he’d like at the last stop and he requests good clean water. He looks tired from peddling hard – but focused. I repress the urge to push him over. Without putting a foot down – he heads out for another 50K loop

Moments later Joey comes cruising through to finish his ride. He looks more refreshed than me. We pat him on the back and then head off to the middle of nowhere to give Pie Pie his last handup. Now it’s getting pretty fun. We’ve got a great posse together – Betty, Karen, and Jeff and Jane who have replenished our lost electrolytes with Chelada!

Chelada! is a wonderful new product from Budweiser that combines beer with Clamato – so you get your RDA of Vitamic C&A plus “certified color.” It really says that on the tall boy. I sip my Chilada! and focus on the last handup. I know Pie. I know his needs. I stare out at the desert through Clamato eyes and mind-meld with him. I know exactly what he needs on this last handup. I’ve heard him shout this a hundred times on shoots, “Beefy! Where’s the fuckin’ gaffer tape!”

Well I’m not going to let my buddy down. I’m going to have the biggest roll of gaffer tape ready for him and that’s what is going to bring him to victory! As soon as I have this desert vision he comes over the hill and I spring into action.

“Food! I need food!” he screams with a gasp as he throws his empty water pouch to the ground. We grab bananas and Clif Bars by the fistful. He pulls up and gets as much as he can in his mouth. He takes the last water bottle and locks back into his peddles.

After so much waiting these few seconds are very very tense. You want to give them everything they need – from food and water to support. I find myself running alongside asking if he wants another banana or surprise! gaff tape. He doesn’t seem to comprehend how I’ve seen into his very mind. He shakes his head to both. I figure he’ll see the brilliance of my plan if he has a moment to process this through his oxygen depleted brain so I keep running.

A hundred kilometers later – oops, I mean a hundred steps later – I bonk and have to pull up. Seems like I only had one match to burn.

I return to my pit crew spent and confused.

After that last handup I finally relax. My job is done. We have another Chilada! on the ride back to the finish line. And 45 minutes later he comes coasting through

As soon as he brakes to a stop he pulls me aside and says I did a great job and those were the best handups he’d ever gotten

Okay, actually he said, “Fuck. I think I’m going to die.” But I know what he meant.

That night they built a monster bonfire and handed out free Tito’s Vodka. I don’t know which was more exciting. And I have to say I don’t think I’ve ever seen Pie happier. He had raced hard (came in 8th!), had his Ponies on the same ride (2nd place!) and had his crew performing textbook handups. He was pouring shots of vodka out of beer cups to anyone and everyone. He was high on life (and Titos). And for the first time I felt like I had a connection with these crazy masochistic cyclists.

As most Beef and Pie fans know, my nick-name is Ponies. Because this is a cycling blog there will be no horses in my blog entry. No really, I promise. Last week after many years off the bike I was lured out to West Texas to ride in the Mas o Menos mountain bike race. I was promised sunshine, a stay in a cool hotel, a fun track, a big hill, and Tito’s Vodka. All were delivered. I was also to be the first female rider for the esteemed Beef and Pie Cycling team. Who could resist? After a night in Alpine to stay with some old friends, we arrived at the race site on Friday to meet some folks for a pre-ride. One of them was our Beef and Pie team member Joey “The Cuban Missile” Machado.

I had registered for the 18 mile race which I knew was going to be a true test for my fitness level. I decided that a nice 5 mile pre-ride would be enough for me. I didn’t stick to my plan at all and rode way longer than planned. I was so tired that I considered scrapping my race plans altogether. We checked into our groovy hotel, La Posada Milagro, after the ride. What a fab place. A small hotel made of stone with cozy rooms, great tiled baths and showers and an amazing view. Highly recommended.

Beef ( Mike) arrived shortly after we did, with Ayse and Dianna. Then Jeff and Jane. Yay! Jeff and Jane are like migrating birds. They’re from Baltimore, but always show up in Austin right before SXSW. This was my first sighting of the migratory Jeff and Jane this year. There are few people that enjoy West Texas as much as this group. I still wasn’t sure of participating in the race the next day, but spent the evening preparing with my hubby anyway. He’s a seasoned racer, and he helped me get everything layed out perfectly so I wouldn’t forget a thing. He even prepared my special drink mixes. One tastes like bad Koolaid, the other like buttery chalk. We had a big dinner and went to bed at 8:30 (mostly because I was so trashed from the pre-ride). When we got up the next morning - pre-dawn - and loaded everything into the car and we were really surprised to see Beefy already up and asking questions about the plans for handing out drinks according to instructions that Andrew had written the day before. He was wearing funny moose pajamas. We knew then that he was serious about his designated job that day. His hand-ups to me would be easy (one bottle), but Andrew was riding 60 miles and there were multiple locations and different drinks to keep track of. We stopped at the closest open diner to have breakfast and found ourselves eating breakfast in a cloud of cigarette smoke with some local folks that were still drunk from the night before. One of them was impressed by our intentions to ride that day and he bought us breakfast (two very delicious bowls of oatmeal – not instant). When we got to the race start, another friend had arrived, Nancy Germond. She decided to register for the 50K at the last minute, and ride down with our friend Charles. It was good to find her at the start line. I’m going to stop here and gush about my bike. Andrew bought a new ride and gave me his old bike. After riding it the previous weekend, I really think it’s the best bike I’ve ever ridden. It’s a Kelly 29er and it rolls over everything like water. I may even be tempted to ride it instead of my pony sometimes (oops sorry about the horse mention). Nancy was also giving a 29er a whirl, and I think she felt the same way I did.

The race started in waves with 100K riders first (Pros, Experts), then the 50K (sport riders), then the 30K (beginners). So my group left last in the dust of all the others. I sat at the back and decided to take it easy because I was tired and my butt was sore from the previous day. We wound through the single track at the beginning and then I arrived at the first water stop after only about 30 minutes. I wanted full documentation of my race so I dismounted and took pictures with Mike (Beefy) handing me my one hand-up. After this water stop we hit the gravel road leading to the base of the massive hill climb. The road was uneventful, but the hill climb was a monster. I made it to the first big landing, and then had to get off and walk after the switch back. The race photographer was there and he told me to get back on my bike because I didn’t want a picture of myself pushing. You can see from the picture that I obliged. I rode and pushed my way to the top, gasping for breath the whole way. The pros and experts started to pass us, and we were careful to not get in their way. I chatted with some really nice folks along the way. There was one fun guy that I stayed with almost to the end. I passed him going up, he passed me going down. He passed me for the last time when I made a stop to get some water before the final downhill. He made a funny comment about how he was glad I stopped so he could pass me again.

After that water stop it was a screaming ride down to the end. Fun. I was ecstatic to find myself at the end of the race and still alive and not even as tired as I was the previous day. Mike, Jeff and Jane were waiting at the finish line. An excellent cheering section. Really soon after I finished, Andrew came by finishing his first 30 mile lap. We cheered and Mike gave him his scheduled hand-up. We stayed around the finish line for a little while and then moved to Andrew’s next hand-up area. Somewhere in between the two locations, Mike and Jeff found some huge, red beers that were part Budweiser, part tomato juice and part clams, yes clams. I had a tiny taste, um, not so good. They sucked ‘em down while we waited for Andrew to come by. There was live music at the water stop and guy was singing, playing his guitar and harmonica. The weather was perfect. After a couple of those huge beers, Mike stood on a cooler with is binoculars to make sure he could see Andrew coming. We had a couple of false alarms, but Andrew came through, and Mike tried to make a joke by offering him Gaffer’s tape. Andrew, in his oxygen debt, ignored him completely and asked for food. Mike gave him food and water, and away he went. We went back to the finish line and waited for his finish. In the meantime we saw Nancy who looked fresh as a daisy after her 50k race. Beefy made sure to position himself perfectly for pictures of Andrew’s finish. He finished strong and his fans (us) cheered appropriately. We showered, napped and made our way back to the race site for the awards ceremony and fajita dinner. Dinner was excellent and it was a great crowd. I made the mistake at this point of drinking the product of the race sponsor, Titos Vodka! We had breakfast with Charles and Nancy (and a bit of a hangover) and hit the road early the next day.What an amazing time. You can count me in for next year!

