Experience AIDS/LifeCycle 2 (2003)

Danelle's Journal

June 5

I leave in two days for the start of the ride in San Francisco transformed from the person I was six months ago. Part of the proof is how the ride has taken over my bedroom. My beautiful bike, a cheaper version of the one Lance Armstrong rides, leans against the wall next to my bed. Why not in the bed? At this point I have been through more with Lance -- as my kids and I call him -- than I have with any other man. We've become quite intimate. And he appears to be the kind of guy who doesn't mind a little mess. This is a good thing. The seven two-gallon plastic bags labeled for the days of the ride are scattered around the open suitcase that takes up most of my bedroom floor. Several of them are still open, with post-it notes reminding me to get another bra or uncover some more socks before I get on the plane. And Lance also clearly knows how to stand by me when I get emotional, which is another good thing because in the middle of this festive chaos, I keep bursting into tears. These are not just sad tears, but tears from memories of Scott and joyous tears about the changes the ride has made in me.

When I first decided this was finally the year I could do the ride, I called Jeff Rabin, an acquaintance from college who did last year's, and told him I didn't think I could do it. The image I have held of myself these seven years since Scott died was of sprinting down the California coast on a bright blue bike, fit and mischievous as Scott in his prime. My dream has not kept pace with my body's slump into middle age. When I was contemplating my first training ride in January, I had eighty extra pounds on my 5'4" frame. I told Jeff I was scared that I couldn't keep up with the other riders. "Of course you're scared," he said. "You'd be a fool if you thought you could do it. But you will."

My beginning was not very promising. My heart sunk as I pulled up alongside the fit, chipper riders who seemed so loose and confident on their bikes. As I took my bike off the rack, I dropped it and it fell again when I leaned it up against my car. As we set off down the road, I clicked my new bike shoes into my new clips on the pedals and immediately fell over, making a huge gash in my elbow and taking a matching notch of flesh out of my knee. I walked my bike up the hills feeling very sorry for myself. I must look ridiculous to these people, I thought.

But each time I dragged myself to the top, there was someone waiting for me, someone who hung around just to tell me how great I was doing. Close to the end, when I was sad and tired and convinced I was hopelessly lost, I was so discouraged. I knew that finishing was the goal, not coming in first. But I hate being last. And all the well-meaning advice everyone was giving me was just making me cranky.

Then I turned a corner to see the ride leader Danny Nava waving me in at the entrance to the last rest stop. As I pulled up to the restaurant, my fellow riders stood and cheered. I felt like crying. I couldn't remember ever being greeted that way. The support wasn't the only thing that brought me back. After the ride, when I lay on my bed, my body tingled, my muscles glowed with heat and my heartbeat was strong, slow and steady. Oh, I thought, smiling to myself, this is what peace feels like.

I started riding my bike the five miles to work every day and doing at least one training ride a week, frequently two. The daily struggle to keep on this course despite my doubts and fears gave my life focus. I got stronger as I put myself to harder and harder tests. My confidence built as I continued to succeed, not always gloriously, but always getting to the top of the hill and the end of the ride. I stopped eating excessively because I didn't want to haul that donut or that sundae up the hill. Gradually hills that made my heart sink when I saw them up ahead became obstacles I knew I would conquer one pedal stroke at a time. I have moved from the middle of the back of the pack to the back of the middle. At this point, I have lost almost fifty pounds and gone from a size 1X bike shorts to medium. And I haven't fallen off my bike in months.

I have learned so much about myself through this training process. I am impulsive and sloppy. I have become grateful for my training partner Jeff's caution and attention to detail almost as much as I am for his wicked sense of humor. These qualities, which irritated me before we began training together, I now think of as life savers. We have trained mostly with ride leader Jim Toledano and the crew from Orange County, and through them I have begun to understand the real meaning of community. I'm not a joiner and I've always hated groups and group projects because of the politics and the competition. I didn't know you could have a group that was free of those things. Through them I have continued the humbling process of attempting to follow advice. I'm from a working class family and I've got a fifteen pound chip on my shoulder at all times. When anyone, even well-intentioned people, offer me advice, my automatic reaction is: What makes you think you're so smart? I found out pretty early, though, that when they say eat, you should eat and eat whatever it is they tell you to. The same thing goes for the absurd amount of liquid they have been forcing down my throat and the need for ridiculous (and ridiculously expensive) bicycling regalia.

Also I have seen parts of California I didn't know existed. On the first ride it was as if we rode to Oz. We rolled past gleaming green horse farms divided by rolling picket fences and drank in the smells of the southern California spring: jasmine, eucalyptus, fennel and gardenia. At the western end of the Pos Ped flat century in March, we loped along the banks of Los Angeles' concrete-channeled rivers to a place that felt like rural Mexico. There were chickens running across the bike path, horses and cows in pens along the side and men in huge, floppy caballero hats fording the river on horseback. Nor will I ever forget pulling off 101 the second day of the Shifting Gears Santa Barbara Double Century (a hundred miles from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara Saturday and a hundred back on Sunday) in April to see Ginger Brulee in a splendid turquoise cocktail dress with beehive to match offering us fresh strawberries, bottled water and Ensure.

Through this ride I have experienced the full range of emotions at an intensity unequaled in my regular life of distractions and deadlines. At this point, I'm having this peculiar feeling of premature nostalgia. I'm no longer training and planning; it's happening. My stomach is sick with anticipation even as my heart is full of joy. It was said best by a man I met at the last rest stop of the Santa Barbara ride, a man who said he didn't want to go back to work on Monday. He wasn't complaining about his knees or exhaustion. We've been through this incredible experience, he said, all pulling for the same goal, all trying as hard as we can. How can you ever explain this to the rest of the world? I feel so connected here and out there I can feel so lonely.

