Day, the Second (aka The First Day of Actual Pain and Agony)

Last year, Ken and I ran into some problems with the alarm clock in our room. Not this year; We never set it! There was no need to because bikers were up and skittering down the hall in their stiff weirdish biking shoes by 4:45 am.

Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click

It sounded like a stampede at a stiletto convention.



See, bike shoes have those little, noisy metal thingies sticking out of them. That's because really crazy, gung-ho brave and up-to-date bikers use those shoes to clip right onto their special pedals. Presumably this increases efficiency in riding because you can pull up on a pedal as well as push down. Ken and I do not wear special shoes...come on now, just knowing we're wearing padded spandex shorts is quite enough weirdness for us!

Ken and I dragged ourselves bounced out of bed and quickly dressed and packed. We hauled our luggage out to the Range Rover, which was parked right in front of the hotel, and tossed it in. Once again, hurrah for the Loan Rangers because everyone else had to haul their luggage onto a shuttle and then haul it up to another lodge before they could load it on a truck! We shuttled to the upper lodge and went in for our free breakfast.

The dining rooms were loud and crowded and immensely colorful with all those crazy bike jerseys. It was serious sensory overload! Consequently, we both withdrew into our own little brainworlds and got our food. Oh praise God for good coffee! Unfortunately, I was only allowing myself 1 cup. The first leg of the ride was 24 miles and I didn't want to be making multiple bladder stops! (Not to mention the fact - which is stupid to say because I AM mentioning it - that I had already downed about 32 ounces of water in an attempt to prehydrate myself for the ride.)

I seem to recall the scrambled eggs being very good. That's quite a feat since I don't like scrambled eggs! There was also bacon and homefries and oatmeal and bagels and muffins and cereal and yogurt and all manner of fresh fruit and juices and milks and, of course, the aforementioned coffee of goodness. As a matter of fact, the whole Trek was a continual feast of wonderful foods. Our friend JB, who has ridden in 18 Treks, has redubbed the event "The Snack Across Maine". :-D

The trick is to eat enough in quality and quantity to meet your body's energy requirements without overloading your digestive system and making yourself ill. I'm proud to say that I did quite well on this front. I did not overeat and I did eat enough. Huzzah!

After the meal, we headed down for a potty break and then to find our bikes. Now THIS was a challenge! While we had been working on registering hundreds of Trekkers, our fellow Ranger, BigGuy was kind enough to deliver our bikes to the storage compound for us. The security dude let us into the building and HOLY MOLY, BATMAN were there alot of bikes in there. HUNDREDS of bikes. HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of bikes. ALMOST 2,000 BIKES! And we had absolutely no idea where ours were! It kinda looked like this except there was the added challenge of hunting inside through 600 6 or 7 rooms in bad lighting.



We had to systematically scan one room at a time, looking and looking and looking and looking. It took us a good 1/2 hour to locate our rides!

Next (after some deep breathing), I took another potty break. Then Ken and I joined up with our teammates and filled our water bottles and filled our tires and tweaked our cycles and paced impatiently. For safety's sake they would only release 50 riders at a time from the starting line. The Rangers queued up behind 100 or so other folks and chafed and laughed nervously and made lame jokes and compared handlebars and...I had to pee again. Oh well, no time to go now. The groups ahead of us were taking off!

Now it was our turn to listen to Ed Miller (Chef Executive High Muckety-Muck of ALAME) give us the safety spiel. The main gist of it was "Be careful! Don't run into another biker!" He also suggested that it would be terribly embarassing to wreck in the midst of a pack of riders in the first few hundred feet. As one who has never before ridden in a crowd, this was my worst fear. Here's a pic of our team all wadded up at the start line:



Thankfully, our team moved out smoothly and started the glide down the mountain. That's right, Down the mountain. For THREE miles! It was a chilly way to start, but we warmed up quickly once we hit the bottom and started pedaling. I wasn't as cold as some of the other folk because I was wearing an extra shirt. As some of you will recall, I am very sensitive to the sun. Last year, after volunteering for this very event for three days, I broke out in a horrible itchy rash. To prevent a repeat performance, Ken took me out this past Spring and we got a sun-repellent shirt from LLBean. It's much cooler than it looks and it (along with oceans of sunscreen) really did help protect me from too much sun. So, even though I looked somewhat geeky, it was worth it.

Before we'd even left the access rode for the resort, we saw medics crowded around a downed rider. Apparently he had been riding too close to his brother. They touched wheels and he flew off and landed on his head. Good thing they require helmets! We saw him at supper later that evening with a big ole cast on his arm (cracked elbow) and some serious "road rash" on his face. He had to do the rest of his riding in a van.