This is one of my favorite marathon races. I’ve done it twice, had great results, and just a good time in general. But, the race is held in Juarez, Mexico. Tell that to most people and the usual response is “Dude, are you crazy?”. For those who don’t know, Juarez is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities in North America: High crime, gangs, drug trafficking, kidnapping. You want violent crime? Juarez is your destination of choice.

Nothing, however, could appear to be further from the truth when you attend this event. The organisation is superb, the people friendly, the landscape spectacular and the race site is enormous, with a huge carnival-like atmosphere. There is live music, free massage, good food and even the Tecate girls show up. Did I mention that there are usually over 2000 entrants in the race? That’s a lot of riders. As is common in races in Mexico, the government puts up a lot of money for the event as an attempt to get people into a healthier lifestyle. This means that there are cops all over the pavement sections directing traffic, great support and - best of all - outrageously cheap entry fees. When I raced it two years ago the fee was maybe ten dollars. This year it was $25, but that included a bag o’ swag and even a race jersey - a real one - for the top 100 finishers. That, my friends, is a deal.

So, we make the drive to El Paso. Scott Henry (who finished third here in 2006), B+P teammates Joey Machado and John Baxendale and myself, loaded up in Scott’s scary-as-shit looking van: A massive black thing that makes the Silence Of The Lambs van look like Mother Teresa’s ride. This thing is matte black with subtle blue flames running along the sides. Suh-weeet! Total chick-magnet. We check into our hotel mid-afternoon, drive to the international bridge, park, get on our bikes and ride across into Mexico to register - passports in jersey pockets. After registering we saddle up and go for a warm-up ride along the levee on the Rio Grande. Nice afternoon, with a little breeze. Scott is hoping for more wind on race day because he knows that he will destroy the lighter riders with his power riding in a cross-wind.

At this stage it’s worth pointing out the - ahem - unusual race course: The first hour of racing is pretty much a balls-out road race along the levees of the Rio Grande. There are no climbs, just the flat wide top surface of the levee. It’s more like road racing than mountain biking: knowledge of drafting and pack strategy is a huge bonus. It can get very sketchy, given that it’s on dirt and we’re racing elbow-to-elbow. Also, there are a couple of railway culverts that require a dismount. And there are more than 2000 of us… After the levee, there is a section through town, and then you’re climbing, for a long time, on double track jeep roads. Then a combo of singletrack and double-track. Did I mention that there are also two nasty hike-a-bike sections, lovingly named Escalones de King Kong (King Kong’s stairs) and Asphyxia (enough said). The latter is a real mo’fo’. It takes about 40 minutes to hike it, and the descent down the other side is very steep and sketchy with numerous switchbacks that are very difficult to negotiate. After that there is some nice flowy singletrack, then you’re back on the doubletrack heading home - onto the levee section again and you’re done.

At the start, we line up on the grid, that is rapidly growing to over 2000 riders deep. By virtue of our finishes in years past, Scott and I are allowed into the front area of the grid with the pros. Scott is front row given his 3rd place finish the year before. I’m about 3 rows deep. I expect our teammates to be buried way back in the crowd, but I turn around and see that they have somehow bullshitted their way to the front area as well. Nice one, team Beef and Pie! I look around to see what kind of competition we can expect. There is Tinker Juarez, the recently crowned world 24-hour champion. Next to him are two guys in Italian National uniforms. One of them is Mario Deho who is one of the top-five marathon racers in the world. And some other fast-looking lean bastards…

And, we’re off. The jockeying for position starts immediately, but the tempo is not as crazy as previous years. We ride in a very tight group for about a half-hour. There are a couple of attacks off the front, but none from the major players, and they are easily brought back. Then, we are suddenly turned around and routed back in the opposite direction, but now we are riding on skinny, twisty, sketchy doubletrack. Immediately the tempo gets crazy-fast and we are trying to hang on. A couple of guys get tangled up in front of me and go down, I manage to get around them and get on the wheels of the end of the lead group. We are really on the rivet now, balls-out, as fast as we can go, barely keeping it upright through the turns. I sneak a glance backwards and see that we have dropped absolutely everybody and opened a good gap. The furious tempo continues - I’m very close to popping at this point - and then we suddenly come back out on top of the levee. Our lead group is about 15 strong, Tinker, Scott and the two Italians are in there. The tempo eases a little and I chat to Tinker. We are about the same age, easily the oldest riders in the breakaway (probably by at least ten years, yikes!). The easier tempo allows a chase group to catch us and suddenly we’re about thirty strong.

Then, just as soon as we relax a little, we hit the railway culverts and all hell breaks loose. Rampant attacking, bad dismounts, and a lot of bike aggression ensue, and once again , the pack disintegrates. Luckily, I find myself still in the front group - down to about fifteen riders again - and definitely back on the rivet. I’m feeling pretty smug at this point, due to the fact that I’m still hanging on in this elite company. Then, we turn out of town, and reality bites me in the ass as we hit the first climb and I get dropped like the sad, tired old rider that I am. Damn…

I find myself riding with Alejandro, a guy I met racing in Creel, Mexico a couple of years ago. He is a strong rider and lives in Juarez, so he knows the course well. We take turns at the front up the climbs. He is great to ride with - good to chat to/suffer with, and very fair about taking his turn into the wind. After about an hour we pass a rider from the lead group who is fixing a flat, then minutes later we catch his buddy who jumps on with us. Then we come upon Scott, who has had two flats and is out of tubes. I stop and give him my entire tool kit and get back on it, trying to catch Alejandro and the other guy. I do after a few minutes, and we ride together for a while, dropping the other rider in the process.

We reach a steep, technical short climb and are gutting it out when we come upon a tiny church at the top. There’s a priest in white vestments splashing holy water (?) on us as we ride by. A quite surreal scene of the kind you only encounter in a race in Mexico.

Then Alejandro and I catch and drop another guy and continue on our own up the first hike-abike. After that, it’s a good ride, singletrack, doubletrack, river beds, a lot of climbing. Then we come to the ascent to Asphyxia and I can’t stay with Alejandro any more. The hike up is nasty and long, but nothing to do but suck it up and get it over with. I figure that I’m in the top ten by now, so I don’t want to lose any time. The descent is sketchy and dangerous - so much so that some of the switchbacks even have stop signs! I make it down without incident and now I know it’s all downhill from here, so I give it everything I’ve got left.

Some nice singletrack, then doubletrack. I haven’t seen another rider in about twenty minutes, and I think I’ve got to be about 8th or 9th overall now, so I keep pressing it. Top ten would be awesome! I glance over my shoulder and I see a tiny red speck in the far distance. No problem, I think, I can hold this rider off until the finish. Two minutes later, the tiny speck has grown into the form of a rider and, by the looks of it, it’s Scott Henry. I can’t freakin’ believe it. Two flats, and he’s still got the legs to make up all this time! He catches me and I try to get on his wheel, but there’s no way. He absolutely shreds me and I’m left to ride the last levee section solo, then finally, very happily, finishing in 10th place.

Joey and John roll in a little later and we consume massive amounts of food and Tecate. We go for the free massage, listen to the terrible rock band, get our picture taken with the Tecate girls, and then stumble back across the border. A damn fine day!

