Declan's Blog

I made some maps earlier based on the chase drivers maps. This map comes directly from the tracks files from a GPS one of the Dads had on the ride, so it is totally accurate.

Here are the data files so you can play with them yourselves:

KMZ File – works with Google Earth
GPX File – GPS eXchange Format
GDB File – the base Garmin DataBase that came from the device

I received great GPS data from some of the guys who had devices on the ride. I was able to make elevation charts. Someone with more patience can figure out our total climb. Here’s the whole 267 mile ride as one chart (note that the scale changes on the Day charts, so they are not directly comparable):

Day 1 – River to Gold Rock Ranch:

Day 2 – Gold Rock Ranch, across the Dunes, to Pine School:

Day 3 – Pine School to the El Centro pool, to Westside School:

Day 4 – Westside School, through Plaster City, to Vallecito Camp Ground:

Day 5 – Vallecito, up Banner Grade, to Julian and Spencer Valley School:

Day 6 – Spencer Valley School, through Black Canyon, to San Pasqual School:

Day 7 – San Pasqual, to yummy breakfast, to the coast!

The desert winds whipped the tent around all night, and the light pole right above our tent made it seem that it was morning all night. Sleep was fitful at best, mostly nonexistent. I’m so happy that Elaine arranged hotels for some of our future night stays.

ONE of us had a good night’s sleep:

Nathan got to sleep in the van, which was less susceptible to violent winds.

There was one working bathroom in the offices, so I thought I’d be clever and get up before Gary, the Pitt Boss, had revelry go off at 6am. Sadly, everyone else had this idea, so there was a line anyway. We all stumbled around, found bushes to water, then got in line for breakfast.

Here are the dead bathrooms, on the left:

The ocotillo is in full bloom, so I got a picture of one by our tent. My mother in law assumes all flower pictures I take are for her since she’s way into flowers and plants, and I’m happy letting her think that 🙂

Food was prepared for us at every stop. Breakfast was usually eggs and some bread substance.

This is Hailey, one of Erin’s classmates. Her Dad had to work until Thursday, so she hung out with me and Erin on the roads.

We were told over and over again that the kids were not to be riding alone, and it really mattered. The 153 riders could be spaced out over 10+ miles of distance, so a kid could possibly wander off the road and get lost. There were chase vehicles every 2 miles or so, offering water and great moral support. They did a pretty good job of grabbing orphaned children and hooking them up with adults. I do admit that one of the hardest parts of the ride for me was slowing my pace to stay with my daughter and her buddies, but I got it into my head that this was a ride, not a race. Staying together, despite the pain it causes and extra time it took, was more important than getting ahead.

Elaine and Nathan had to run back to San Diego, so we didn’t get a lot of pictures on this day. I’m hoping to collect pictures from the other families to fill in the gaps. The ride itself was very difficult. We had strong headwinds the first 15 miles which took us 4 hours to cover. Once we got to the 78, we had more of a tail wind and covered a lot of distance. One of the most striking features of the ride was crossing the Dunes on 78. It’s a comic book version of a desert, with long mounds of tan sand drifting across the distance. We saw a snow plow used to keep the drifts back from the highway.

After 54.22 miles, Erin made it to Pine School.

Erin was just awesome! She got her pace and just moseyed herself across the desert. I was keeping an eye on some stragglers, so Erin would often get ahead of us. This was a little scary for me, but the chase drivers were great about making sure everyone was ok. Erin did a lot of training with me for this ride, so she knew how to be safe and maintain a pace. I am so proud of her!

I arrived shortly after with Divia, one of Erin’s buddies:

This was a really hard day. It turns out it wasn’t the hardest.

Click here for more pictures from Day 2.

We started at the Colorado River at the border of AZ and CA by Yuma. Everyone had to put their back wheel in the water:

As you can see, I’m well carbed up for the ride. If you are mean, you are making bosoms jokes about my picture right now. I know I would be. It was the light. Or maybe 40 years of Oreos. Thankfully, we were equipped with BMD (Bosom Masking Devices) to spare people looking at pictures on the web:

There was one celebrity there to see us off, Starsky from TV’s “Starsky & Hutch:”

Here’s the obligatory colorful-riders-all-in-a-row picture. I photoshopped in an attack helicopter and Starsk’s departure to make it more interesting:

Actually, the helicopter was real. I guess it’s pretty boring out in the desert, so if you have a helicopter it’s fun to buzz 150 bike riders (kids and adults).

And we’re OFF!

Actually, that’s not me and Erin. I’ve got some quality control issues with our photographer, but I’ll take it out of her bonus.

What followed was about 25 miles of this:

The first 2.5 miles were on soft sand. I was very happy to be on my wide tires and not the road bike. There are a few riders with road bikes, but they had done the ride before and knew to just carry the bike on this stretch. Even with the wide tires, we had to work hard to get through, and were glad to see pavement. One highlight of this section was pushing the leader of the chase vehicles, Gary (in the vest):

and his cool Tacoma out of the sand. You can tell when people didn’t grow up getting cars out of snowdrifts… 🙂

Our support team went on ahead and set up camp:

Three hours later, we came to the turn off for Gold Rock Ranch, our first stop. Of course, it’s a mile off the road, on another stretch of sand. Just the thing to get us hungry for the spaghetti dinner at the other end. In Illinois, someone would have put down a layer of oil and made a proper surface with the road, but the desert is run by hippies who wouldn’t think that was cool. Of course, these hippies all have dune buggies and dirt bikes, so I think they have a hidden agenda.

