Category: AIDS/Lifecycle 2018

As I mentioned in my previous blog from Day 3, I woke up to a bit of a surprise. I was well rested and ready to take on the day. Got 7.5 hours of sleep, which was record-setting for the week. Got up, got around and packed, Munoz and I got on the shuttle from the hotel back to camp to have breakfast and for the first time in days, I felt really good.

Well, I felt really good until it was time to roll out. I got to bike parking and my front tire was flat. I’m talkin’ all the air was gone, hanging off the rim, sealant all over the grass, flat. Never fear, though. I had a spare tube! I rolled my bike over to the mechanic tent for them to work on it for me and after about 10 minutes realized that the tube I’d bought didn’t include a stem long enough to work. The mechanic had to sell me a tube they had on hand for a swap out. My friends were patient and kind enough to wait for me to get my bike fixed up and then we rolled out. Wasn’t the best way to start the day – kinda killed the momentum. One thing I did appreciate though – even though the previous night was a rough with my disagreement with Munoz, he cared and waited for me. Part of me wished he wouldn’t have because I felt I didn’t deserve such kindness after how I’d talked to him, but another part felt so appreciative that he didn’t just abandon me to ride on my own. Anyhow, I got my life together and got rolling.

This day had another emotional moment – the halfway point! As you can assume, this is Day 4 of a seven day ride, which means the halfway point hits somewhat early in the day (before lunch). The ALC folks do a great job making this feel awesome. I climbed a hill and at the top was an AMAZING California view. That’s where I took a moment to take some photos with “HALFWAY TO LA” signs. Of course, trying to plan that out to get everyone together isn’t that easy lol. Everyone rides at a different pace and so meeting up can be a challenge. Again, luckily is was early enough in the day that most everyone is still pretty close together. However, since we’re out in the middle of nowhere, phone/data service is very shotty. Text messages don’t go through and actually phone calls follow suit. The halfway point is a bit of chaos, too – everyone is trying to get their friends together to take pics. After some work, we figured it out.

There is a really steep/fun downhill that runs for a solid 10 miles. You have to be really careful because you can really get some speed, but has some amazing views that you get to enjoy – just have to watch out for that crosswind! Unfortunately, someone got hurt at the top of the hill as they got started. They literally went down, and a couple of other cyclists did too. The rider had to be air-lifted out. It was scary – my clan had just made it down the hill and were taking more pics when we saw an ambulance going back up the hill; we knew that wasn’t good.

Later in the day at lunch, my friends noticed my cleats were worn way down on my shoes. I’ve not ever changed out a cleat before, so decided that I should wait until I’m back at camp so as to not waste too much time since it wasn’t totally worn away yet. That was one of the best decisions I made for the week, because swapping out my cleat on the morning of Day 5 turned out to be pretty interesting…

Woke up this morning at 4am feeling pretty good. While a bit tired, I think the adrenaline is what really woke me up since this is the first morning in a tent. The mattress pad I bought did the trick. It lost a little bit of air overnight, but the valve was right next to my head and I was able to easily air it back up without even getting up! #lazy

I’m realizing now I haven’t actually done a good job packing my bag. As someone that prides himself in organization, it was not near as organized as I thought. My gear bag as become a swimming pool of clothes in ziplock bags, which is fine and I followed instructions. What I did NOT do a good job of was putting together the other things I would need each morning. Toothbrush, suntan lotion, GoPro batteries, etc. – which means I will spend too much time trying to get this stuff together. As my tent mate Munoz would say, I have a difficult time ‘getting my life together’…

Made it to breakfast on time, and boy are the food options good. There is so much there; if you can’t find something to eat you’re doing it wrong. The entire time I’m thinking to myself, I hope I didn’t get a ticket yesterday. You see, I also pride myself as one that follows the rules – especially when it comes to safety. On Day 1, I didn’t realize I was breaking a big rule – which is to look over your shoulder for traffic before passing another cyclist. For those of you that don’t know, I’m extremely auditory. I hear the strangest things at long distances (yes I know, half the time I don’t hear what you’re saying when you’re sitting right in front of me, but just go with me here). So what that means for me when I ride: I can always tell when a car is coming. I hear the tires/engine and what-not, so often times on Day 1, I used my ears instead of my eyes. A few of my friends called me out on this just as I made a dangerous passing without looking AND one of the event cars was the car that could have hit me if they weren’t paying attention. Now I am convinced that I’m going to get a ticket.