OK, so there really are some races you should only do once. This is one of them. My second time around just confirmed that for me. Clearly my memory is shot. This is not so much a mountain bike race as a death march, and this year they made it even harder by adding an extra stage, making it a four-day race. Bastards. Even excluding all the stuff that can go wrong - getting lost (see 2002 post), mechanicals, bad race organisation, getting sick, crashing and going to hospital etc - the physical challenge of this race is daunting. And let me add that this was the concensus hardest MTB race in the world according to everybody there who had done the (longer) Trans Alp, Trans Rockies and Cape Epic races.

By way of comparison, let’s consider one of the hardest one-day MTB races in America, the Leadville 100. Leadville is a 100 miler, at altitude, with a total of 12,500 feet of climbing. The weather can turn nasty, the altitude makes you feel weak, the climbing is difficult. Only about 60% of racers finish in under the allotted twelve hours. About 10% finish in under nine hours - an achievement marked by the reward of the coveted “big belt buckle”. Sounds rough right? Well, in the first day at La Ruta, we climbed almost 15,000 feet in just 67 miles. A lot of that was off the bike and pushing up muddy slopes too steep and slick to ride. And the weather was quite benign this year…. For those who say that La Ruta has too much road and jeep road riding well, that’s true, but it also has extremely nasty and very technical muddy descents, endless climbing, river crossings and mud like you’ve never seen. This year’s Stage One was supposedly easier than last year in that we did the famous Grifo Alto 22 km climb on the road instead of the dirt. But, to offset that, they added the extra day. I think I would have preferred the dirt climb, but I digress… The cast: We had a good group of racers and a wild-card for this one: Scott Henry (Trek Regional Team Racer); Matt Gordon (ex State Champion and very good all-round racer); Stew Stafford (four-time State Champion); Joel Grimmett (overall bike monster, 11th place at Leadville 2006); myself, and the wild-card - my brother-in-law, Andy Burton, a 58-year old business executive who has ridden a mountain bike a total of eight times. In fact, he doesn’t even own a mountain bike. Let me point out that in the months leading up to La Ruta, I have taken an endless stream of abuse from the other riders in our group for inviting (persuading?) Andy to do the race. They can’t believe that a guy with this little experience - not to mention the fact that he is 58 years old - is about to attempt the most difficult mountain bike race in the world. What they don’t know, is that I’ve seen Andy ride a road bike (we did a couple of stages of the 2006 Tour de France) and I know the old bastard can climb. Very well, actually. I also know that he has a great sense of adventure and the kind of good nature that really helps get you through a race like this. So, I am optimistic. I am going to try to keep this brief:

Stage One: Wake up at 3am. for breakfast. get in bus and go to start hotel. Pick up bike from storage tent. Go to starting grid. Wait in dark for start of race. Whimper softly in fear. Then….Endless climbing as described above. You’re never happy to see a downhill, because it’s invariably followed by an even longer climb. Lots of mud, lots of hike-a-bike… technical, muddy descents with gullies deep enough to swallow bike and rider.

The “home team” advantage gets really annoying after a while: The Ticos have support motorcycles and cars ferrying drinks and food to them on the open jeep road sections - we get to suck in the fumes of their vehicles while we lament our heavy loads of supplies we are forced to carry. After about four hours on the bike we finally get through the muddy parts and come to the last check-point before the fabled Grifo Alto climb. I arrive as Stewart is getting ready to leave. He tells me that Scott and Matt are just up the road. This is encouraging. I refill my bottles, grab some food and get after it. The climb is steep and endless, but at least it’s on asphalt and is relatively easy compared to the sucking mud we have endured for half the day. The tired legs can live with this. And then…a cruel joke…towards the top of the climb we come upon a road work crew who has been laying fresh, sticky asphalt for miles. And, lucky us, we get to ride on it! It is as if we are in molasses all of a sudden. Curses ensue, but nothing to be done but suck it up and keep riding. The asphalt is finally over, then maybe ten more miles of jeep road climbing and I am done. My time is 6:41, ten minutes behind Matt and Scott, five minutes behind Stew. I am very happy with this. We shower and eat and wait for Joel and Andy. This race is not Joel’s cup of tea: he has bad ankles and the hiking sections really kill him. As we wait, Matt leans over to me and says, sotto voce, “Dude, your brother-in-law is not gonna make it”. He has a point: The stage was very difficult with sections that even the best technical riders had trouble with. And Andy is very inexperienced… But, no sooner are the words out of his mouth than we see Andy cross the line , barely more than an hour behind us. We find out later that he finished second in his age group - a stout effort indeed. We reluctantly hand in our bikes for the power wash - a seal-destroying, bearing-contaminating session of bike abuse performed by the La Ruta crew. Then we hand in our bikes for overnight storage until the next stage. We all hate doing this because they just lean the bikes against each other in rows, maybe 50 bikes deep.

Stage Two: This is very funny. We get our bikes early so that we can get towards the front of the starting grid and avoid having to fight the crowds mid-pack at the start. Then we hear an announcement saying “the following riders please line up at the front of the grid”. And, by virtue of our collective good finishes on Stage One, Stew, myself and Andy find ourselves at the front - with the pros. Andy can’t believe it - it’s maybe his 10th day on a mountain bike - ever. We are a little apprehensive about this stage because it is the new, extra day they just added and nobody really knows what to expect.The start is fast and furious: through a muddy field, out onto jeep road, then asphalt, then dirt and then - damn - here are the climbs again. We hit the first steep one and I shift into my easiest gear on the cassette. Massive sound of metal-on-metal ensues followed by my pedal-stroke getting stopped dead. I dismount and look at the rear end. My chain has totally overshifted the cassette and is now wedged between the cassette and spokes. I pull off to the side and try to pull it out. Matt rides by and asks if I need help. I tell him I’m OK and he advises me to be gentle - derailleurs are easy to snap. I struggle with the oily chain for about five minutes. It seems as though the entire race overtakes me. Finally, I realize that I just have to break the chain, re-route it, then put it back together. Five minutes later it’s done and I’m back on the bike overtaking the hundreds of riders who have passed me. But it’s tough going, the climbs are clogged with riders either pushing or riding a bit slower than I’d like. Overtaking is nearly impossible. We hit the next huge climb and I shift into my easiest gear and - crunch! The chain overshifts again. Now I’m really pissed. I dismount, look at the jammed chain and wonder WTF this has happened twice. Then, I look at the bike from the rear, and see that the dearilleur hanger is badly bent and this is what has caused the overshift. And…I realize that it must have happened overnight in the bike storage tent. All those bikes leaning on each other - with people trying to get their bikes in and out - must have been what bent it. So… same story: break the chain, re-route it, re-connect it, bend the derailleur hanger straight, adjust the limit screws and try to overtake the 300 or so riders who have overtaken me again. It turns out to be a brutal day: The climbs are relentless - Leadville climbing packed into half the distance. I’ve never lived in the granny gear for so long. Near the end of the stage we are diverted off the main trail and up the longest, muddiest, suckiest climb I’ve ever seen. It’s so bad that there’s a guy at the top who you have to pass your bike up to. Then he hands down a long pole, you grab one end, and he pulls you up. At the top it’s giant pools of muddy water, then the descent down the other side is like a slippery ski run on your ass and feet. No fun at all. Then we are routed through town - I almost hit an oncoming truck when I overcook one of the turns - and we finish at a giant shopping mall at the outskirts of San Jose.