After dinner I grabbed a shower for a dollar – had to have quarters… Thanks to the support team I was set. Luckily I took one early, because someone flushed a towel down a toilet and the whole plumbing system went nuts and they had to shut down the bathrooms. That left 200 people with one bathroom in the main office building. Camping is fun!

Next, there was a campfire where we burned the slowest child on the ride and his spirit was released to the heavens:

Seemed a little harsh to me, but hey, it’s the desert, man. Things are tough out here.

I had fun with the campfire light:

Then we raved til dawn. It’s pretty much the same as Burning Man.

Click here for more pictures from Day 1.

Rode 30

15% sand

Gusty winds

Sand everywhere

200 people

1 bathroom

Mythical sleep

Get up

Ride 54

Here are WAY too many pictures from our trip:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7
Yes, I know how to delete pictures, but I just can’t! I’ve been hanging out with librarians too long to destroy cultural value!

As you can see if you visit the photos site, we’ve got a new camera and a 1G card, so I’ve been playing with it a lot.  Mark has the same Canon Rebel, but in film format with all kinds of cool lenses that also work on my camera.  We played around with these all morning.  We are dorks.

Nathan woke up at some point and became a photo model.  And dog toy:

Ok, there’s “liking” dogs:

and “LIKING” dogs:

“What?!?  This is how he hugs!”

Never do something like this when I have a camera and a blog.  🙂

I can’t stop!

So, Blogosphere?  Is it wrong for a man to…  😉

Mark’s gonna kick my butt.  Thankfully, we only see each other every 15 years, so I can take Tai Kwan Do or something by then.

We went to take in some of the sights of Philly.  First stop at South Street:

Why don’t they heat the East Coast?  We needed to stop for strength:

MMMMmmmmm!

Gotta love a samwich with neon stuff in it.  Actually, it was great.  We learned that Cheez Wiz is the proper cheese to get on a Philly Cheese Steak.  We went with the provalone.

Apparently Mark is funny, because I think Nathan is laughing.  I’m sure it is at me.

He’s trying hard NOT too, but Mark’s just too darn funny when he’s making fun of me.  Too bad I don’t have incriminating pictures of him with dogs.

Here I think forward in time to when I will blog about my buddy Mark:

Actually, I’m just enthralled by the selection of crepes.

This is Ben Franklin’s house:

Ok, it MIGHT be.  It looks old and stuff.  ACTUALLY finding Ben’s house might have been work.  Ben DID live in Philly, right?

Guy on a horse:

This was at the Rocky I – IV memorial building.  Up there on the steps is where the Rocky statues isn’t anymore.

Hi Jacob!

WK buddy Jacob Beach met us for lunch at Penn Station.  Dig the tie!

The plan for the day was to train down to Philly to meet up with my old college buddy Mark Fischer.  After riding the rails, then the light rails, Mark picked us up at Norristown:

ALL the chicks wanted this dude.  Yeah, him.  Wait til you see what he does with dogs…

Mark’s son Lucas and wife Lisa (you figure out which is which):

We started with a nice breakfast at a place Tad recommended (can’t remember the name):

Which led to the inevitable knife fight:

I won but I STILL had to pay.

Our hotel was right across the street from the Natural History Museum, so that’s where we headed next.

This is the Milky Way.  Or something:

This is the lung from a dinosaur who smoked to much.  They all did, hence the extinction:

There were many dioramas.  Diorami?  Shadowboxes.

This specimen wall was really neat:

I’m proud of this picture.  The room was very dark, simulating being under water.  Which was cool until they removed all the air and everyone suffocated.  Not really.  I had to dink with the exposure settings and make the camera really still on a bannister to make this work.  My 10 yr old could do it with a tripod.

We weren’t sure why there were exhibits from the movie Aliens, but hey, that’s part of Nature too:

Here’s a picture where I did NOT master the art of keeping the camera still.

This is here to make you even more impressed that I got the whale shot above.  Impressed?  So is Nathan!

GAMERA!!!!!

Highlight of the trip for me!

Ok, this one takes some explaining:

When Nathan was little, he was fascinated with dinosaurs, and would often challenge me to a dinosaur fight.  To be a dinosaur, you had to make claws with your fingers.  Since everyone knows that the Alasaurous has three claws, and the Tyrannousaurus has two, one of us would have to have three fingers out, while the other had two if we were to have a proper battle… HEY!  You’re not completely captivated by what I think is a GREAT story!?!  Neither was Nathan.  Or Elaine.  Pfft.  Since I take all the pictures, I get to say what’s interesting.  Buncha…. (Declan wanders off muttering to himself.  Does that a lot lately.)

Meanwhile, Nathan goes back on vacation:

We wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, but didn’t really want to spend the day there, so we took the FREE Staten Island ferry out and back.

We got a good view of the Lady:

Got some nice shots of the city as well:

When we got off the ferry, we passed through Battery Park:

Nathan wants one of these:

We then walked up toward Ground Zero, passing this sculpture that was pulled from the wreckage:

Then we wandered north. I was cold and bought a cool NYC toque:

Stylin’!