as it was, the ride

Thursday:
Leave for Hanover. Realize about two hours afterwards that I've forgotten any sort of camera besides my phone. Consider turning around; quash that. Consider buying another camera; quash that eventually, although it takes about 24 hours and a good look at my bank balance. Give up and decide to count on the shutterbuggery of others. (As it turns out, this doesn't work so well when you're riding with people who mostly don't know you, and therefore don't take your picture so much.)

Friday:
Leave Hanover for Baltimore; rendezvous with Sarah and Wayne in Catonsville around noon. Run for snacks, move all my crap to their car, move my bike to their car. Discover that Scott, the planned fourth passenger in the car, is in Connecticut (instead of just outside of Baltimore, as previously planned); make a strategic decision that he can drive his own self to Rehoboth Beach and hit the road. Eventually find the Sea Esta IV motel, get the room, chuck crap in room, and flop on beds. Realize that we're late for the ride dinner, get back up off beds, and realize that none of us know where the hell it is. Sarah thinks to ask the desk attendant, who is the knowledgeable one. Off we go. It's in a church that looks like an elementary school inside. We miss most of the dedicationy stuff, and are not sad. Grab our registration packets, eat some pizza, hobnob a bit with folks on the team (none of whom I know particularly well, so my hobnobbing is pretty limited). Collect a spare pizza for Scott (who has just arrived in Rehoboth, but is too late to come to the church), collect some beer from a conveniently located liquor store, and head back to the hotel. Hang out and chat with Scott for a while, then try to sleep.

Saturday:
Give up on sleeping some time before 6am. Make the coffee left in the room, discover that it tastes like wet cardboard, sigh mightily. Chuck everything back in the car and head back to the church, where the ride starts. Flap around for a hour or so getting bikes situated (whoops, my front brakes are completely nonfunctional–better fix that), riding gear adjusted (Wayne's gloves are AWOL, but I have a spare pair), breakfast consumed (I ate fruit!), the car off to the driveway that it'll live in for the next couple days, and figuring out where the hell we're supposed to meet up to start everything. Team picture is taken; I am one of the few people not wearing a team jersey because I guessed wrong on the size and it fits me like a sausage casing. More flapping around and holy crap, we're leaving. It takes a while to funnel a couple hundred riders out of the church parking lot and down to the highway (with a bike lane!), so we're quite the procession. It's pretty much the last time we're all going to be clumped up like this, but it's a fun, eventful feeling sort of procession. 100 miles to go.

The day blurs together into a series of mostly back roads, all very flat. (This is not a bad thing.) Killer headwinds pop up randomly; this becomes significantly more sucky as the day wears on. Lots of rest stops with lots of food, every fifteen to twenty miles or so. Ride ride ride. Lots of chicken farms in Delaware, all of which smell bad (but not as bad as the decomposing opossumish thing on the side of the road, which made me have to rinse out my mouth after we passed it). I ride with Sarah for a while, Wayne for a while, by myself for a while, with random strangers for a while, mix and repeat. The socializing is nice, but staying at a pace that feels comfortable seems more important, so that's what I do. Manage to only get mildly lost a couple times, and only very briefly, thanks to to the superhuman efforts of various volunteers marshaling the course. Just keep riding. (Best to not look at the cycle computer, because the odometer tells evil lies.)

After about ten hours total (with five? six? rest and refueling stops) I'm towing Wayne (who is on an overgeared single speed) and Sarah; or they're just letting me ride in front because I'm the biggest breaker for the now constant headwind. We pass cheering riders on the side of the road, and holy crap, there's Chesapeake College. We're done for the day. We flop on the lawn and contemplate our disgusting coatings of sweat, salt, and grime. I feel surprisingly good – my hands and feet are numb, and my ass is sore, but my legs feel fine and I'm not nearly as destroyed as I thought I'd be after 100 miles. Wayne, who tore a calf muscle three months back, is not as chipper. After some deliberation, and some amazingly nice offers of car-fetching from some of the non-riding members of the team, he decides that he'll forego the 40 miles remaining in favor of driving a support vehicle and being more likely to be able to walk properly in the next few weeks. Dinner is had, shower is had (oh, blessed shower!), and I pick my sleeping spot in the gym. The gym is warm, and not at all dark. I've sunburnt the crap out of my arms, and they won't stop reminding me about it.