Stage Three: This is the same as Stage Two from years gone by and I’ve done it before, so I know what to expect. In a nutshell, you climb for about three to four hours, then do a 30 km descent on the shittiest, muddiest, rockiest cow-poop infested doubletrack road known to man. It’s really fun. And, it’s really hard on brake pads, so most people carry extras with them on the bike in case the existing ones wear out. I have prepared well for this by changing my pads the night before AND packing a spare set in my tool pouch. Clever me…

The following is the post I wrote in San Jose on Day Four:

Day four: Well, sadly, I am writing this because I’m not racing the final stage of La Ruta. After a great first day, a bad luck second day, I had another bad luck day yesterday. After a mammoth climb up Irazu Volcano on the road for about 3 hours, we were turned onto the muy peligroso mud, rock, mist and rain endless 30km descent. This is the one everybody warns you about. It’s so long and muddy you can wear out a set of brake pads on the way down. So, everybody carries spare pads in their tool pouches just in case. Jennifer tells me I’m not far behind Stew as I hit check point 3 and start the downhill. I’ve been feeling good, so this feels right, just like day1. I think I can make up time after my shitty mechanical breakdown from day 2. The downhill is long, wet and peligroso as advertised. After about a half hour the brakes start to fade. I stop and adjust the slack and continue. I pass Joel a little later. He really hates the mud. A little later they get really bad and I’m having a hard time stopping, at one stage having to go off the road and control/crash into the verge to stop. Time to change the pads. It’s tempting to continue and hope for the best because I know I’m only about 10kms from the end, but the slope is steep and very treacherous, so I stop and reach for the tool pouch under my saddle. Only…it’s not there! All that’s left is the cinch strap and a red tatter of fabric that had once, proudly, been a tool pouch. It looks like the shark from Jaws ripped it from the bike…

Oh well, nothing to do but run. So, I suck it up and run the last 10kms in my super stiff carbon shoes, cursing every step of the way. About thirty or forty guys pass me on the run. Bastards… The run hurts - my big toe nail is still black from it - a month later….

I buy some more pads from the bike shop tent, hand in the bike for a wash and go to shower and eat. While I’m eating, Matt comes up with a strange grin on his face and says ‘do you want the good news or the bad news first’. Long story short, he tells me that Andy has crashed in the final 10 kms of the race. His carbon handlebar snapped, he went down on rocks, cut his hand, bloodied his nose and got bruised all over. Carbon brake lever destroyed, handlebar snapped… But that’s not the good part. So he, then, somehow, gets offered a bike from a Costa Rican racer to finish on. Apparently this Tico guy thought Andy’s race was more important than his. So, they trade number plates, remembering even to cut off the timing chips and switch those too. And, Andy finishes the stage on this good Samaritan’s entry level Gary Fisher, circa 1995. And that’s what Matt is laughing about. He tells me I’m the proud new owner of a $350, 30 pound chunk of scrap metal, to put it kindly, because he’s convinced that the Tico is going to walk with my nice light $4000 race bike that I loaned Andy.

But, no, we meet the Tico, Sergio, after the race, exchange email addresses and take a pic of the two of them. He’s a really cool guy. Andy looks like shit, but his adrenaline is still up and he tells me he wants to race the final day. He goes to get his hand seen to by the ambulance crew. They tell him they need to take him to hospital. We arrange to meet at the mechanic area so that we can take a shuttle to our hotel later. I buy a new handlebar and grips from the bike shop tent. The proprietor is starting to like me more and more. Then, I spot Tinker Juarez, the current 24 hour world champion, who I know briefly from racing with him at Chupacabra and also from this race, hanging out at the hotel with him and the lads in the hotel bar.

I ask him for help and he takes me to the Team Cannondale mechanic, Troy, who is working his way through a mass of Cannondales, cleaning and prepping them for the final stage. We explain the situation to Troy, who is super cool and agrees to fix the bike and loan us an entire new brake assembly… after he’s done with all those other team bikes in the queue, which will be well into the night I believe.

I wait for Andy to return. I walk to the ambulance and ask them where he is. ‘Hospital” is the answer. OK… So, I wait some more and ask one of the organisers what I should do. He says that, although it’s been three hours already, I should just be patient, things take a long time in Costa Rica. I go back and ask the ambulance drivers if they can call the hospital. Of course not, they only have walkie talkies to comm with the other ambulances, but no way to contact the hospital. Damn. Stew, Matt, Joel and Scott are long gone to the hotel and I begin to think I should do the same, seeing as we have a bag of wet clothes, rain jackets, wet shoes, bottles to refill etc. and, clearly, there’s nothing I can do to help here. I talk to one of the organisers we like, who also speaks good english, and he agrees to look out for Andy and put him on a shuttle to the right hotel upon his return.

I get on the shuttle – it’s getting dark already – and begin the 45 minute drive to our hotel, one of the four hotels that the racers are being put up in around the little town of Turrialba. The first thing I do when I get to the hotel is to ask the front desk to call the hospital and check for Andy. “Which hospital?”…shit, I dunno, so the nice lady at the front desk calls around and locates the one Andy was checked in to and we discover, to my relief, that he has just left. I join the lads in the restaurant for dinner and we anxiously wait for the last shuttle to arrive from the race finish. At last it arrives and we all walk out to meet it, expecting to see him on board. But no, he’s not there. Now, I’m really worried, knowing that Andy has already checked out of the hospital, doesn’t know which hotel we’re staying at, and doesn’t speak any Spanish at all. Not good.

We return to our dinner and beers. About ten minutes later we hear a car engine and see a cab drive up the steep path to hotel. Andy gets out and bums cab fare from us, since he didn’t take any money with him when he left for the hospital. He sits down and eats and tells the sorry story of his epic day: The race ambulance pretty much just dropped him off at the hospital and left, making no arrangements for transport back to the race site. After treatment, he had no money to pay the $105 hospital bill and so had to loan the money from one of the other gringo racers who was also injured and in the hospital. The other gringo racers and Andy left the hospital together and went to the hotel in town where they thought they were staying. Andy however, was not booked into that hotel and so after a few phone calls, he figures out where we are and gets a cab ride out to us.

So now, the adrenaline has worn off, the five hours in hospital and all the injections into his split hand have taken their effect, and he looks – and feels – like shit. Wisely, he decides not to ride the final stage. The other guys in our group have done OK: Matt finished an astonishing 11th overall on the day, Stew maintained his 2nd place in our age group, Scott did well, Joel had a bit of a rough one again in his nemesis, the mud.

It’s a rough night for both of us. Andy is hurtin’ and doesn’t sleep well. I have a case of the runs, probably from all the cowshit and mud that we’ve been riding through. It’s a pretty bleak morning too: raining and misty. Andy looks a little grey around the gills. We go for breakfast and I mull over the shitty mechanical luck I’ve had in this race, the weather, Andy’s condition, my bad gut and I decide that bailing out sounds like a plan. Disappointing, because my legs feel fine and I rarely, if ever, bail out of a race, but we’ve done the three hard mountain stages and have acquitted ourselves quite well, I feel. Also, I finished this race in 2002 and recall that the last day was less than inspiring: a lot of riding on train tracks, a lot of road sections, little climbing…and I’m OK with missing it this year.

We go to the start of the race and organize a bus ride back to San Jose. We wait and watch the start of stage 4 before we leave. Just before the start, I look over and see that Scott is having trouble with his shifters and is trying to see if he can take mine off my bike and put them on his. Matt, Jennifer, Scott and I decide that transferring the shifters and cables would take way too long so he should just ride my bike. We quickly change pedals, adjust the seat height, change toolkits and we get him on the line just in time for the start. Andy and I start loading our stuff onto the bus. Embarassingly, Troy the mechanic sees Andy’s bike being loaded and comes over and says something to Andy about “staying up all night working on it”. Andy holds up his bandages hand and tells Troy the sad tale of his day in hospital. Troy understands, kind of. I think he had a rough night too.