When you get at ticket, they pull your bike from bike parking and hold it in what everyone calls “bike jail”. You have to go and talk to them, find out what you did wrong, then they will give you your bike back. If you break the same rule another day, your bike is pulled for the whole day (you can’t ride). If you break that rule again then you’re done for the week. I certainly didn’t want to start off that way, so as you can imagine, my mind was in another place all through breakfast.

Lucky for me, I got to bike parking and I didn’t have a ticket – but the bike next to me got pulled. It’s all done by number, so technically they got it right – however, what’s ironic is that they pulled my friend that told me I was breaking the rules. Sorry, Daniel *shrug emoji goes here*.

As soon as we got ready to roll out, and I tapped my booty on the seat, I realized how tender I was and thought ‘oh boy, that’s sore’. I don’t think I’ve ever been that sore. I found a way to adjust and get comfortable and rolled out for the 109 mi ride day. While I didn’t do horrible, I certainly wasn’t pumped about how the day went. I’m still not figuring out how to stay ahead of the day and not be too far back. Almost every rest stop I get to, I only have 30-40 min to snack, use the bathroom, rest, and get moving again. Don’t get it twisted, I’m doing better than a lot of folks but just not as well as I would have liked.

This was the day of the Otter Pop Stop, which is an un-official rest stop. I was so sad that I only got to spend about 20-30 minutes here, because it was one of the ‘party’ stops where there is music, people dancing, and they hand out those little frozen ice popsicles you cut open with scissors. This is one of my first performance regrets of the week. Everyone is having so much fun, and started the fun before I did.

I finished the day, and again felt accomplished. Now I’m thinking it’s time to rinse and repeat: set up tent, shower, and eat dinner. However, my tent mate made it to camp faster than me, and he texted me when I was about 30 minutes from camp to tell me he already set up the tent for us. Talk about an awesome dude! The rest of the evening becomes fuzzy. I’m exhausted mentally and physically. I notice that everyone else seems to be in good spirits. I’m not in bad spirits, but I just don’t know where everyone is getting their energy from. I trained well for this ride and this was a long day, but I’m figuring out I’m not doing something quite right.

Intro: This (and the other posts about days on the ride) are look-backs. I actually took my iPad and a durable keyboard to blog each evening from my tent. Can I just say that idea was precious? It really was cute wasn’t it? There was no way in HECK that was going to happen. After you read these blogs in order, I think you’ll understand why. Oh, and disclosure. This entry is LONG. Lots of things going through my mind on Day 1.

Day 0.9 – I didn’t sleep well the last night before the ride. I laid in bed with my best friend, Strobl. I laid there fighting back the feels that wanted so badly to show themselves. I’d finally made it to the night before the ride. I was in San Francisco in a hotel with my best friends, ready for the ride. It’s after 11pm and I still can’t get to sleep because I’m on the verge of losing it. My breathing gets difficult because every time I start to breathe in, I feel like I’m gong to cry. Strobl asks if I’m okay after hearing my breathing a few times and I tell him yeah, and that I’m just really happy and I’m glad he’s there to go through this exciting, life-changing adventure with me. He agrees, also saying he’s fighting the feels and says that he’s really proud of us and we’re going to do great. I agree with him, but it’s still so hard to relax. Eventually, I roll over and fall asleep.

Day 1 – It’s 4am and time to wake up. For those of you following along at home, I hate waking up early. No really, I hate it. My body is like, ‘no thanks Josh’. Little did I know I’d be waking up at 4am every day for the rest of the week. Clearly I didn’t think that part all the way through, but it’s a little too late to worry about that now.