Sunday:
Give up on sleeping some time before 7am. Wander off to the bathroom, notice it's raining. Pack up my pad and bag, wander over to breakfast, discover it's raining even harder. Also discover the difference between "water resistant" and "water proof", and where my jacket falls on that continuum. I'm soaked by the time we all climb onto the buses that'll take us across the Bay Bridge (which we're not allowed to ride across, a fact that seemed terribly unjust earlier in the weekend but not so bad now). The rain has slowed a bit by the time we all unload, get our bikes, and get back to riding. My hands are unhappy in just about every position I can put them, but everything else is doing okay. I decide that the best thing I can do for my hands is to get off the bike sooner rather than later, so I push my pace a bit more than the previous day. The rain stops pretty quickly, and we're routed onto the super-nice bike trails that apparently connect Baltimore to Annapolis and BWI. (I don't have a map, so I'm going on hearsay.) The trails continue for most of the way until we get into Baltimore proper-ish (again, no map), when we're back onto surface streets (which are mostly deserted). The rain has played hell with the route markings painted onto the roads, and I give up on the go fast idea in favor of letting other people navigate for me (or at least in favor of getting lost in a group). We go through Federal Hill in Baltimore (among other neighborhoods that I didn't ask the name of), and presto, there's the Inner Harbor, and we're almost done. Only a few miles to go.

The ride reassembles at the Inner Harbor rest stop so we can ride to the Moveable Feast headquarters in one big sweaty happy group. Lots more turns that I don't have to remember, ending with cheering crowds lined up for a block before the Moveable Feast building. I'm about ready to cry, but thankfully keep it together and avoid a messy ride-ending pileup. Teresa and Beth have come from Hanover to cheer for me at the finish, and I'm all ready to cry again. We hand off our bikes, head upstairs, and get fed one more time. The post-ride thanking is done, I'm doing lots of clapping with hands I can't feel so well, and then it's over. The team (most of the team) gets together a few hours later for dinner; Sarah and Wayne and I spend some time Monday with breakfast and visits to some of the team sponsors to thank them with moneys (Wayne bought a bike! I bought some books and some socks), and then I'm back on the road, back to Pittsburgh.

It's a week later now. My hands aren't completely back to normal (although I was doing yard duty today, so it's hard to tell what's from the ride and what's from the string trimmer and hedge shears), and my right foot is still a bit asleep-feeling, but overall I feel pretty good. I've certainly felt worse after long motorcycle trips. I did get to feeling a bit stiff come Wednesday or so, which dashes any ideas of leg immortality I might've had, but like I said, pretty good. My sunburn has started to peel, and I think I'll be gross like that for at least a few more days if I'm lucky.

Frankly, I was (and am) more of a mess mentally than physically. It's hard to come out of something where you feel like you're doing heroic and noble things to go back to the day to day routine, back to the messy house and the job I hate. (But back to my sweetie, which was very very excellent.) It makes me question whether I'm doing good things, the right thing, whatever that is. I wish I knew. I know I like the feeling of doing good things, though, and I'm pretty sure I'll be doing the Ride again next year. Maybe faster next time.

curse you, mother nature

Weather forecasters say there's over 50% chance of thunderstorms everywhere I'm going to be over the next three days. Fabulous. This should make the ride exciting.

how much is enough?

Back when I started thinking about doing rides long enough to require some sort of training, I figured I should finally break down and get some sort of cyclocomputer, after many, many years of resisting any quantification of my bikey efforts. After a couple months, I'm almost at the 500 mile mark, mostly due to training efforts for the RFTF. With a few days left before the ride, I wish I'd ridden five more miles (or remembered to stick the stupid thing on the bike a few more times). Is 500 miles enough training? I guess I'm going to find out pretty soon.