And we’re off. Back to the comfort of the Best Western in San Jose where Andy goes to bed and doesn’t emerge, except for dinner, for about 18 hours. Turns out the rest of our gang has an epic day. After the last stage the bus bringing them back to San Jose breaks down and they have to get a $100 cab ride to the hotel. Then, there is a mud slide on the highway and the vans carrying the bikes are delayed, which really sucks because we have to disassemble the bikes and box them up for our crack o’ dawn departure for the airport. Finally, they arrive at the hotel at about 2 am and we go downstairs, collect them and pack them, only to wake up a few hours later to get the shuttle to the airport.

Stage Four proved to be good for the lads: Scott finished close to the top, despite getting two flats, Stew flatted, but held on to 2nd place overall, Matt and Joel both rode strong. Matt finished 7th overall in the 30-39 age group, Scott was 5th in the same category and Stew was 2nd in the 40-49 category. Pretty good results from a raced that started almost 700 deep! Now…what’s next?

I was keen to see what my next ride held in store for the new B&P Team kit and I was not disappointed. I was so busy last week that between the storms and working I was not able to ride much. Sunday morning I rode on the Freewheeling Ride, a group of crabby old men, mean age 50+, riding in the Violent Clown colors. The Freewheeling Ride generally has about 15-20 cyclists. In the Spring there might be a few “newbies” and women with varying cycling experience. These Spring rides can be painfully slow as the ride leader- control freak-
crabby old man-Dave Henderson, tries to control the speed to make sure not everyone gets dropped, left behind, and humiliated.
By the end of Summer, in the deep August heat, the ride has boiled down to a reduction of crabby old men. The upside of this is that everyone is fit and the speed goes.

I had two genuine compliments on the B&P team kit and many insults. Insults like the “shorts made my butt look big.” One has to realize that this is not a bad thing. I have many unfortunate physical features but a big butt is not one of them. Today’s American male uses degrading insults as a way to compliment one another. For example, Andrew calls me “fool”. It took me about a year to realize it was a reverse compliment. That calling me a fool meant he liked me. Go figure? The kit was largely well received with many insults.

“Coffee, ride, beer, repeat” was especially popular. Someone pointed out that you can see the washing label through the sheer gray spandex. I explained that inserting the washing label in one’s butt crack provided extra stability. The shorts are great with one caveat. They made cycling shorts in black for 85 years for a good reason. Running my hand over my tire to knock some glass bits off, I instinctively wipe my hand next on my… shorts. Add a flat tire to that and the gray gets pretty skanky by the end of the ride.

I thought the B&P Team kit “effect” on the opposite sex was a first ride phenomena until I was on Dean Keeton near my house at the Red River light when I heard this jittery, Japanese, honking behind me. I turned around and a couple of cars back there were what looked to be two UT co-eds in a silver Accord. I didn’t know them but they kept honking and I turned around again and they had rolled their windows down and were waving frantically… at me. They were giggling hysterically as they drove by. What’s up with that?

Richard

High top socks are lame. Only Yates and Eckert can somehow look normal in them.

So, we’re really busy at the studio right now and I have to try and squeeze in rides wherever I can. Thus it was that I found myself battling traffic out on loop 360 early one morning last week. Also, I was very excited, this being my first ride on my brand new Giano carbon bike, built by none other than B+P teammate, Beto Boggiano. There I was, on the gradual climb up 360 just before the arboretum, getting after it a little because I had a shoot to get to. The lovely, silky sound of tires on asphalt as my companion, somehow drowning out the nasty noise of the car-people driving to work (but getting nowhere fast). Then - all of a sudden - I hear the sound we all hate: the sickening, unmistakable explosion of air that comes from a gutted tire.

Shit! I stop, pull the wheel, remove the tire and witness the horror: I’ve picked up a roofing nail and it has cut the tire almost in half and - to add insult to injury - ended up embedded in my almost-new Mavic Ksyrium rim. Shit, again. So, I pull the nail, but now I have a hole in my rim, right where the rim strip would go, as well as the cut tire. Time to resort to age-old cyclist trick of “booting” the tire. For the uninitiated this means getting a reasonably strong piece of paper (like a dollar bill), a candy bar wrapper or whatever will stay between the inner tube and the cut part of the tire and stop the tube from ballooning out from the cut and exploding.

I reach into my wallet and look for a Dollar bill. I see a few, but nestled amongst them is a 5 Euro bill - a leftover from my recent trip to Spain. So, I’m thinking, my wheels are French, and I have a Euro here. Why not put the two together in harmony (detente?) and see if it all works out? I assemble the “boot”, put in half a CO2 cartridge worth of air, and start pedaling. I glance down and witness that my Euro-French rig is working beautifully. I keep pedaling for a couple more miles, but soon I start hearing a repetitive rubbing noise from the back wheel. I dismount and immediately find the problem: The cheap paper that the Euro is made from has not withstood the pressure from within and is ballooning out from the cut in the tire so much that it is rubbing my chainstay with every revolution.

Clearly the time has come to resort to the most stable currency in the world: The one that has stood the test of time, in markets and tires all over the world… Viola! Out of the wallet comes a Dollar bill (a single, no less). Into the tire it goes. In goes the remaining half of the CO2. Off I pedal. And home I arrive twenty minutes later, tire intact and fully functional.

The moral of the story? The Dollar may be devalued and unfashionable right now - the frumpy housewife of currency, the aging domestique in the peloton of payment. The Euro - on the other hand - is the trendy, hip new way-to-pay—exciting, bold, avant garde—the money all the other money wants to be, the exciting young Spanish climber on the strongest team…. But, like those Flock-of-Seagulls haircuts we once sported, the Euro is a flash in the pan, I tell you! Stay with good old Uncle Sam and his American money. It has stood the test of time and will serve you well. That’s all.

Sunday was one of those weird B&P rides. It included a crash, a fire, a very close call, and a dead body.

I haven’t been on a Progress Coffee ride in a while. With as few miles as I am able to put in, keeping up on a Progress Ride can be a bit of a challenge. On the last one I rode, I was pleased to discover that the Progress rides have grown in popularity. This is a good and a bad thing. The good thing is I can stay in just about any large peloton if it’s not too hilly. The bad thing is the larger groups always have some inexperienced riders that make things edgy if not dangerous.

I would guess we had between 25 and 30 riders Sunday including the usual suspects and probably ten or more I have never laid eyes on. It was a beautiful clear Fall day with a blustery Southeast wind. We had just turned onto Pleasant Valley to cross Longhorn dam when the trouble started. It seems like you always hear the sound first, that snapping metallic grinding sound of sharp edges hitting the asphalt. Matt Beeter and two guys had gone down on an oil slick that covered most of the outside lane. They might as well have been on a sheet of ice. Like a video game, two water bottles skittered across the road and disappeared into an inconveniently placed storm drain. Score!

Fortunately they were unhurt. We quickly regrouped and carried on. Not two minutes later as we turned off Pleasant Valley for the cut through to Wickersham and an enormous fire came into view. No fire trucks, no people. But there were flames shooting up 30 or 40 feet in the air from what appeared to be an apartment building. We were obviously the first on the scene as smoke was just starting to gather over the flames. As we got closer it became apparent the fire was not in an apartment building but in one of those construction dumpsters, the enormous ones that are set out in a parking lot for remodeling. An architect friend later told me spontaneous combustion from solvent soaked rags were a common culprit in these types of fires.

We went on. As we pedalled into the Southeast wind there was a collective sense this was not an ordinary ride. Two strange things had happened within blocks. What was next?