I understand that but I don't feel lonely right now. I am connected to the world through the world of the ride and by the rare feeling of making a difference in the small way I can. And I am very proud of myself and my transformation as equally of the people I have ridden alongside who have fulfilled this astonishing commitment. And I feel a fresh connection to my friend Scott and our relationship is alive in a way that it hasn't been in years. I also feel, as I have during every ride, intense gratitude to be healthy enough and prosperous enough to undertake this incredible adventure.

Day 1 (Sunday, June 8)

After all the months of training for this day, I wasn’t prepared for the anxiety I felt as the cab pulled up in front of the University of San Francisco. At five in the morning the place was bustling with people dropping off their gear and finding their bikes to load them down with their daily necessities. As I dragged my immense suitcase, which held not only the clothes for the next seven days, but the sleeping bag, pad and pillow, I felt sick. My stomach was upside down and I was giddy, almost girlish with the expectation of what the next week would be like. I could fail, that was possible. I could be the last one in to camp every single day, the one they have to shoo out of the rest stops because they are about to pack everything up. It wasn’t part of my picture of my position in this immense number of people that I would be sailing up the hills with a smile on my face.

After a teary ceremony to honor the reason that we ride, we set off toward the coast in a hypnotic fog. The sight of so many people in colorful spandex, many of whom had festooned their helmets with amazing decorations -- wigs, streamers, little balls made up as faces, a group of women with wedges of pie on their helmets from Team Pie – made us seem like a carnival. We were a musical act, actually, singing show tunes and the chorus from “Proud Mary:” “Rolling, rolling, rolling down the river.”

When we turned south at the beach the fog thickened. It was as if we entered a mysterious world. There was some antique car event taking place on the road we were riding and the people passing us on the other side were in open touring cars from the 1920s. The drivers and passengers wore leather helmets and long flowing white scarves. And us on our bikes struggling up the hills, made it feel as though we were are the turn of the previous century.

All of this comical illusion disappeared as we headed up the first big hill of the day, a butt-busting incline that dragged us up to the top of Skyline Boulevard. That was bad enough, but it was followed the hill that never ended, a incline that brought us to 2500 foot elevation after about an hour-long climb. Nobody was singing show tunes anymore. My head was full of whining and complaints. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this to myself? When will this end? Can I call for a helicopter?

I am my own enemy in this. I subscribed to the listserve that circulated emails among the riders so newer riders could get answers to their questions from the more experienced ones. Right before the ride, there was a lot of talk about the length of the hills and the total elevation gain. These questions seemed absurd to me. I’m doing this and I don’t care what the numbers are. Knowing that the elevation gain is isn’t going to make the climb any easier. But as we struggled one pedal stroke at a time up this monster hill, I kept asking everyone who looked more competent than me (so basically everyone) how much further we had to go. Did they think we were perhaps half way there? Did anyone know if it was going to get worse?

Of course eventually it was over, ending in a screaming downhill that was truly one of the highlights of my biking life. We flew at amazing speeds out of the fog and the covering of pine and cypress trees into the rolling hills covered in pale green grass as we dropped toward our lunch spot next to the ocean. Food has rarely tasted as good to me as the chicken sandwich served in a spectacular spot by the beach.

The next part of the journey was along the coast to Santa Cruz. The fog was completely gone and the sea was the deep blue. The shore at this part of the coast is rocky and the waves smashed against them making huge spray. At one point we came around a bend in the road to see the sky was filled with flying punctuation marks. Okay, I’ve now completely lost my mind, I thought. I am bonking, the word for when you’ve not eaten or drunk enough and you go into a weird mind state. Some of my friends who have bonked have seen weird sparkling things in front of their eyes. So it fits that since I’m a writer I might be hallucinating flying commas and parenthesis? Can I be that deranged? Well no, actually. The bright half circles swooping through the sky were parasails, the power source of the dozens of athletes skimming along the surface of the ocean on surfboards.

Everything felt better after lunch. My body felt better. My spirits were good because I’d done these two very difficult hills and not had to walk or be helped. I had more energy too because the road we were on was relatively flat. I had developed this new method of getting up the hills that was working well for me. I’d go like hell on the downhill and build up so much momentum that I’d pedal effortlessly up most of the incline. It would only be hard for a little while and then I’d crest the hill and start again.

All of this was working for me pretty well until I got a flat. I am embarrassed to confess that despite having taken the flat tire clinic that is offered by the organizers of this event and having received a private tutorial from a very experienced tire changer, I still get all Lucille Ball when I get a flat. Every single lesson I’ve taken flies right out of my head and I stand by the side of the road looking helpless and screaming: “Ricky.” Someone always comes by.

Unfortunately Robin and Gary, the good-natured people who stopped to help me, had collectively about as much knowledge as I did about flats. We cracked ourselves up with our amazing inadequacies but in the end Gary, the one of us who had the most recent experience in this, because someone helped him change a flat just that morning, saved the day. He got the tire out with his special tool and extracted the tube and also had a handy CO2 cartridge that filled the tire up instantaneously.

We talk a lot about the spirit of the ride and many times the tone of that is somber. It automatically seems to apply to the grief of those we’ve lost and the hard work we are doing to raise money in their memory. Certainly this was the focus of the opening ceremony where we honored the Pos Peds, the HIV positive riders who lead our group out of camp each day with flag of distinction on the back of their bikes. They are miracles to us all and living symbols of what we all are working for here. But what that estimation of the spirit misses is the incredible humor of this event, the rowdiness, outrageousness and sexual innuendo.