Other than that, the first leg to Rest Stop 1 was uneventful. The riding was fairly easy, mostly downhill or up gentle grades. My hands were already bothering me, but I was doing OK...a little on the slow side maybe, but OK. Well, maybe ALOT on the slow side. The phrase I most often heard (and that punctuated my sleep that night) was, "On your left!" That's what a passing biker is supposed to holler to slower bikers when they pass them. Bikes are much quieter than cars. If riders don't shout out a warning, you won't know they're there and could swerve out in front of them. Since they often passed in groups of 5 or 6 (Though none of them were drafting. Drafting is anathema and I saw absolutely No ONE drafting at any time. Yeah, right...), a mishap could cause several folks to go down. Hence, I heard, "On your Left!" quite often. Quite, QUITE often.

"On your left!" Once in a while someone would break up the monotony by ringing their bell or shouting a cheerful "Good Morning!" but it all meant the same thing: Sherry may be Groovy, but she is also slow!

That's alright, though. I determined that I would not let it bother me. If I was going to finish the course, I would need to do it at my pace. "Slow and steady wins the race" and all that.

Ken rode wth me for a while, then took off ahead. I'd putz along and he'd get worried and circle round to find me again. He probably rode 5 miles for every 4 I rode. What a sweetie!

Other than my hand issues, I did fine through to Rest Stop 2... Oh wait, lemme tell you about the Rest Stops. They were incredible! They set up port-o-lets for the riders (very important!) and a food/beverage tent (even more important) where the Trekkers could refresh themselves. The amount of food and drink was simply astounding. There was water, vitamin water, Gatorade, soda, and bottled teas. There were chips and pretzels and trail mix (my favorite!), scads of fresh fruit and baby carrots, Power Bars, small chocolate bars, cheese/PB crackers and, at the second stop each day, peanut butter sandwiches. There was also a board where each Trekker had to sign in that they had arrived and a table full of essentials like sunscreen, aloe vera, insect repellent, band-aids and antibiotic ointment, eye-glass cleaner, paper towels, Bag Balm ( for sore bums), and huge bottles of every analgesic known to Western Civilization.

I'm telling you, they REALLY take care of the riders!

At any rate, by Rest Stop 2 we had ridden 42 miles. I was tired,but still feeling capable. That's when everyone started talking about The Hill. They were sitting in the shade and dreading The Hill. Or they were gnawing on peanut butter and remembering The Hill from last year. Or they were waiting in the potty line and lamenting that The Hill was coming. To hear them all talk you would have thought it was the hill to end all hills.

It was.

Picture a road running up the side of this mountain and you'll get the picture:



Ok, ok...maybe it wasn't quite THAT bad, but it felt that bad after 45 miles of riding! In reality, the incline ascended over 500 feet in about 1.5 miles of continuous cranking.

It. was. gruesome. At one point I got off and walked my bike for a while. I was walking faster than many folks were riding! I think I even got to say "On your left!" once or twice. Others got off and rested part way up before finishing the climb. And finishing it took forever because every time you thought you were near the top...you weren't. The Hill, she went on and on and on and on and on!

But when it was over - when I finally crested the top - Oh the glory! The downhill run was steep and looooooooooooong and absolutely the funnest ride I've ever had in my life. The ALA had put up signs that said, "Steep grade, use brakes". I said, "I don't think so!!" and just FLEW. Luckily I had been going so slow before the dowhill that there was pretty much no one in front of me. Luckily too, I was able to skillfully maneuver around all the road cracks and potholes and thereby avoiding death and maiming. (This past winter was hard on the ole roads; They're in awful shape!)

After that though, things started getting harder for me. I was sweaty, my legs felt like lead, both my hands and wrists were in pain and my butt hurt. Ken kept checking on me, but I assured him I'd be OK. I'd finish the ride, but at my own pace.

And I did. I was never so happy to see a bunch of cheering hula dancers at the finish than I was that day after 65 miles! They immediately shooed us under a big tent for baked potatoes (surprisingly good). Then we found our dorm rooms. The Range Rovers (our team's support crew) had already deposited our luggage in our room and had put mints on our beds along with some encouraging notes.

I ran for a shower and Ken took a nap, then we traded. My wrists were pretty uncomfortable, so I iced them for quite a while.

Not much left of that day...We went to supper and hung out with JB and his teens and EarlyBird and MellowMan instead of eating with the team. I don't much remember the food, I just remember that we were sitting infront of an air duct and I was freezing! This dining hall's most popular attraction was the ice cream, but I was more interested in some coffee to warm me up. There wasn't any.

Sigh.

Ken thought I was acting a bit dazed and "out of it", so after a short walk around the campus, he took me back to the dorm and this groovy gal went to bed at 7pm. And she didn't move again until 5am the next morning! One thing I can say for the college we stayed at - the dorms are dives, but the beds were VERY comfortable!

And thus ends Day The Second of the Trek.

Tune in next time when you'll hear Sherry say, "Are we there yet?"