We have to weave around our old route to Cedar Creek with the construction of 130 cutting a massive swathe through the landscape South of town. The pace started to heat up as we climbed some new hills that were not on the old route. I noticed the guy next to me had completely covered his bike with black electrical tape. So what is that a stealth bike? A ninja bike? He seemed like a nice enough kid but I couldn’t really make of his explanation of why he had done this. It was something about protecting the bike. He told me it was a steel Cervelo and I explained if any water condensed in gaps beneath the tape it would rust the frame. He explained that he didn’t ride the bike in the rain. Hello?

I was the only B&P rider at the beginning of this ride. Andrew was in Taos and maybe everyone else had ridden the century in Round Rock on Saturday? And Beto had been involved in a Pure Austin gym event at the quarry over the weekend. Mr. “G” was here but is still riding in his standard Sachs kit. He’ll probably don his B&P kit 25 years from now as a retro gesture… and he’ll look exactly the same as he does now… sleek and ornery.

As we neared the run in to Cedar Creek the pace started to heat up as it always does. It was my good fortune that there were enough guys in the front rotation where I could hide at the back for a while out of the wind. I think Eckert, Matt, Fred, Sam Childs, Don Hutchison, and one or two other motors I didn’t know were keeping the speed but it was smooth without any attacking off the front. The speed can go up to 28 or 29 MPH in this section even into a stiff wind. Suddenly I heard a sickening sound, the sound I always imagined a parachute makes as it pops out of it’s’ folds. The zipping sound of two tire side walls rubbing against one another. I looked up in time to see Matt Beeter’s bike wobble as though he were fighting for control of it. But nobody fell.

The specter of a high speed crash pumped some adrenaline into my system and I pulled through to the front on two rotations. I noticed the young guy with the taped up Cervelo hanging at the front but to the left side of the pace line. We were riding at at least 26MPH and he had to be struggling to stay out there on his own. I knew then he was the cause of the overlapping wheel episode. He disappeared in the next minute. I felt great as we approached the sprint and tried to take a flyer. I barely came up to Gregg Eckert’s wheel and he gave me this look that said, “in your dreams Whittington” and I punched out of the back within a hundred yards of last bend. In the parking lot of the Cedar Creek store I found the Cervelo guy and suggested he ride at the back until he learned how a pace line worked. He took it pretty well.

At the store Stu Stafford and Buffy showed up out of nowhere. Stu told me he got a late start and had been chasing, only to discover he had been ahead of us the whole time. Stu was in his B&P kit. Matt Beeter told me he wasn’t part of the tire touching incident but one of the guys that popped out of it had hit his shoulder. Thank goodness Matt didn’t go down. I was on this same ride 6 or 10 years ago when Rick Kent took Matt down in a sharp turn. Rick was riding on his tri bars… not a good idea in a group. Back then Matt had just spent a year or more recovering from a serious car wreck and was the last person you would want to knock down on a ride.

As we left Cedar Creek for the Lytton Springs leg of the ride about a dozen riders peeled off for the shorter Elroy version which cuts off about eight or nine miles. I felt well enough but I was tired and had a ton of stuff to do in the afternoon. I decided to go on the shorter route so I could be semi-functional for the rest of the day. I thought the pace would slacken a bit in the new group with all the weenies that couldn’t hack the 63 mile loop.

With the SE tailwind we were flying. It was hard but fun. Until just past Elroy. We came over a rise and could see a couple of DPS cruisers and other vehicles. The DPS bubble lights were spinning. At first it looked like a wreck but as we got closer you could see all the cars were undamaged. There was no ambulance. As we came abreast of the two officers about 25 feet down the sloping shoulder of the road one of them pulled up the corner of a black sheet of plastic revealing the corpse of a middle aged man. He was a bloody pulp. What else could happen on this ride?

Fortunately the rest of the day was without incident. We had averaged 18MPH until the store stop and increased that to 19.2 by the time I rolled into my driveway. It was a pretty quick ride for an old man.

–

The summary of La Ruta de Los Conquistadores (or our three days of mud, pain and suffering in Costa Rica). Our group was comprised of John Wilder, Joey Machado, Scott Henry and myself. Scott had done this race before, finishing 5th overall two years ago, and is a Trek team rider. For those who don’t know, the rest of us are 40-ish Expert class racers, but nowhere near Scott’s level. La Ruta, as the race is called, is billed as the toughest mountain bike race in the world. It is run in mid-November from the Pacific to the Caribbean Ocean – across the width of Costa Rica - in three days. The distance is advertised as being 300 miles, but is in reality only about 250 by my estimates. There is a total of 26,000 feet of climbing, however, to go along with all that mileage. Rules are similar to NORBA – you must finish the day on the same bike you started and be entirely self-sufficient, accepting no outside help except for food and drink at the authorized check points. About 400 people entered the race this year, mostly Costa Rican, but also from as far afield as England, Australia, South Africa, Ecuador, Mexico and Canada. Here’s how it went down:

Day one, Friday.Jaco Beach, Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Rained all freakin’ night. We’re talking tropical thunderstorms here, people. 5am start time in pouring rain on asphalt (still dark). Hit the dirt in about 5 minutes. Have no idea where I am in the pack, since we can still barely see. Very slick and muddy. Soon we’re all pushing our bikes up the hills. Mud so clingy the wheels won’t even turn any more. Grabbing sticks from the side of the trail to scrape it off every 5 minutes or so. All around me a I hear the Costa Ricans cursing the mud; “puta, puta, puta…”. I start to hurry the pace a little because I know that the more people go through the mud the harder it gets to push. Back starts to hurt from bending over and pushing so much.Been riding and sliding about two hours when I come upon a group of riders having a conference in the middle of the trail. It’s the two lead teams (Dos Pinos and Pizza Hut) also Scott Henry and a bunch of other riders. This is the lead group, including the eventual winner of the race. We have apparently been lost for hours. More riders join us. After lengthy discussion, they agree we are too far gone turn back and must push on and find an alternate route to check point one (which we would have reached in one to one and a half hours had we not been lost). We are about 60 riders strong at this stage and we proceed, looking for the route to CP1. I am crapping myself that I will get dropped by the lead group and find myself lost in the jungle. We are in a very remote, rural area with only a few scattered houses here and there and even most of the locals don’t have a clue as to where we are. Also, we are carrying only enough energy food and water for about two hours (having been expecting to hit CP1 way earlier to refuel).The lead group starts to put the hammer down and the peloton splinters. I find myself at threshold trying to stay with a group near the leaders. Every so often we look back and see other riders dropping off. Just stopping by the side of the trail, pulling into the occasional house, hitching rides on a passing truck. The group spreads and dwindles. We stop and fill water bottles from an outside faucet at a house. Water very suspect. Lots of climbing and descending, granny gear hills, some pushing. We start to get close to CP1, catching some of the riders who were dropped earlier. Finally at 10am we reach CP1. Both of the lead teams plus about thirty riders are just hanging around, washing bikes, eating, waiting for instruction, wondering what to do. We’ve been riding hard for 5 hours. Everyone is pissed off.Continuing seems like a stupid idea since we are so far back and technically we are disqualified, having not reached the check point under the time limit. The lead teams are clearly done for the day and are waiting on the team SUVs to pick them up. Most of the support crew has left since we were all supposed to be through CP1 hours ago. Apparently the organizers realized a bunch of us were lost and sent motorcycles after us to turn us back, but the guys in the lead group (us) were too far gone. No transportation around to take us back. A couple of brave souls get back on the bike and try to continue. One of them is a guy named Eric who apparently won the Iditabike race a couple of years ago. What a stud. Scott Henry knows a friend, Nat, who has a truck at CP1. We shoehorn 6 guys and bikes into the pick-up and continue to CP2. I am very happy to have squeezed on to the truck – I had visions of hanging out at the remains of CP1 all day.En route we encounter the race organizer, Roman Urbina on the road being harassed by a group of riders. We talk to him and he assures us that due to the screw up, everybody will be given even time for Day 0ne, except the winner who will get a 30 minute time bonus. He tells us that somebody removed the directional arrows from a tree early in the race and that this was turn we all missed. This is no big deal since most of the best riders were in the lead group and will easily overcome this time deficit on Day Two. We drive on looking for Nat’s son who is in the race and was lost earlier with us.We come across John Wilder at CP3 looking very calm and collected. He clearly has a strategy – go slow on day 1 – save the juice for the next two days. He also almost took the wrong turn and got lost with the rest of us, but a local guy persuaded him that that was the wrong way to go so John followed the guy and got lucky. We encounter Niles, a 13 year old kid doing his second Ruta (he didn’t finish the first). His whole family lives in Costa Rica and they race it every year. Rom, the oldest son, is with us in the truck having also been lost with our group. The father is racing as well: No shirt, Tevas, manky old Trek Y-bike, long white/gray hippy hair and beard. Niles looks like shit – hot, tired and struggling up the hills. I don’t think he’ll finish.We go down to a creek, get out of our muddy bike clothes, wash the bikes, bathe. We see Joey very soon after that looking pretty pooped. He is in the worst situation – he was lost early like us, but way further back, so he got caught by the chase motorcycle and turned around, effectively adding about an hour and a half to his day. We drive on, eventually getting to CP4 where we see that Niles has made a miraculous recovery and is looking stronger heading into the finish. I feel guilty seeing all the other riders struggling after hours on the bike, so I lube up my chain, get dressed again and ride the last hour in.John Wilder comes in later after over 11 hours on the bike, Joey staggers in at dusk after 12 and a half hours. He is barely able to keep himself upright and tells us he is about to throw up. There are a lot of shattered looking riders around. We line up for the one cold shower available. Guys are getting IV drips and massages. I change my brake pads, lube everything and change tires in preparation for Day 2.I get us a spot on the bus back to the hotel, grab Joey’s bags and we wait for the driver. That night at the hotel John is so shagged he doesn’t even come out to eat – just drops into bed. Joey looks like death warmed up. He was too pooped to clean and prep his bike the night before and so will have to do it Saturday morning before the start. Scott Henry has picked up a stomach bug from day 1 and has a nasty case of Montezuma’s Revenge. Not pretty. Some riders have been moved to a different hotel and are (understandably) very peeved about it: After a full day in the saddle they now have to pack up all their stuff and bus across town to another hotel. Lots of grumbling going on right about now.I talk to a woman called Karina who says that, despite Urbina’s statement about the directional arrows being removed from the tree, we all got lost because the arrows were never put up in the first place. I ask her how she knows this and she says the arrows were in the truck she rode in to the race start and she knows that they were never removed because they were still there at end of day…Day 2, Saturday6 am start in downtown San JoseGuys frantically running around the streets trying to get their bikes ready for the day. There are many totally mud-encrusted machines that need to be prepped for the impending day Scott Henry has warned us will be “a kick in the nuts” (sounds very pleasant).We start the gentle climb out of town towards Irazu volcano, many thousand of feet up. We have Camelbaks loaded up with rain jackets, pliers, spare brake pads for the nasty descent, energy bars, Ziploc bags with Accelerade, extra tubes, water, pump and lots of chain lube. Soon the climb gets nasty and we are pushing a smaller gear. The road turns to dirt too technical to climb and so we are off the bikes pushing again. There’s no rest from the climbing.We come to CP1 after about two hours. I stuff a chunk of papaya and a banana down, stretch my aching back and get back on it. We alternate between asphalt and bumpy jeep trail for the next hour. The occasional screaming downhill breaks up the climb and gives us a little rest. Eventually we are on the main road. I look up and it’s just steep switchbacks as far as the eye can see, all the way into the permanent high altitude rain and cloud towards the peak of Irazu. My Camelbak is really starting to hurt now and I have to pull over and stretch. I’m in the granny gear, just trying to spin up the Tour de France-like slope. Darby, our California friend has been with me pretty much all day. We keep passing each other and commiserating. All of the Costa Rican riders are barely carrying any water bottles or Camelbaks. Despite the rules, they are all getting support from cars all the way up. I ride next to a guy for a while who is being handed hot drinks from the team SUV as he rides. They give him his rain jacket so he doesn’t even have to dismount. I’m thinking about the 6 pound Camelbak I’m dragging up this freakin’ mountain and I’m not happy. He offers me food, tea, energy drinks from the SUV. I grumpily decline.The rain intensifies and it gets colder. I’m glad to be wearing tights and have a good rain jacket at this point. The summit is nowhere in sight. Visibility is about 50 feet at this point through the fog and rain. Back hurting, legs dying, I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here suffering when I could be back in Austin on a fun ride. I swear I’ll never come back and do La Ruta. Then, as if by magic, CP3 appears through the mist. This signals the end of the climb and the beginning of the descent. I’ve been climbing for 4 hours solid, 10,000 feet. The lead group blew through here about 45 minutes ago. There are some riders still 2-3 hours behind me.Darby appears out of the mist. We chat, lube up, mix Accelerade, chow more papaya and get on the downhill. From here on out it gets pretty surreal: The descent is a very tricky, technical rocky jeep road made all the more sketchy because the thickening cloud reduces visibility to about twenty feet. It’s a total blast! I push the pace as fast as I can and discover a happy fact: The little Costa Ricans can climb, but they can’t descend worth a damn. My full-suspension Titus is eating up the bumps and I’m blowing by riders in droves. The descent is very much like the Hill of Life in Austin in parts, but endless and wet. At one stage I see a dead horse on the edge of the trail.Some guys are actually off the bikes walking the more technical sections. This makes me feel even more studly since I am bombing them. The trail becomes gnarlier, but we are out of the cloud now and so we can see. I have dropped Darby and am still passing a lot of riders. We hit a couple of technical, wet climbs, then ride through a nasty pasture of soupy black mud and cow poop. Not pretty…Finally I hit CP4 and eat more and talk to the guys who assure me that the finish is not far. This is probably bullshit since Costa Ricans are notorious for not having a clue about distance and time. (Ask two guys the same question about how far it is to a town, say, five