I have never had such a good time changing a tire as I did with Gary and Robin. Somehow the conversation went from the mechanics of changing a tire, to our desire for a picnic in the French countryside, to masturbation techniques. When we met up later on the road we all expressed the desire to have one of us get a flat again just so we could have a chance to change another tire together.

So I got into camp late. So what? When I turned the corner to the baseball field where our little tent city is arranged, there were people cheering and applauding, just as there had been people every few miles along the route: a belly dancer, a drag queen, two handsome young men harmonizing to “You Can Make It If You Try.” Everyone I’ve ever trained with (and over the course of twenty training ride, that’s more than two-hundred people) came over to ask me how I was and congratulate me on a great day’s ride. I am sore and tired and it’s only 9:44, but I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Day 2 (Monday, June 9)

The day began with a hilarious yoga class, one of the many strange juxtapositions I find all the time on this ride. The yoga classes are held every morning at 6, 6:30 and 7 a.m. to loosen up the riders before the long day of exertion. One wouldn’t think you’d get too many people ready to contort their bodies at that hour, but the stretches are essential to a comfortable day of riding and classes are very well attended. It isn’t just necessity that gets people there, though. It is the joyful yoga instructor who keeps the whole class laughing through their pain. During more than half the poses he hectored the class: “Chest Up! Butt Out! Chest Up! Butt Out!” Adding after the third time he heckled us in his drill sergeant voice that he was going use that phrase as the name of his yoga studio. After one difficult posture, one that required us to stick one leg straight out to the side while bending deeply on the other knee, a less limber member of the class stood up to leave. “You can’t go,” he said. “You’ll be unbalanced all day.” She turned around and said in a voice laden with a parody of the usual sacredness of yoga classes: “I just want to tell you how proud I am of all of you.” She actually stayed to finish the class.

After class, I felt so ready to ride. The day was going to be a tough one in distance but not in elevation -- 105 miles but most of it pretty flat. We headed out through misty Santa Cruz and across the fragrant strawberry fields of Watsonville. In this rolling green expanse, not challenging myself up a hill and separated from the faster riders, I found myself alone with my thoughts and very emotional.

I kept thinking of Scott and how much I miss him even now, seven years since he died. It’s not the kind of thing I think about him very often, but it hit me extremely hard just then and I found myself crying as I was riding. I remembered twenty years ago when we were both just out of college in New York, me from Berkeley and him from Yale Business School in the middle of a failed attempt to become a part of corporate America. I was complaining about how it seemed like I would never get out of journalism and never get to the point when I was writing my own books. He reached across the table and held my hand as he said with a sweet but sarcastic smile: “I’m taking a position in Danelle Morton futures, but I know I’m going to have to hold them long.” I was crying when this memory came back to me today. I have written six books now but he was never around to see me become a published author. Scott, I thought, you don’t have to hold those futures any more.

By the time we got out of the strawberry fields, through the lettuce lands and into the hills covered by grape vines, the fog had broken and we had clear skies and cool temperatures. I had tremendous energy because the flat route had built my confidence in my stamina and I was steaming along passing people. I felt surprisingly strong once my own emotional fog had lifted. My training partner Jeff had told me that I had to take the time when we went to the lunch stop to visit the Mission Soledad tucked away in the corner of the grounds on which we were eating. I told him this kind of thing was not for me. I get antsy in churches and I think religious services are boring. But in the spirit of following other people’s advice, the spirit that I am trying to apply to my activities on this ride, I accompanied Jeff into the chapel.

It felt odd to go into the beautiful, scared place in my spandex biking shorts, clopping stiff-soled biking shoes and form fitting jersey, particularly once we got inside and saw how simple and pure it was. Over the altar was the most sorrowful picture of the Virgin Mary I have ever seen. There were about five other riders there and the church, anticipating our arrival, had draped a cloth over the table on the altar and placed a heap of colored markers on top with a hand-lettered sign inviting us to write messages to those we have lost because the church intended to use the cloth in an up coming service.

As we sat in the calm, cool interior, all our grief rushed in around us. Everyone around us was sobbing and those who went up to write on the cloth had trouble keeping a steady hand. A man behind me led those who were Catholic in saying the rosary. I am not Catholic but his soothing voice and the chanting quality of what he was saying only added to the feeling of a beautiful ritual we had been fortunate to find. It was a reminder to all of us of why we ride.

We were shooed out of the chapel by one of the volunteers, who needed to close up. Good thing too or we would have been too late out of the rest stop. If you are still hanging around the rest stop when they close down you get sagged, meaning you are carried by bus to the next rest stop or in some cases all the way to camp. Although many people opt for that when their bodies tell them they can’t go on, it is a matter of pride to try to complete the whole ride if you are able. Jeff and I are able and scurried around to get out on time.

From the somber observance of all we have lost, we went to the hilarity of the last leg of the journey. We passed a group of cyclist skinnydipping in a creek below a bridge. A little way up the hill, a woman dressed as a sort of neon satin girl scout was handing out homemade cookies.

Despite all this good cheer, by the time we got to the final rest stop, we were exhausted. The wind in the valley was incredible. We estimated it at thirty miles an hour but there was no way of knowing if our estimate was correct. All I can say about the wind in this spot is that when the previous Lifecycle camped in this valley, someone lost his tent. He set it up but didn’t place his gear bag inside. When he came back from his shower, it was simply gone. The rest stop at this spot equally wind-whipped and staffed by volunteers in police uniforms who were writing tickets for everyone who made the smallest infraction of grammar, fashion or decorum. Jeff got one for “failure to wear tight enough clothing” and I got one for “excess of attitude.”