I wake up, and start getting around. I wake up Strobl and attempt to wake up Munoz. Munoz loves his sleep a little more than I thought he did. He continued to snooze until he really had to get up. I’ll tell you though, that guy knows how to get himself together in the morning with very little time. It’s impressive to watch and it’s something I saw over and over throughout the week. The three of us and another friend get our lives together, check out of the hotel, call an Uber, take a pic and roll to Cow Palace. As we approach Cow Palace the driver starts to ask what we are doing and we explain the ride to him. This was a very exciting explanation and a story we would tell over and over and over throughout the week. Talk about an easy way to generate awareness! We get to the parking lot and it feels like organized chaos. The ALC workers and volunteers know exactly what everyone should be doing but those Uber drivers and other newbies (like me) sure don’t lol. Ariana Grande’s brother was in the Uber in front of us – so that was interesting to see him climb out of that van and realize he’s also doing the ride.

We get our gear out of the Uber, walk to the gear trucks for the first of many times that week, dropped our gear at the gear truck and headed to get breakfast and attend the opening ceremony. We were running around with our heads cut off and walked in just as the opening ceremony started, which was perfect timing. We found the rest of our team. Finding them was really cool – it was like finding your family clear across the country. I felt relaxed for the first time all morning. The ceremony ended, the organizers opened the ride route and cyclists started to head to bike parking for their bikes. Others, like us, made one last minute pit stop before rolling out. We did our best to stay together (Arkansas friends from Team Walmart) and we rolled out together. We were towards the back of all cyclists when we rolled out. I ran my GoPro and can’t wait to share that footage with you.

Rolling out of the starting line was like something out of a movie. The cheering, signs, smiles, positivity – it’s something I’ve never experienced in my life. It was like being on stage. I’ve always been a watcher. I’ve been the one that is outside the barricade, waving at people as they went by – but this time, I’m the guy getting the waves and cheers. Everything looks different from this perspective, much more so than I thought it would. While it was so exhilarating, it was also surreal. I knew I was in the right place but still had a hard time believing we were finally doing it. When we started down the street and the crowds thinned out, all I could do was lock in my smile and look at my other cyclists from my team. We were doing it!

I’m pretty sure adrenaline kept me going the first 10-20 miles. I hadn’t ridden my road bike in over two weeks, and it was effortless. Then came the ocean views. Much of Day 1 was on HWY 1 which runs down the beach. It was absolutely breath-taking and beautiful. Views that I would not get tired of all week; and dare I say, may have taken for granted in the middle of the week as I tried to keep good time and get through all the hilly miles.

Lunch was at the top of an overlook out onto a beach. All of Team Walmart got there about the same time. We were all wearing our Walmart kits, sitting together, talking about the day so far. It was a really neat time and one of the only times the entire team was together that week. I think forcing everyone to start at the same time that morning helped keep us together on Day 1.

I got to camp that evening, closed out my Strava and feel so accomplished. I made it through Day 1. In that moment I’m trying not to think too much about Day 2,3,4,5,6 and 7 at this point although a slight feeling of being overwhelmed enters my body and quickly leaves. Honestly there isn’t much time to be stressed about riding, there is so much to do! We get to camp, get our gear bag and tent to set up camp. Camp is HUGE. Of course with over 2,300 riders (two to a tent) that makes for a big field of tents. Each of us is assigned a letter which corresponds to the truck where we get our gear and the tent grid where we pitch our tent. I was L7 for the week so I visited the L truck and camped in row L on the tent grid. VERY organized but of course it has to be with this many folks. Once the tent is up, we debate at length if we should eat or shower first. Taking showers first won (thank goodness).

Once I’m all relaxed, I met another rider and chatted with him at his tent a bit. Really nice guy named Michael – he’s the first person I really met and we continued to chat on and off throughout the week, but only on text message. He’d done the ride multiple years which I thought was really cool for as young as he was…pretty sure he was in his late 20s and had ridden 6 years in a row.

The anticipation for Day 2 didn’t let me get to sleep that early. I think I laid down to relax in the 10:30-11pm timeframe. That was par for the course all week long, though this may have been one of my ‘early’ nights, believe it or not. My tent mate, Munoz, is really awesome. It wasn’t obvious this early in the week, but this dude only gets more awesome as the week goes on.