ConstantRider

Hi Jo,

Yes, I rode it. I saw a woman working the check-in at the end that must have been you. I think you started checking in the riders just after we had checked in; myself, my brother, and another rider finished a little before 5 PM and were checked in by a guy wearing a Rivendell sweatshirt. If you're doing the 300K brevet, I'll be sure to introduce myself, now that I know who you are. (If you saw a guy with glasses and wearing a blue wool jersey, looking extremely fatigued, that was me...)

Like you, I was watching the news reports late into the evening, especially the flood-watches. The route the SF brevets take is pretty much flood central; it goes through all the streets that typically flood in Ross, San Anselmo, and Fairfax. So that plus the heavy winds advisory was making me have doubts about doing the ride, even though the forecasters were saying there would be at least a few hours of no rain during the day.

I live just a few miles from the bridge, though, so I didn't really have to make any decisions until the last minute. Around midnight or so, I decided that rain or shine, I would at least ride to the bridge for the start and make my final decision there.

Well, we lucked out. The weather was, given what was predicted, great. On my ride to the Bridge, in fact, I realized I was way over-dressed. When I got there, I shed my wind-breaker and my heavy gloves, and probably could have gotten rid of my booties and additional clothing I was carrying in my saddlebag too.

Crossing the bridge at the start, the sunrise was beautiful. I hadn't brought a camera because I didn't want to deal with it if was raining -- it would have been nice to get some shots of that sunrise though.

Most of the roads were surprisingly dry. I thought there'd be a lot of debris on Sir Francis Drake in the section that goes through Samuel P. Taylor Park, but it wasn't bad. On the road to Inverness, some riders apparently got held up by a tow truck that was lifting a car that had gone off the road into a creek; we managed to get by that before they shut down traffic for a while.

The last half-mile or so to the Lighthouse was pretty treacherous, especially on the return trip. At one point, I was blown from the far side of right lane to the middle of the left lane. Luckily the only approaching traffic at that time were cyclists. I talked to one rider who said he was blown off the road but managed to stay upright; I heard second-hand that some riders were actually knocked down off their bikes. It was the only time in the ride where I was grateful for the ten pounds I put on over the holidays! Getting blown around the way I was at a 190 lbs., I can only imagine what it was like for the lighter riders.

The other adventure was the road into Point Reyes Station that was flooded. Taking the detour would have meant an extra six miles or so, and the water didn't seem that deep....so we decided to risk it. Turned out all right; my shoes got a little wet, but that's what I was wearing booties and three pairs of socks for. My brother, who had fallen behind us at that point, opted for doing the detour and was kicking himself when he'd heard that we just rode through it.

About two miles from Marshall, a spoke in my rear wheel broke. Neither myself nor the PBP veteran I was riding with at that point had a spoke wrench -- a crucial randonneur error! Luckily, I was riding 36-spoke wheels, though. I undid the brake, bent the broken spoke around a couple of the non-broken ones, and while it made a bit of a racket, as things rattled and scraped, the wheel was still ridable. At the Marshall store, another rider who came in did have a spoke wrench, and we were able to get the broken spoke off completely. The wheel was still kind of wobbly, and I had to ride the last 50 miles with only one brake, but at least it wasn't making a huge amount of noise anymore.

Riding with a compromised wheel and only one brake impacted me in two ways. First, I took all the remaining downhills very cautiously. And second, when we were riding through Ross, we were approaching a stop-sign where traditionally we come to more of a rolling stop than a full stop. Yesterday, however, a cop happened to be parked there. I put on the brakes at the last second, but one wasn't enough and I rolled through right in front of him. Luckily, he was engaged in what must have been an interesting conversation with a local resident, so he simply laughed at me and gave me a "What the hell are you thinking" gesture.

So for me, at least, it wasn't just the weather gods working in my favor yesterday, but also the law enforcement gods. The rest of the ride went smoothly, but I was really tired and fairly dehydrated by the end. It wasn't so bad when I was riding, but it seemed like we hit every red light in Sausalito. And when I was stopped and just standing there waiting for the light to turn, the fatigue I was feeling would just sweep over me. It made me kind of wonder about the 300K -- I certainly didn't feel like I could do another 100K yesterday.

But, there's a month to prepare. After we finished, we hung out a while at the Bridge to watch some of the other riders come in. When it started getting dark, I decided it was time to ride home; about a mile or so from my house, the rain eventually started to fall.But all in all, it was a good randonneuring day -- starting in the dark, ending in the dark, surviving a mechanical without too much inconvenience or time lost, and not getting too wet. Hopefully, the new RBA's in with the weather gods will continue for the 300K...