Many people just couldn’t face the next fifteen miles to camp. The winds were daunting and they were exhausted. So several people including Robin, one of our training buddies from Orange County, said she was going to opt to be sagged. I supported her in her decision and said I was sorry because I knew how much she wanted to complete the entire ride.Jeff and I decided to give it a try. As we turned out of the rest stop, I thought Robin had made the better decision. The cross winds were unbelievable. My bike and I were being buffeted all over the road. Then up ahead we saw an incredible hill we had to climb to go south along a mountain road toward King City. I thought I wouldn’t make it. But as I started up the hill I saw Robin struggling along, determined. This cheered me so much, I knew I could do it too.

Once we got up the hill, the mountain road was wild like a roller coaster of ups and downs. From this high vantage point, we saw a breathtaking view of the valley we’d just been in. When we got to camp, we felt fabulous: strong, healthy and glowing. As we were parking our bikes, Robin came into camp. I hugged her and told her how proud I was of her for deciding to push through. We were both crying then.

In regular life there aren’t too many days like this, a day that starts out with hilarity, drops down to grief, moves through catharsis and ends in tears of elation. I suppose most people enjoy the fact that life is manageable and emotions have their place. But this was a day that I know I will never forget and I cannot wait to see what the next day holds. There is rumbling in camp about legendary Day Three: the heat, the hills. Yes the heat and of course the hills, but what else is waiting for us out there?

Day 3 (Tuesday, June 10)

Today the ride was all about the butt. People seem to be thinking of little else and talking almost constantly about them. After all, on the ride you have plenty of time to contemplate the butts of the riders in front of you. There are some massive posteriors that drape grandly over the tiny bicycle seats. There are muscular bicycle butts made firm and huge from years of cycling. And I’ve seen a few tight, high classically formed sets of buns which I think of as party butts, the butt that likes to go out. But most of all, I think of my own.

The roads today were extremely rough, and at this stage in the ride you can feel every bump along the highway, every pebble in the path, in the most tender part of your anatomy no matter how well or how poorly formed it is. The bicycle seat seems to be especially designed for torture, with its narrow point aimed directly at places others need permission to touch. One of the women in the portable showers was bemoaning both the road and the state of her butt. She said that today, with the kinds of roads we were riding on, it wouldn’t have mattered if the seat was a balloon.

Another aggravating factor for discomfort was the hill we climbed today: the legendary “quad buster.” I have been hearing about this incline since the beginning of my training rides with my ride leader comparing every difficult hill we tackled to “quad buster.” “If you can do this, you can do quad buster,” he’d say. Or: “If you think this is tough, wait till you see quad buster.” In the days preceding Day Three, mealtime conversation and rest stop chat usually ended up touching on “quad buster,” and the mood was one of dread, as if we were about to slay the incredible monster. An equal number of riders would swivel their hips, John Wayne-like, hike up their shorts and sneer. “People make too much of quad buster,” the real bike jocks would say. “It’s just another hill.” I wanted to believe them, but in my secret heart of hearts that was the statement that would make me the most scared.

So we rode over the rolling hills the color of a lion’s pelt seeing “quad buster” looming up in the distance. It was a big hill! My new climbing technique of pedaling as fast as I can to build up momentum, so I can get partially up the hill on minimal effort, would not do me any good on this monster. I was determined not to stop, though, because I knew that when I did, it would be incredibly difficult to clip back in and get balanced enough to begin another attack at the hill. I was going so slowly. Everyone was passing me, although many were not passing me at speeds much faster than my own. Some of the best climbers were encouraging us by flying down the hill cheering us on and, when they got to the bottom, sprinting up the hill again cheering the whole way. This one guy passed me twice, which made me feel as though I was winning the competition for The World’s Slowest Cyclist.

All along the hillside were people from sports medicine cheering, ringing bells and applauding. When I got near the top, they decided I needed a little boost. One of them put her hand on the small of my back and jogged alongside me to give me just a bit more momentum. It really helped. For a brief moment I was going faster than walking speed. I got about fifty feet further up, almost at the summit, and a man placed his hand on the small of my back saying he’d get me just to the front of the car parked about twenty feet further up on the shoulder, and then the next man would take over this task. With these boosts, I finally crested the hill and came to a stop. I have never in my life been so aware of my butt.

At the first rest stop I described this incredible assistance to a group who were standing around the Gatorade barrels. “So I was just passed from man to man.” I said. A male rider, who had only heard the last sentence of my description, rolled his eyes: “Honey, I wish I was having your ride,” he said.

The wind was formidable for the last part of the ride, and we had to pedal very hard on the bumpy shoulder of highway 101 to get through to the last rest stop – a hilarious pilgrim-themed one at the San Miguel Mission where the volunteers were all dressed in pilgrim garb. They had constructed stocks in which we could place our heads and hands so that we could be punished. I was punished for “too much whining.” Again, whining about my butt. People by this point in the ride have lost most of the little modesty they packed in their suitcase. We used to take the Chamois Butt’r (a combination aspercreme and lubricant specifically for cyclist saddle sores) discretely into the Port-A-Potty to apply it. At this rest stop I saw people just reach into their shorts and slather in on for instantaneous relief.

I was incredibly relieved to make it back to camp after the seventy-seven miles we rode today. The last bit of road was lovely, but not smooth enough for my agonizing condition. I cannot yet do what the really good riders do and cycle while standing up. The way my bike wobbles as I stand frightens me. But I discovered that I could stand up on the pedals as I coasted on a gentle downhill and give my butt a few seconds of air. This was small, temporary relief, but welcome. I think tomorrow everyone’s butt will be better because today was the butt’s last gasp, last attempt at protest before it just gives up and goes completely numb.

Day 4 (Wednesday, June 11)

I can’t remember when I’ve been more exhausted than I am at this moment after a hundred-mile day of bike riding. This hundred miles added on top of the two-hundred and eighty we did in the previous three has brought my body into a state that I’m not really familiar with. In committing yourself to complete an event like this, you are bound to discover things about yourself. But these are not the things I really was looking to discover. I ache in places I didn’t know I had places. I won’t write any more about my butt except to say that I am happy that it has made the journey from agony to numbness. At one point on today’s ride I felt like crying. I wasn’t crying for Scott or for myself. I wanted to cry because I wanted it to be over so badly and I knew I still had twenty more miles to go.

Not to say that the day didn’t have highlights. As soon as the discussion of “quad buster” died down, the rumors started about The Evil Twins we were facing today. These two hills, which are just a short ride from the Mid-State Fairgrounds camp we were in last night in Paso Robles, are pretty steep but not really that bad compared to the terrain we’ve already crossed to get to this point. They certainly are nothing like the agonizing climb on the first day. They offer a gradual windy climb through untouched rolling hills that are dotted with oak and manzanita trees, a picture of early California.

At the top of the Twins was a great turning point in the ride – halfway rock. This non-descript rock at the top of the last twin is the halfway point of our ride. There was a long line of riders waiting to climb up on top of the rock and have their picture taken hoisting their bikes over their heads or with their riding buddies all clustered for group picture. I waited there with some of the people from my riding group and my training partner Jeff. It was a great moment for us having conquered the Evil Twins and also being early on in the fourth day of this journey strong enough to pick up our bikes in celebration.

After the photo, there was an amazing downhill that seemed like it was five miles of straight acceleration. After the agonizing crawl up the Twins, the exhilaration of this charge downhill lifted my spirits even higher. When we got to the next pit stop, my riding buddies were giving me a really hard time about how fast I was going. The road was damp from a thick fog, but it was a good road, one that had been recently paved. Its surface was deep black and free of debris. It had beautifully banked curves too. I have complete confidence in the downhill. Lance, my bike, is beautifully built machine and holds steady in acceleration. Also I’m not scared. Larry was explaining that he gets nervous whenever his bike computer shows that he is going faster than thirty miles an hour. “Oh, that’s why I didn’t put my computer on the bike for this ride,” I said. “I don’t want to know how fast I’m going. I’ll stop if I feel unsafe.” This was not considered to be a very sane response.

At this point it was only a third of the way through the route and we were almost at 11:30 a.m. I had decided to leave with Jeff because it is more fun to ride with him. If I decide to ride with him though, I’m on Jeff Standard Time. He is amazing for his capacity to always find something else that needs to be done. All of the things he needs to do are necessary but one by one they pile up to a huge delay. We didn’t get out of camp until 8:30, the time of day when the crew is pulling down the tents and saying if you don’t get your bike out of bike parking within five minutes they will take it directly to the next camp. In fact, the minute we arrive at a rest stop the Associate Director Steve Danemiller starts telling us to get on our bikes and leave. This may be because we are always among the last fifty people into the place. We had this sense that we had to really hustle if we were going to make it all the way through the route before it closed at 7:30 p.m.

The route was more of the same rolling hills, none of which were really a challenge if it was the first day of the ride. But because it is Day Four, our legs are tired. The number of people being sagged back to camp, meaning giving up the struggle to complete the route, had escalated. By lunch the group of bikes in the “Bikes To Be Sagged” parking was impressive and people were flopped all over the park grounds in poses of exhaustion. I pressed on.

Despite the aches of my body, which are too numerous to describe, there was my incredulity at the distance we were covering. By the time we left the third of the four pit stops, it was about 4:30 and the crew was anxious that we get moving. We still had more than thirty miles to cover before the route closed. The path to the fourth pit seemed incredibly long; even though it was only eighteen miles it seemed endless. The cruel joke was after a very long, undulating course over the gentle hills near the ocean there was a steep climb up a hill that reached from the bottom of a valley floor to the top of a pretty high mountain. I didn’t think I could do it. I was in so much pain in my quads and the task seemed too daunting for someone in my condition. I could always get someone to rescue me if I couldn’t do it, so I should just go ahead and do it.

I really surprised myself by getting all the way to the top. As with so many other moments on this ride, there were a group of other riders hanging around at the top to cheer me for my accomplishment. We all stood around and hugged each other and slapped each other on the back to mark the moment, something that no one else would think of as memorable or special in any way. Then we set off for the next pit.

This is when things got bad for me. All the aches were magnified by my feeling that this might never be over. When I looked up ahead and saw riders strung out before me for as long as I could see, my heart sank. Where was the pit stop? Although I hadn’t been cold during that screaming downhill from the Evil Twins, I was getting cold at this point because my spirits were sagging. When at last we got into the final pit it was 6:20 and the crew told us we had ten minutes to get out or we would be driven back to camp in a bus. I was on the edge about whether I should get in the bus or get on the road. I think if I had ten more minutes in the pit stop I would have headed out on my bike. But the crew surrounded me and bathed me in approval for the idea of getting on the bus. The crew captain said the point was to finish the ride – all seven days – not just finish the last twelve miles of this day. If I was pushed myself too hard, I might make it so that I couldn’t complete the ride. I should get in the bus.

As I waited in the bus with the other riders, many of whom were wrapped in blankets and suffering real injuries, I felt like a wuss. How come I can’t do this? Why am I not on the road? But what would be the point of pushing myself to exhaustion? What kind of adolescent point would I be proving to myself by powering on?

