It was great!

Okay, not all of it, but most of it was great!

The very first hill nearly knocked me out. I got nauseous, even, and that's never happened to me before. It was steep and long, definitely not the bunny slope. I actually had to stop a couple of times to get my breath, and ended up getting off the bike and walking a good distance to the top of the hill. My daughter did, too.

The route was poorly marked. I'm glad I had hand-written the directions as they were given on the Website because I had the street names in my head, and about ten miles in where a group of riders we were following went straight, I knew we had to turn, so we turned, and the whole time I was wondering if the route had been changed, were we going to get lost, would we be found - would they send a search party? Crazy, huh? Soon, though, we caught up with some others and some others caught up with us, so we were feeling better about it all when we got to the aid station.

When we got there they were nearly out of orange slices. I'm so glad you all suggested I bring bananas. We needed them. (The apples didn't fit in the handlebar pack with all the other stuff I was carrying.)

We rode on roads in the bike lane next to some heavy traffic at times. Some roads didn't have any bike path at all. I got behind my daughter - I figured the cars would have to swing way out to avoid me, so they'd for sure miss her.

At the scary busy intersections, we were lucky enough to get behind people who actually knew what they were doing, so I told Danielle to just "follow that biker guy across, just follow him." And she did.

Danielle did great. No whining. Well, not much. When we stopped at the top of a hill to eat our bananas, she said "I'm dying out here. This uphill stuff is killing me!" I asked her to stop using language like that because words have power, and I don't want to her her talking like that. "Say, this is challenging, but we're going to finish and we're going to finish strong instead."

No more whining after that. We tried to stick with other riders as much as possible the rest of the way, and as we were finishing, the people who had done the 60-mile ride were coming in, so we got to ride next to some pretty elite-looking athletes, and I was glad that Danielle had their example to follow as far as hand signals and such at the lights and turns.

It was, indeed, a skills test, and I think we both did really, really well.

I did see two jerseys I'd really like to get. One has Super Grover on it, and the other was hot pink and had a fluffy yellow chick sitting on a bike saddle, with "Biker Chick" written above it.

And next year, we'll go for the 26-mile course, if not the 50.

Woohoo!

Roxy