Hello Bike Ridin' Guys Watchers,
Yesterday started out with High hopes. The guys were up at the crack of 9am after a restless sleep at the Lamplighter Motel. (See attached photo). They decided to upgrade to the executive suite -- a working toilet and a humming fluorescent tube above the sink. Clay's got a theory about where they store the pinto beans until they are needed for the frijoles based on his experience with the lumpy mattress.
Mornings can be chilly so they decided to give the sun a chance to warm things up before they headed out -- but not before downing a hearty breakfast burrito. By late morning they'd covered about thirty miles. Clay set a brisk pace and they averaged 19 MPH -- an aggressive start. Pat sent pictures of the miles and miles of strawberry fields and grape vineyards. They were on the El Camino Real the whole way -- the inland north-south corridor running down California's rich fertile valleys. Pat texted that it was the most wonderful day he's had since retiring. But you know how things can change suddenly...
I got a call sometime in the early afternoon asking if I could google a bike shop in King City. No bike shop in King City or any place near King City. Turns out that Pat broke his shoe. Now might be a good time to discuss equipment. Biking, like so many sports has its own aggregate of appropriate clothes, protective wear and general gear. For instance, Pat and Clay bought special biking shorts that have 2 pounds of gel quilted into the bottom. After 6-8 hours on that little peninsula of a seat, you are mighty grateful you bought the "good shorts". Think Dr. Scholls for your bottom and you won't be far off. They were decidedly "gellin'" You may have noticed in the pictures that Pat has no problem with the bright colored clothes bikers wear. This was not always the case. In the beginning he shied away from the tights and jersey look, but now he loves nothing more than getting new biking duds- the louder the better. Last month we stopped in Vail, CO where he purchased his latest jersey. It was signed by the artist and looks like a lot of graffiti scrunched into a small area to me. Chandler enlightened and alarmed when she pointed out the marijuana leaves painted all over the shirt. Pat chalks it up to poetic license and wears it proudly. 
Let's get back to Day 3. Part of the biker's equipment is the shoe. The shoe has a knob poking out of the soul which locks onto the pedal. This arrangement allows for both pulling and pushing and improves performance. What happened to poor Pat is he broke his shoe. When trying to unlock his shoe so he could put his foot down at a stop, he yanked so hard he ripped the coupling apart -- irreparably. Hence the search for a bike shop. He rode one footed for seven miles and then decided to see if they could figure something else out. In a town of 20,000 they could not find a single English speaking adult, but in front of the local grade school, with the help of a little boy, they made their needs known and hired someone to drive them the 40 miles to their night's destination.
So, just another day of surprises, some wonderful, some challenging.
The real payoff was that they ate hamburgers for dinner and slept like babies all night long.
More later,
A
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