Ah, the blackberry pie of Santa Cruz County – this is the stuff that dreams are made of. But, more on that later.
Day one of the dream ride down the California Coast is in the bag. Suffice it to say that the first day of the Train of Pain lived up to the hype.
After much preparation – not always on the bike, an unbelievable job of organization by Carter, and a sometimes questionable assembly of the riders in San Francisco, we rolled out at 8:30 under perfect weather. Although we lost Cody for the ride at the last minute, he was replaced by Jeff – with only an hours notice, he jumped at the chance and handed his $5000.00 bike off to two complete strangers in a nondescript white van in the middle of a roadside parking lot, “see you in San Francisco”, he said, with just a touch of nervousness, as we rolled his bike away.
By Saturday evening everyone was in the hotel, their bikes ready to go – everyone with the exception of Colin. A panicked phone call earlier in the day explaining that he had missed his flight drew concern from some, and the type of cynicism that one holds for the excuses of our accused pro peloton caught red-handed with their hand in the EPO jar. Let’s just say that their were a few of us that assumed his “missed flight” was a euphemism for “I haven’t trained and needed to find a way to stop the madness”.
But come roll out time, there he was – rested, and ready. My lunch of crow went down a little rougher than I’d hoped.
San Francisco took full advantage of the positive PR that was generated through our decision to grant them “The Grand Depart”, knowing that the Bay-to-Breakers run – now in its 96th year – could never garner the numbers of participants on it’s own, they scheduled it to allow the 60,000+ runners the opportunity to experience us riding past. While this was, arguably the thrill of a life-time for them, it created a small dilemma for Dennis. As the man responsible for driving, feeding, and general corralling of all of us, he was stuck for more than two hours trying to get out of the city. The scheduled feed stop looming ever closer. For the normal man this would prove an issue, not for Dennis. As the first group approached the designated stop, a man jumped out from beside a small VW bug, waving his arms as though in mortal danger – “Are you guys the Train of Pain?”, he shouted, “Dennis called, he’s stuck in the city and told me to meet you here”. This makes our new friend Larry either a heck a nice guy, or the newest member of Half Moon Bay’s loony bin.
For the majority of the group, the rest of the day was a blistering pace down the coast; one fed by a tail wind, which made us all think we are significantly faster than reality will show us come tomorrow morning. We met up about 10-miles outside of Santa Cruz and rolled in together.
For the third group on the road, Carter, Colin, and Axe, the ride went somewhat differently. This is where the Blackberry Pie comes into play.
It seems that Colin and Cater wanted to keep Axe in the group – a project that required a good deal of patience. Over a stretch of a few miles they were forced to stop eight times to wait for him to catch up. Each stop went the same: they would roll to a stop, look back and see nothing. They would wait for a few minutes and after seeing no one on the horizon would roll down the road again – only to repeat the process after a kilometer or so. Finally, after miles of this, they approached a small convenience store and stopped for food and water. Having replenished the tank, it was back on the bikes – still no sign of Axe. About this time Dennis rolled up; he too had not seen him, but headed back the way we had come to try and find him.
Meanwhile, Colin and Carter rode for a short distance and came upon another road-side shop – this one having advertised the aforementioned Blackberry Pies. And there he was, happily shoving bite after bite of the sugary treasure down, the look of pure satisfaction reflected across his face.
From hence forth – at least until the next one of us steps forth with a story to top this - Axe is now known as Snacks, or maybe it will be Pie-Boy.
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