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!

It’s going to take me a while to get all the days written up.

Here is a link to all of my pictures on Flickr. 

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

Matt was kind enough to invite us to his Tacky New Year’s Eve Party.

Here’s Matt with Gabe, who is in his birthday shirt (thankfully NOT birthday suit!):

He’s my tacky date:

I thought she was kinda hot… 🙂

Matt and Megan made tacky food too! But it was classy. Pig-in-the-blanket made with hoity toity sausages, peanut butter and banana sandwiches made with caramelized bananas, tater tots, and Spam and cheese on toast. Not sure how that was classy, but it was!

We all played 90s Trivial Pursuit. As usual, Amanda was kicking everybody’s butt, but they had to leave to deal with babysitting issues, so they automatically lost! 🙂

It was a fun night. We got yelled at by some neighbors for being too loud. At 11 PM. On New Year’s Eve. Communists.

I’m a little behind on the blog because we’ve been on the road. We decided to spend Christmas in San Francisco and make the trek a road trip. The theory was that we could take our time wandering up the coast and get Nathan some much needed “behind the wheel” time for his impending drivers license.

Here’s Nathan at the steering wheel:

Nathan did a great job driving, clocking 15 – 20 hours on the trip. I’m sure he felt very fortunate to have Mom telling him what to do from the passenger seat, and Dad screaming “SLOW DOWN!!!” from the back back. Erin was in the back offering color commentary.

At some point I was told to “Zip It and Go with the Flow,” so I spent a lot of time playing CivIV and trying hard not to look out the windshield. Not an easy task for a control freak. Also, the French and English teamed up and beat me up in Civ, so I was pretty grumpy.

We stopped off in Santa Barbara to check out UCSB:

I wanted to see an neat interactive map display I’d heard about at the Library, but it wasn’t up yet. Good excuse for another road trip.

We stopped for 2 nights at Solvang, a town I’d heard about as a great biking location and the setting for the movie “Sideways.”

Here Nathan and Erin show their interest in seeing the sights (or ever getting out of a hotel room before noon):

Man, kids these days. In my day, we went out and played in the fresh air. When it wasn’t snowing, or raining, or tornadoing. On those days we played video games on proper consoles, not these tiny, dim, hand held contraptions. Well, I DID have a Merlin…

Ok, here’s the obligatory Solvang “ain’t we all Dutch and stuff” set of pictures:

Jeez! Even away from the hotel room, they gotta be pushing buttons!

More pictures from the first leg of the trip here.

On Friday, we zoomed up the coast and just made it to our 3p tour reservation for Hearst Castle. I had always wanted to see the place, AND we got a new camera for Christmas, so I was very excited to get up there and take some neat pictures:

Well, there ya go! Nice pictures, eh? NO!!! SOMEone SAID she had the camera when she had to sprint in to make sure the tour bus didn’t leave as Nathan parked. Well, SOMEone ELSE was sure he heard her say she had it. Or he was just delirious from a 3 day diet of Doritos and envisioning his fiery death on an interstate.

Here’s a link to flickr’s “hearstcastle” tag. There are 2224 pictures there. I’m sure mine would have been better. Sniff.

The mansion is wonderful! I highly recommend checking it out.

Nathan was tired from driving, and it was getting dark and foggy, so I took over the drive to San Francisco. One thing we learned on this trip is that Highway 1 is GORGEOUS during the day when there is light and it is not dark. And foggy. And wet. Sigh… It was a stressful drive, but we made it and hit the sack at the Wharf Hyatt.

The next morning we all hopped out of bed and got moving to see the sights and take advantage of as much daylight as possible!

YEAH RIGHT! For some reason, these people thought they were on vacation or something. The boy sleeps as well as he drives:

And the mom and girl are pretty good at it too:

Well, at some point, we got out to see the sights:

Erin had her first cable car ride:

I think she liked it:

Nathan really needs a haircut:

Oh, wait, that’s not him. Here he is:

We finally relented and let him get a sword. Hey, if you can drive a car, you should be allowed to hack off people’s heads, right?

He was overwhelmed by the choices:

He finally settled on a $15 Kill Bill knockoff. Now lets see if his mom ever lets him take it off the wall.

Erin also enjoyed shopping in Chinatown:

More pictures from Christmas Eve in San Francisco here.

Christmas in a Hotel!

Nathan refuses to be totally awake, but he’ll at least sit up for presents:

Erin loves manga:

Elaine gets a tiny present:

Then we headed out for the traditional Christmas meal of Dim Sum:

And got some cloudy picture from the top of the parking structure. See how happy Nathan is to be awake!

More pictures from Christmas day.

Day 3 in San Francisco

Since we’d been in SF for 3 days, and we were staying at the Wharf, we thought we should actually go look at it. This is a crappy picture, but it’s proof we were there, right?

Here we enjoy a view of the sea lions at Pier 39. I think Nathan’s yawning…

Ah, now’s he’s more awake!

Is he smiling? We’re not sure… Erin is tho!

Nathan and I always love going to see the Bushman in SF. He’s the guy on the bottom left, hiding behind a few branches waiting for people not to notice him. Then he goes “BOO!” We can watch him for hours. Here’s a picture of him with a victim:

Mom and Nathan watch the fun:

More pictures from Day 3.

We got home late on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Joe and Lorah Gross came to visit. Joe and I took a killer bike ride up some of our San Diego mountains:

Nope, that’s not Joe, but he looks a lot LIKE Joe, kinda. If I’d have been thinking, I’d have asked for a picture actually WITH Joe, but I was too tired from climbing that mountain to think. The lady with us is Grace. Oh, and the fake Joe is Jack, a buddy of Joe’s who has actually ridden the Furnace 508, which I hear is a way that bikers can add even more pain to the whole experience.

Joe took some neat pictures of us actually moving:

That’s the next cover of Bicycling Mag!!!

More pictures from this ride here.

Look what Elaine got me for my birthday! And look what it did to my hair!

She took me to Catalina on a helicopter! She looks thrilled:

Here’s the view from our room:

Here’s the view after we drank a lot:

You can kind of see the moon reflecting off of the ocean…

Click here for other pictures from this adventure.

Thanks E! Kiss Kiss! Love – D

I hate to admit how much time Elaine and I spent laughing at this site last night:

gofugyourself.typepad.com

MAJOR PET PEEVE!!!: