Hello Ladies-
As this was my 5th time on my bike (training continues to be mostly indoors for me or snow shoeing), I did the Flat Flower. I teamed up with another nice lady right at the start and we ended up being a good team. We had a hard time at the begining along with many others as the signage was terrible at the start of the Flatflower. We followed a local guy who got us on the bike trail as we found no signs to take us there. I started after the rain (7:30am) and only hit a few drips around 11am. The roads were mostly OK, but lots of just rough broken up country roads off and on. Very little traffice on the side roads and a few scary moments on the main highways. We had to stop and watch a herd of cows be worked by two amazingly talented dogs for a few minutes as the rancher was moving them across the road to another pasture. I was totally amazed by the talent of the dogs. I found the food to be OK, the signs needed to be brighter in color and they should put out a bright traffic cones at turns to catch your attention. The bike trail at the begining of the ride in town was awful as it was too crowded and I was pushed off the trail and into a shrub! I was going to hit the hard gravel on the side of the bike trail or the shrub and my biology training came in with a quick evaluation of the shrub as soft and friendly! They may want to control the flow of riders on the bike trail to make it safer. The signage was so bad we many times had to yell at people that missed turns. We took the extended scenic route and both our little bike computers showed 70.33 miles at the end. We did get some good winds after the lunch break, so the Flatflower was a little more work then I thought it would be. We did the ride in 5 hours including the very
slow town traffic coming and going out of Chico and our cow heard crossing.
I camped out in my SUV at the Fairgrounds and will definitly do it again next year. Everyone went to bed very early, the restrooms were fine and it was great to just roll out of the sleeping bag and onto the bike. I will definitly do the ride next year and hope for 70 degrees and sunny.
[B]Question.[/B] I was thinking about doing the Wine Country Century in two weeks and the Lodi Century in four weeks. Any input? I may be bring friends that are new to the sport and I want them to have a good time! Are they fun, well run rides?
Thanks....Jean