hrj

Mostly behind a cut, due to being image-heavy, but here's the final pic as a teaser.

So there's this bicycle endurance ride called "Death Ride": 125 miles, 5 Sierra passes. The idea is you do one pass, or two, or whatever all the way up to all 5. In one day. Just to do it. Not a race. No "winner". Just for the glory.

So am I crazy enough to do this? Heck no. At least ... not this year. But

thread_walker is. And I went along to be her groupie (along with her husband and brother-in-law). Being a Death Ride groupie is a bit tricky because they close down all the relevant roads to car traffic (which is a Very Good Thing) so you can either get into Markleeville (where it all starts and ends) before the ride begins and hang out there waving and cheering each time they pass by. Or you can position yourself at one (1) of the three turn-around points, having come at it from the other (non-blocked-off) side and wait for your rider to show up. This was our gameplan, positioning ourselves at Hermit Valley on Hwy 4 which is the turn-around before beginning the 4th ascent.

thread_walker and crew had gone up to their family cabin in Arnold several days before, so my gameplan was to drive up Saturday morning and meet them at the turn-around point.

thread_walker's estimate was that the earliest she might hit Hermit Valley was 11am, but with a 2 hour window from then. So I hit the maps, calculated a 4 hour drive under ideal conditions, added 1 hour to make sure I didn't miss her if she was smack dab on the ideal schedule, and another hour in the event of bad traffic. This mean I rolled onto the road at 5am. Before Starbucks is open. :(

I had this brilliant idea sometime last week that the event wouldn't be complete without a mascot. Unfortunately I didn't actually do anything about this until Friday, so while the raven came along for the ride, she does not yet have her bike helmet and racing jersey yet.

There were no traffic problems. So I arrived on the dot of 9am -- 2 hours ahead of schedule. (More, as it turned out.) They had the highway blocked off about a hundred yards back from the actual event area, so I parked there at the handy camping area and hiked in with my chair, ice chest, and assorted paraphernalia to keep my busy while waiting. And the raven, who spent most of the day taking it easy.

Vast numbers of volunteers were readying vast quantities of water, gatoraid, and assorted fruit snacks and the sponsors' energy bar-type foods.

The first half dozen or so riders were already coming through, looking excessively energetic and casually mentioning how many hours before dawn they'd started. (The couple in mid-image, however, had biked over from the Alpine Lake area as tourists.)

Figuring I'd have a bunch of time on my hands, I'd brought a bird-book and my usual assortment of sketchbooks and travel watercolor kit.

An hour and a half or so later, the rest of the

thread_walker cheerleading squad showed up and we proceeded to spend the next couple of hours scrutinizing each one of the 3000+ riders coming down the road to see if we could recognize one particular sweaty, bike-jersied, helmeted, sunglassed figure from the crowd. Did you know that if you stare at an endless line of oncoming bicyclists for long enough, when you look away, the scenery seems to recede from your gaze?

The basic routine was that the riders rolled up to the sticker station, where they got a sticker crediting them for having finished the 4th pass. (Although technically it was the 3.5-pass mark, they still had to ascend Ebbetts Pass, which they had just come down, to complete the 4th, but I assume this was to avoid confusion with the sticker station for the 3rd pass, which was at the top of Ebbetts.) Then, if they wanted to, they continued on to the refreshments, porta-potties, etc. The scary ones were the riders who got their stickers and immediately turned around to head back up the hill.

Just around the end of the 2 hour time window, just when we were starting to wonder if we should worry -- the time-stamp on the photo says 12:54 pm -- we hear this voice from behind where we're staring at the oncoming riders saying something like, "So, you didn't see me when I waved?" We had utterly missed recognizing that one particular sweaty, bike-jersied, helmeted, sunglassed figure from the crowd.

Despite being unbelievably chipper on arrival ...

... it soon became evident that maybe 3.5 passes was all we were going to get today.

Still and all, quite an achievement and nothing at all to sneeze at!

Around about 2pm the decision had been made to call it a day. But since Hwy 4 to Markleeville (where

thread_walker's truck had been left) wouldn't re-open until 3pm we just lazed around and enjoyed a bit of a picnic for the next hour. Then it was two vehicles over the pass to pick up the truck (and buy souveniers at the base station), then back over the pass again back to the cabin. Clean-up; out to dinner; relaxing over a game of Cataan; and the sleep of the dead. (Who'da thunk that watching people bicycle would be so exhausting?)

And that was my weekend as a Death Ride groupie.

The scary thing is that I'm feeling just a little bit inspired ....

(The mascot will have another appearance in a couple days when she has received her helmet and jersey, and then will be passed on to

thread_walker for future luck.)

A larger photo album with original sizes of photos is viewable at my mobile.me account.