Wine Country Century 5/6/2006

[cindysue]

I got up at 4:35 (after hitting the snooze button). Most of my stuff was packed (or so I thought) and I headed to Starbucks. The plan was to pick up coffee for Charlize, Bekki, and I – my carpool companions. I arrived at Starbucks at 5:10 and there was a note on the door that they would open at 5:15 (15 minutes late). Not good enough! I was supposed to meet my group within the next 15 minutes or so! So, I pouted off and met Carlize in the parking lot. Bekki rolled in a few minutes later, we attached the bikes to the roof rack and off we went. No traffic at all so we arrived in Santa Rosa about 6:30. Plenty of time for a trip to Starbucks since we were meeting the rest of our crew at 7:00 am (or so we thought).

While we were in the registration line, it struck me that I had forgot my helmet (the 2nd time this year!). Fortunately, Bekki had a spare since she had just purchased a sporty new one. Thank goodness it fit. It was 7 by now, and we waited for the rest of our crew to show. Oops again. They thought we were to register by 7:30 am, not 7:00 am. It was nearly 8am by the time we left. Bekki and I opted for the metric, while Peggy, Dar and Charlize went on to do the 100 mile. Bekki and I knew we had a ton of time to do the ride since it would take Charlize a few more hours to do the full century. We got to lunch at about 10am (lunch at 10?!). Neither of us were very hungry but I thought I’d eat a sandwich to fuel me until the next stop anyway.

It warmed up quite a bit after lunch and I took off my jacket. No need to peel off any arm or leg warmers since I didn’t think I’d need them—especially since we didn’t leave until almost 8am. I called Jo to see if she had come and gone to lunch, but no luck getting her live, so I left her a voicemail. I figure she was long gone by then since she probably started an hour before me.

Bekki and I both got flats along the way, and both of them within a ¼ mile of the rest stop. Oops, wrong size tube (I grabbed the 20/25 instead of the 18/23). So I had to patch the old tube and hope we'd make it to the next rest stop. We did and I bought a new tube from the friendly mechanic.

I think we finished around 1 pm or so, sat around and chatted, saw some friends, and waited for the other girls to get back; 3 pm, 4pm, 5pm. We knew they were OK, because they called in at every rest stop. But we weren’t quite sure when they would finally arrive—which turned out to be about 5:15pm. I didn’t see Jo or Sarah who, by her report above, rolled in about that time. Charlize and I both had dinner plans, so she sat down and ate a little, but wanted to save room for dinner with friends, so we took off at about 5:40 or so.

Got to chatting in the car, and oops! Missed the 580 interchange and ended up in San Francisco! I had dinner plans at 6:30pm and we were sitting in city traffic at 6:45pm. Ahh well, I was relaxed in the back seat and wasn’t in any rush. After all, I’d probably only miss cocktail hour anyway. I got home about 7:30, quickly showered and headed to dinner…………..

What a beautiful day! And what a great route! I can’t wait for the Marin Century in August.

and only a few weeks until LRRH.