When I got back to camp and to dinner, Pat Christen, the director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, was making announcements from the stage. She said the last rider, the one who is followed by the caboose, was about a mile from camp and we should all cheer her when she arrived. As I carried my plate to the dinner table, Pat announced this rider’s arrival. There were almost fifty people lining the pathway where she entered and the entire dinner crowd stood up and applauded her as she leaned on her friend and they walked her bike into the parking lot. It was an amazing moment of support. In a lot of places the last person in feels ashamed. But here the climate is so accepting that the person who is the last, who has overcome the biggest challenges to get here, is the one who everyone cheers. I think I made the right decision by getting on the bus, but at that moment I wish I would have pressed on.

Day 5 (Thursday, June 12)

A nice short day on the ride with only fifty-five miles to cover. I almost cannot believe I use the modifier “only” in front of fifty-five miles on a bike but this is the state of mind induced by the ride.

I decided that I should get out of camp early and get going with the faster bunch to avoid the problems of the day before. I bustled around (well, as bustling as I get) and got out on the road by 7:30 a.m. This I considered to be close to a miracle with all the things that are now essential: to shower, to eat, to do the drill sergeant yoga class and stop by the Sports Medicine stretching class in addition to packing up my gear, taking down the tent and getting it all to the gear truck. After this, I have to put the air in my bike tires, the Gatorade in my water bottles and the water in my Camelbak. But I did it! And I felt very proud of myself to be out on the road with this completely different group of riders.

These people are having a different ride than the people at the back of the pack. They are much swifter generally and more focused on their performance. They offer advice such as dropping my heels when I pedal so that I can use more of the power of my muscles on the uphill. When I was complaining to another rider named Kevin about how much I loathe Gatorade, how bloated it makes me feel, he offered me a packet of this strange stuff called Emergen-C, some kind of electrolyte replacement that comes in a thin packet one inch wide by one and a half inches tall. He said he uses it before hills for an energy boost.

I took the packet and when we approached the first long hill of the day I decided to give it a try. I ripped the packet open and poured it in my mouth. My mouth was on fire and the sensation was as though I had just downed a mouthful of powdered Alka-Seltzer. I grabbed the spigot of my Camelbak and took a few swift gulps of water to flush down the powdered thunder. Wow! Suddenly I was sprinting up the hill in a much higher gear than I had used before. Perhaps the rush and the boost were worth the eye-popping sensation of downing this stuff.

I met Kevin at the next rest stop and explained my breakthrough experience. His eyes popped about as far out as mine had. Evidently you are supposed to mix this stuff with water and shake it up before you consume it. He gave me another package with explicit instructions about using it the right way.

So I’m still not very good at following advice. Or rather, I have to learn to listen better and ask relevant questions when attempting something new.

This second rest stop was a turning point for me. I was right on the cusp of leaving with the faster riders when I noticed the people from the trash team. Day Five is dress in red day, the day when we are urged to all wear something red to symbolize our commitment to the cure. But, this being the charity event that it is, some of our participants have reinterpreted this as Red Dress Day. There was an amazing array of red dresses on the riders, particularly the men. I saw one man in a red lace bustier, which he wore over his cycling shorts. There were a lot of others in modified evening gowns. The most sensational red outfits were worn by the trash crew Bruce and Stefan, however. Bruce, who is a thickset middle-aged man, was dressed in a red suit with faux leopard skin cuffs and collar. He was stomping around the rest stop chomping on a cigar stub. I asked him who he was and he said he was J. Edgar Hoover. Stefan was spectacular in his spaghetti strap, ankle-length red sequined gown with a daring slit up the side exposing his fabulous legs. He walked elegantly from trashcan to trashcan in heels, actually managing better on them than I would if I had to lift heavy objects. Actually managing better on them than I do on pavement. As most of the faster riders were heading out, I knew I had to stop to ask how these two got their incredible outfits. So I delayed, placing me back in the end of the pack, where the attitude is much more comical and more like my own.

When we had been in the little town of Cayucos a few days earlier, Bruce and Stefan were having a red dress wardrobe crisis. They had not brought gowns for Day Five. They found a tiny women’s store and came in trying to explain that they were looking for dresses for men. The proprietress, who only spoke Spanish, kept waving them off in confusion. Finally Bruce said: “Drag queen?” Without hesitation the owner showed them to the plus sizes, where they got their outfits.

I wonder how the center of California perceives us as we make our way through the countryside. How do the kids in these small towns who line the streets to wave us on as we all file past take in these men in evening dress, men in bustiers, and Chicken Lady, a ride fixture who wears a helmet that looks like a chicken, pink or purple leggings and carries a bag shaped like a chicken slung over his shoulder. As the riders pass the kids, we hand them bright plastic leis or Mardi Gras beads. When they take these souvenirs home to their families, what do they say about the people who handed them over?

This occurs to me because the ride has become a world of its own. People often say it is like a family, but it is like no family of my acquaintance. The level of acceptance here, the courtesy and expression of care are constant. People welcome me into their circles and the ease of movement between groups is phenomenal. When I’ve felt weak or teary, there has always been someone to comfort me. The hugs I get are sincere and no one ever asks me to explain myself or to stop.

The longest hill of the day was nearly three miles long and seemed to be endless. Half way up I got out my next packet of Emergen-C. I looked at my water bottle and realized I really didn’t want to mix it. I wanted the crazy rush of this fizzle in my mouth. So I ripped the packet open and downed it followed by a healthy swig from my water bottle. That hill was history.

Once I got to the top there were three of my training buddy friends waiting to applaud this accomplishment. We hugged each other and had another rider take pictures of us with the great view stretched out behind us.

Tomorrow is the last long day of the ride before we ride into Los Angeles on Saturday. We are supposed to do more than eighty miles tomorrow. I wonder what will happen to my body but the last few days of hard riding have made me feel stronger and stronger. I hope that I am right about this. Just in case, I will ask Kevin for another packet of that magic powder.

Day 6 (Friday, June 13)

My stomach is bulging from a huge dinner at In ‘N’ Out, the hamburger joint a block or two from where we are camped by beach in Ventura County. I had a double-double (two meat patties with cheese) fries and a chocolate shake. This is not the kind of food I have been eating for the last six months as I struggled to lose weight. It daily astonishes me how much food I am downing to keep myself going and how hungry I am all the time.

I have these breakfasts that are three times the size of the modest bowl of oatmeal and fruit that is my normal fare. Here I have the oatmeal plus two or three spoonfuls of eggs, meat, fruit, yogurt and bread. The mound of food on the groaning paper plate looks twice the size of my stomach, yet I am hungry before I get to the next rest stop. At the rest stop, there are mini-bagels with peanut butter and bananas, oranges and single-serving packages of snack foods. Everyone gobbles handfuls of food, stretches, drinks water, pees and gets back on their bikes and does the same thing an hour or so later at the next stop.

I guess today many of us had had enough of the camp food, although it is pretty good. The crowd at In ‘N’ Out was mainly riders and all of us were ordering huge meals. Kevin, one of my dinner companions, had a triple burger, fries and two strawberry shakes. The man talking on the cell phone next to me as I write just recited his meal at the neighboring Hungry Hunter: baby back ribs, chicken, salmon and a second portion of baby back ribs. This massive caloric intake is okay when we are riding ten to twelve hours a day. The trick is not to continue this level of consumption when we arrive back to our normal indolent lives.

Exhaustion and anticipation are the mixture of feelings traveling through the riders. Tomorrow the ride is over and although everyone is eager to spend a day not riding their bikes, we also know how emotional we will all be. We are tearing up more and more and the strangest things make us cry. I was crying this morning at the sight of the line of riders setting off. I was thinking of all these people – more than a thousand – who have left behind their normal lives to devote a week to this cause. That so many people would make such a commitment and sacrifice their comfort for this was suddenly overwhelming to me.

The day was grueling, but beautiful. We started off in the dreary little backwater of Lompoc in the hush of a gray fog. As we headed up a series of hills the weather broke and the skies turned that beautiful, clear Southern California blue. When we rounded the bend to Gaviota the sight of the ocean up ahead cheered us all. We had been struggling through damp, cold weather on the ride. I thought of it as a blessing because the hill climbing was so strenuous, but I think I am one of only a few who feel this way. Seeing the sun made me feel as though I was home already but I still had more than sixty miles to go.

The terrain wasn’t so rough today but the route was long – eighty-nine miles. I think that most of us would have been able to handle this easily if it was day one or two, but after more than four hundred miles of biking even the gentlest incline looks daunting.

And then there was the little thing about having to have my ass patched.

I had not followed a crucial piece of advice I received from a woman I met on the Pos Ped flat century in March. She advised me that I should try out every pair of shorts on a long training ride before I embarked on this ride to make sure they didn’t chafe me anywhere. I had never had any problem with any of the shorts that I bought so when I saw a bargain brand on the rack of the bike store the day before I was to leave for the ride, I grabbed them. They had some weird edge on the padding that caused an irritation in the place where my thigh turns into my butt. It was uncomfortable the day I wore them – day four – but with two additional long rides that little sore had turned into a major pain in my ass. When I was feeling sorry for myself about the amount of territory ahead right before lunch, all I could focus my attention on was this particular part of my body.

Almost all of the rest stops have a medical tent and the lunch stop always has one. I stood in line and winced as I described my delicate personal problem to the male supervisor. Without a blink he pointed me to a van in the parking lot where other riders were waiting to have their asses patched.

As I stood in the ass-patching line, my mood lifted. The absurdity of the situation could not be denied. There were no private medical suites in this open park land. In order to be treated, you were instructed to bend over, resting your elbows on the floor of the medical team’s minivan, and drop your shorts. Someone, either a close friend or one of the other nurses, held up the privacy shield, a large gray-green blanket that hid this unforgettable view of you from your friends and colleagues who were eating lunch a few feet away on the park grounds.

The guy in front of me – a spinning instructor no less – had a friend hold the blanket. He delivered a running commentary on the action taking place behind the blanket and the crowd on the lawn was begging him to drop the blanket. “Where’s the webcam when you need it?” another called out.

The patches, which were originally designed to treat patients with bed sores, worked pretty well. I was able to complete the ride, which is more than I expected when I pulled into lunch.

I think the scenery was part of the reason I was able to keep going. We threaded through Santa Barbara on a sweet bike path that led us along the shore and past a lake. Just past the lake, the local gay pride alliance had set up its own informal rest stop, a “Clif Bar Free Zone” that offered ice cream, candy bars and fresh strawberries. The rest of the route took us along the coast, sometimes on the freeway and sometimes on little roads right at the shoreline.

As the sun was setting, an announcer with a bullhorn kept warning us of the approach of the last riders of the day. They were five miles out, three miles. When they got to three miles, a big crowd formed at the entrance to the camp site. When the last riders came down the path, we could see them from quite a distance away. People were whistling, cheering and clapping their hands. It was a touching moment, and beautiful too, with the sun setting behind them against the pure white sand and the blue of the ocean. One of the riders was crying as the crowd rushed up to greet her and her friends. I had that feeling I’m having a lot now, that feeling that despite the fact that this is hard and my body aches in unfamiliar and intense ways, I will miss this when we are all back at our normal lives of comfort.