miles away, and you’ll get answers ranging from 5 minutes to three hours. Seriously. They just want to give you an answer, so even if they don’t know, they’ll make something up).Darby appears out of the mist as I’m getting back on the bike. He is looking strong. I push the pace and then, oh no, get a pinch flat. I drag out the tool kit, Instaflate etc. and put in a new tube. I crank on the Instaflate, but no air comes out. It’s not working. Bugger. I reach into the Camelbak and pull out the reserve pump and hand pump the tire. This all takes about ten minutes and 15 or so guys, including Darby, blow by me. Very disappointing.I get back on and big-ring it hard to get back on. Five minutes later I blow by Darby who has suffered a similar fate and is also fixing a flat! About ten minutes later I hear a bike coming up fast behind me. This is the only rider who has overtaken me on the whole descent (flat debacle excluded) so I want to get on his wheel. We talk whenever we can as we descend. His name is Tom, from Boulder, CO and he’s on a new Maverick FS with disc brakes. He’s just tearing it up and it’s all I can do to keep him in sight.We hit the asphalt which means we have only 10 miles to go to the finish in Turrialba. Tom is incredibly daring on these super-steep twisty mountain roads and I’m really glad to be behind him since there’s no way I would go this fast on my own. We catch a Costa Rican rider after about five minutes and he gets on our wheel to try and draught us down the mountain. We don’t know where the finish is, but he clearly does.We hit a hairpin bend and then a flat section and the little bastard comes around from behind and tries to drop us into the finish. Clearly the line is just ahead out of sight. I give it everything I’ve got and pass Tom to get on the CR guy’s wheel. Tom knows he’s toast and swears at us as we go by. The crowds are cheering the CR guy on but I outsprint him to the last turn into the finish. With about twenty feet to go he surges and takes me by a wheel. Que lastima! Oh well, lunch was great, the cold shower was OK and I got my bike power washed pretty quickly. I finished in 6h.05m which I’m pretty happy with.My back is killing me, so I get a massage. John Wilder comes in about an hour later looking calm as a cucumber. He really enjoyed the downhill. Still no sign of Joey. Scott Henry, despite the bad stomach has finished 8th on the day, but is feeling terrible and has decimated the lone seatless toilet with extreme prejudice. He and I get on the early bus back to San Jose to recuperate. As we climb out of the Turrialba valley to San Jose we see Joey just beginning the asphalt descent. We discover later that he got lost again, rode right through CP3, and almost reached the summit of Irazu. He is going to be one tired puppy tonight. Some guys with altimeters tell us we climbed a total of 12,000 feet today.Day 3Turrialba to Limon (Caribbean coast)This is the long (100 mile) day to finish La Ruta. It’s mostly downhill and therefore theoretically easier, but we have a lot of miles in our legs right now and the cumulative output is going to make this a tough ride. Scott Henry has withdrawn from the race because of the stomach bug. I’m really bummed for him, since the Day Three route played to his strengths and he would certainly have kicked ass.It’s a bright sunny morning as we roll out of the Turrialba valley. We start climbing some rollers almost immediately and the legs start complaining just as fast. My quads feel like they are going to cramp up and die any minute now. Joey has given me some electrolyte tablets which I am chugging to try and avoid cramping. I also drop a couple of Advil for the still painful back.No real problems for the first hour. We just climb and descend pretty regularly. I’m trying to stay 10 beats below AT so I don’t blow later. We hit a long screaming fast asphalt descent as the rain starts. The asphalt turns to jeep road and the rain gets worse. I pity the guys behind us. It’s hard to see and the rain makes it technical. I see a lot of flats being fixed on the side of the trail.After about another hour we come to the one major climb of the day. It’s very steep and wet and long. Like seven Hill of Life’s in a row, not so technical, but wet and just as steep. Granny gear all the way. I pass Darby about halfway up. I ride with a Costa Rican for most of the climb. Like all the others he is getting team help from a truck, including guys jumping off the truck, running next to him, and lubing his chain with spray cans of WD 40 as he rides. He is a pretty cool guy and he encourages me to be “fuerte” when I start to suffer. The team SUVs are a pain in the ass since they need to pass us to get up the trail and they sometimes take the best line up the sketchy roads, making us take a tougher route.We hit CP 2 at the top of the climb. I chow down on everything I can find. My legs still feel like shit so I drop another electrolyte cap. One of the guys at the CP says it’s all downhill from here. And, for the most part, it is. Darby comes up, we chat and get back on it. Long road descent through many towns, over train tracks, locals out in force.We go over a series of crossing train tracks and Boom!, suddenly I’ve crashed and I’m on my ass. I look back to what caused my fall and see a little kid quickly run up and bury one of the tracks under loose sand in preparation for the next rider. This is the one I slid out on. The little bastard has clearly been laying traps for the riders all day, much to his friends’ delight since they are cracking up at my misfortune. I talk to Darby after the ride. Apparently he got nailed in the exact same way. We are obviously two of many…We are forced to ride on train tracks for a while, having to dismount and carry our bikes over the many small creek crossings. We soon hit a long road section and luckily I end up in a group of about 15 riders with Darby and his buddy Paul. We get a good pace line going and make good time for a while. Soon we reach another group of guys in Team Festina jerseys. They join our group but refuse to go to the front to do any work and just stay in mid-pack sucking wheel. Darby, Paul and myself try to get it going again, but these guys are content to sit in and shoot the breeze. Every time we try to attack and break away they do just enough work to catch us and then sit in again. Very frustrating. Our average speed drops about 3-4 mph from when we had the pace line going.Finally we hit an extended dirt road section and the pace picks up. We are big-ringing it through potholes full of water on pretty sketchy roads, but as least we’re hauling ass now and the Festina boys are working a little. Then we hit the section we have all been dreading: the 10 miles of train tracks. These, apparently, have improved significantly over last year in that they have been filled in a lot with gravel. However we are still riding over railway ties down the middle of the tracks and it’s not much fun.Every so often we come to a bridge - some short, some long - where we are forced to dismount and carry our bikes across. Many of the railway ties have rotted away and the gap has been repaired with boards nailed between the remaining good ties. It’s wet, so footing in bike shoes is very sketchy. There are some big rivers we cross, so if you slip, it’s a long way down.Finally we are done with the bridges and it looks like train tracks forever. I am still in the middle of our group of about twenty and they are going a little too slow for my taste. I see a small, rough path on the side of the track, so I do the cyclocross dismount, run the bike to path and hammer as fast as I can to overtake the group. I get back on the tracks ahead of the group and start to hammer. My FS bike is just eating up the bumps, no problem. Next time I look back they are out of sight.I reach the last check point, chow down a lot of food, stretch, mix some Accelerade and get back on it as the rest of the group rolls in. I am now riding at sea level on a jeep trail parallel to the beach. It’s raining again and the road is, as usual, muddy and full of water filled potholes of varying depths. I decide to try and keep my gap on the group and start to do the Lance Armstrong high cadence time trial technique along the trail. I figure the end must be in sight since I am hearing pretty consistent distance estimates from the thickening crowds on the side of the road: “15 kilometers, ten kilometers, ocho kilometres…”I keep looking back to see if the group is catching me but I think I’m opening more of a gap, since they are nowhere in sight. Finally I see a sign that says Playa Bonita (our finishing town) and I know I’m there. I roll into the finish at 5h45m on the day and I couldn’t be happier just to be done. I dismount and stagger around for a while and here comes John Wilder just three minutes later still looking like this was all just a walk in the park for him. He has really enjoyed day three, running over the rotten bridges around guys, eating up the railway sections – just what an ex-Marine enjoys, clearly. He caught the group I was with and passed them on the last road section.We swim in the ocean to wash off the mud. Later we meet Scott Henry who has been given Cipro (the Anthrax - prescription drug) to combat his ailment and is feeling much better. We shower, throw the muddy bikes in the truck (there’s no washing facility today) and have lunch. Joey rolls in soon, looking like he could have ridden all day. He has obviously recovered from Day One completely. He has had a disposable camera attached to his Camelbak and has been stopping to take pictures throughout the race. It’s pretty funny to see a guy in all the technical cycling wear with a little Kodak camera bouncing around on his back. There’s a party starting at the beach, but being old farts, we opt to get on an early bus and go back to San Jose to chill.We get to the hotel after dark and wait for the other buses and the truck with the bikes. Much later the other riders’ buses arrive. It’s pouring with rain now in downtown San Jose. A lot of them are a little drunk from the post-race party. The truck with muddy bikes arrives and the hotel manager says no way those bikes are coming into the hotel. We negotiate with him and he assigns the janitor to wash the bikes off outside. We put on rain gear, go out into the street and unload the 100 or so muddy bikes and proceed to wash them. Most of the bikes’ owners aren’t even here, they are either staying at another hotel or are on the last bus and haven’t arrived yet. We get them all washed and store the unclaimed ones in the hotel courtyard, taking our own bikes up to our rooms (mine gets the deluxe warm shower wash a little later).The next day we hang out in down town San Jose with Darby and Paul, showing them the wonders of a country with legalized prostitution and gambling. Darby and Scott hit the casino, the rest of us wander around. We leave the following day, already thinking about next year.