JP and I went to dinner with Jim at DiCicco's in lovely Old town Clovis in the 100+ degree weather. Perfect. We heard later that Ken got a flat tire on his delivery truck and he and Kim didn't make it to Clovis until 8:30 that night.
By the way, I was using the CamelBak for the first time on a ride this time and it worked out great.
The pace was much faster than I prefer when starting this ride, but I didn't want to lose sight of Jim and Jennie, so I just tucked into the back of the string as a couple other riders made some boneheaded moves, like stopping right in the middle of the road. The pace seemed to settle down SLIGHTLY as we entered the rollers. We came across Ken on the side of the road with a flat. He looked like he had everything he needed, so we just continued on. It wasn't long before he came cruising past on a short climb.
The climb up Wildcat was steep (12%), but I put it in my 27 and cruised up it. At the first rest stop at the top, I went to the sleeveless jersey even though it was still in the mid 70's. It was a nice cruise to the turn to Tollhouse (the road was closed because they were mopping up a fire, but they were letting cyclists through). The smell of smoke came to our noses every now and then.
The Tollhouse climb was a pain. My legs still felt fatigued from the Shasta climb of 6 days previous. I moved ahead of Jennie and never pulled away from her, staying about 50-100 yards ahead. It was nice to see the Forest Service "drop plane" flying around below us in the valley because it diverted my attention from the slogging I was doing. At the top of Tollhouse, where it junctions with route 168, my legs felt very sub-par and we still had more climbing to the Shaver Lake rest stop. I backed off a bit to recover and Jennie came into the rest stop with me. We didn't see Ken, so assumed he was probably on Big Creek by that time. Jim arrived shortly behind us.
Coming out of the rest stop (with Jim), we had trouble getting out because of a non-stop string of cars. We had to basically get a car to stop to let us in. We soon found out that a big rig carrying a very wide load was stopping up traffic and later learned that the rig got stuck trying to make one of the hairpins!
We were finally free of that mess and entered the Big Reek zone (partially poking fun at Big Creek and partially because of the Patiulli (sp?) oil wearing fellow that kept speeding up every time we got next to him, keeping us downwind--GAG). On the first rise after the turn-off, Jim had fallen back and Jennie was having some trouble with one of her knees (so she fell back as well). Jennie and I started the true Big Reek climb (thank God Patiulli Oil boy had dropped back by then) together. I SLOWLY went ahead, my legs not even close to how good they felt last year. I kept a moderate pace and was suprised at the amount of traffic on the road. My heartrate was spiking a bit on the steep section, so I criss-crossed the road a couple of times to get it under control. It was nice to see that first hairpin as the gradient "eased" to about 8-10%. I used the road around the lake (to lunch) to recover from the climb. Jennie was just a few minutes behind me and Jim another few behind Jennie. JP did salt tablets and I did 3 tablets plus 3 Ibuprofen. We all left for the evil Kaiser climb together.
Kaiser started out very warm as there was a tailwind. I was getting nauseous because of the salt and Ibuprofen, so I stuck with JP this time, not really able to go any faster. More traffic to deal with on this climb and we hit the top together with Jim just a couple of minutes behind looking like he was coping well. We saw Ken coming down. He was delirious as he called me "Alan." My nausea had at least gone away by now. Now what to do about my sluggish legs? Coming down, we encountered an RV (why do they allow vehicles like this on such a narrow road??). I decided to dive to the inside on one of the hairpins to pass and JP followed, but Jim played it safe and stayed back. It was nice when we finally got to the full size road section. There was a cool headwind which felt very nice as we all descended together. It was good to see bunches of people heading up. We saw Kim amongst them.
We hit the multi-climb Tamarack Ridge section--UGH. I kept tempo with Jennie on my wheel, but Jim fell back to an easier pace. I kept thinking each rise was the final climb to Tamarack, but NOOOOO. It was messing with my head, and my comments were messing with Jennie's head. I must say, JP was very patient with my rantings. We had to climb about 4 hills before getting to the "top."
After a fun descent with more of the cool headwind we made the slog/grind/ouch up to the 2nd to last rest stop in Shaver again. I ate, took more salt tablets, applied sunblock, filled up CamelBak with ice, drank much and finally left with JP and Jim (who was not far behind us at this stop).
The section between Shaver Lake and the Auberry road turn off is a fun roller-coaster like descent complete with banked turns. We all had a blast tucked onto JP's wheel going through this stretch. We tried to let our momentum get us up that first little rise, which happens immediately when you make the right turn, but we had to "dodge" a van that was nearly blocking our path to the road, so it was a grind up it--OWCH.
We rolled through the rollers along here and were joined by "Alan" who Jennie had ridden with on her Europe trip. Meanwhile the temps were beginning to "hot up". We did the descent into Auberry on some recently chip-sealed roads, so we had to take it fairly easy on the turns. We had stretches now where the temp was overwhelmingly hot and I just sucked on my Camelbak and took drinks of Gatorade. I also bugged Jennie and Jim about drinking. My watch read 110 degrees.
We made the turn towards Millerton and did the stretch from HELL to the Millerton rest stop. I'll never understand how they could have us go so long in the heat without placing another water stop along the way! Jim was asking where the rest stop was. I was now totally dry, but felt OK and Jennie and Jim both seemed to be doing OK.
We made it to the rest stop and I focused on drinking and drinking and wet towels and popsicles. I felt good. The Camelbak had done it's job. Climb to Kaiser would be a success this year. Mentally I was very good. and it was also great to see that both JP and Jim were doing fine. JP tried to steal one of the wet towels, but she was caught red-handed as she was about to leave. My watch read 105 degrees.
We cruised the last stretch together with Jennie towing us until we got to the roller from hell. Last year, I remember suffering horribly on this roller. It seems like it's done, but it still goes on....Jennie pushed over it with me suffering on her wheel. Jim smartly stayed back to watch us hurt each other. We cruised the flat sections from there as Jennie looked like she was feeling it a bit (and I was feeling decent), so I took over the towing. Through the orchards, my watch read 98 degrees.
We finished with a time of 11:47. Jim was about 5-10 minutes back. We all felt good, had our appetites and were coherent. Camelbak is gooood.
About 30 minutes later, here comes Ken riding across the grass from the wrong direction looking like he was beyond fried. He took a wrong turn and got lost in Clovis suburbia hell. He just lay down and his legs started cramping. We got ice and water for him and once he could actually stand, he had to be helped to get to the bathroom. Much later he got a massage and seemed better for it. He said that this was the worst he's ever felt on a ride. Hmmmm. Where have I heard that before??
Me, Jim and Jennie all went out to the Old Spaghetti factory for our second meal of the evening and went back to the house and crashed.
This C2K was successful.
Much thanks to Jim and his sister-in-law, Yvonne for letting us stay at her beautiful house for Saturday night.
Thanks for reading.