Day 7 (Saturday, June 14)

When we woke up day seven the whole camp seemed in a good mood. The skies promised clear weather soon and we would be riding along the coast north of Malibu in the beautiful last days of spring. I was so excited to be almost home, so glad my patched-together butt would spend its last full day on the bicycle seat and anticipating a night between clean sheets in my own spacious bed. Right away, I started to cry. I was thinking of my family and friends who were going to meet me at the closing ceremonies: my kids, my ex, my step-father and two close friends. When I took my first spinning class last August, toward the close of the class the instructor had asked us to visualize coming across a finish line. I had imagined coming into West Hollywood after seven days on a bike and seeing the exact people who were going to meet me there. I was crying because I had done it even though I didn’t believe I could, because of Scott, and because rarely in life do things fulfill the image you have of them at the start. And I was also crying because it was over.

Outside the tent, everyone was putting on their best cycling clothes so they would look good for our return to civilization. I scanned my neighbors, people I felt very fondly towards. I looked around the field where a thousand riders were putting away five hundred tents. I started crying harder. I trusted these people, even though in regular life trust is a very hard thing for me to give. But my fellow cyclists had shown that they were concerned for my safety all the time. Each time I stopped by the side of the road, everyone who passed offered help. Each time I mislaid something -- even my wallet -- by the time I got to the lost and found, it was waiting for me there. The fact that I had lived a week free of suspicion began to hit me with the regret that in a few hours back in LA suspicion would be back.

The day was even better than anticipated. We hit the coast after about an hour of suburban Ventura sprawl to the sea glittering in the sun as we zoomed down the shoulder of 101 to Highway 1. Big dark boulders jutted out from the green hills, giving us a wavy road and some hills to climb. But the hills didn't seem bad at all. I'd done this stretch of road in late April on the Santa Barbara Double Century and it had seemed a lot harder then. The ride had made me stronger and more determined. Things that had seemed like huge hills in April now seemed -- relatively speaking -- like mere rises in the road. Part of it was the good spirits of the crowd too. In this mood, I think we would have sailed up Quad Buster if we faced it on Day Seven. When we got to the first rest stop, the theme was Krispy Kreme and the volunteers were wearing KK hats and handing out donut holes. I felt as though the rest stop came too soon, as though we'd only gone eight or nine miles. I was trying to savor something that was slipping away too quickly.

At lunch, I met up with my training buddies from Orange County, who had commandeered a little patch of shade in this park. We were teasing each other about low moments in the ride: Ken's road dementia when he'd tried to get off his bike while it was still moving, my helpless female act when trying to get someone to change my tire. Which one of us deserved the title of Sag Hag? That would be the person who had spent the most time off the bike. We couldn't decide. And the fact that a few miles earlier I had passed Russell, one of the fastest riders in the group. I couldn't believe I had passed him and neither could he. Instead of being competitive about it, Russell kept congratulating me.

I lingered over lunch. We only had twenty more miles to go and we would be at the Closing Ceremony. As I trudged toward my bike, I started sobbing again as I put on my helmet. This week had been life-changing for me. I had seen so many faces of California along the route, so much beauty. I had used a strength I didn't know I had. I cried because Scott had brought me here and he would not be there at the finish line to see me.

The route took us along San Vicente in Santa Monica, a few blocks north of my house. As we approached my street I was really torn. I wanted to pedal down a few blocks and take a shower, then rejoin the peloton to West Hollywood. Maybe I could get a manicure too, I thought. This was the thought that prevented me from sneaking off the route. If I had a shower and a manicure, I'd be separated from the group experience and I didn't want to be disconnected in these last few moments. I'd get my shower soon enough.

The arrival in West Hollywood was chaotic, and not what I expected. I thought it would be cathartic but it didn't turn out to be that way for me. I was separated from my training buddies near the front of the pack. It was hard to see my family and friends and impossible to move to a place where I could because all the riders were wedged into a thick line in the center of a street. One of the speakers gave a rousing, angry speech about how mad she was about AIDS and AIDS funding. I have been mad and will be again, but I wasn't then and I didn't want to be lectured at. Her talking about her emotions made me think I was being selfish for my feeling of victory. She destroyed that for me. When the official ceremony was over, I had heard, the riders held their bikes over their heads in triumph. No one around me did that and I thought we had lost some of the magic of the end.

Soon my kids and my friends were around me with their loving congratulations. My daughter hugged me and looked at me with pride: "That's my mom!" She kept saying. "This is my mom. She rode here all the way from San Francisco!" They continued the spirit of the ride, bringing my stuff to the car and fussing over me.

I took a nice long shower and tried to tell some of the story of the ride. I found it hard, though. I could relay anecdotes, I could describe bits of scenery. But these snapshots didn't really convey the feeling. I could see it from the reactions on the faces around me. I know they are proud of me but I suspect they feel as though I'm somewhat delusional. I think I am too, but in a good way. I have lived this deluded experience of being in a community of trust and compassion where we were all looking out for each other's safety. Beyond that, everything else was up to you. If you wanted to bicycle in a red cocktail dress, or pick up trash in one or even come to breakfast that way, go right ahead. We were all working toward the same thing at our own speed and helping each other toward that goal. In our regular lives, we spend so much time feeling excluded and inadequate, it's nearly impossible to describe feeling the opposite of that. I'm getting teary as I write this. I used to snort when someone would describe a 585-mile bike ride as a vacation because after all we were working so damn hard every day. But it was a vacation from the regular world, a week away that was so profound it makes everything look different.