Thursday, May 29
Between the heart-stopping downhills of California’s mountain ranges and the freezing splendor
of Alaska’s mid-August blizzards, it’s hard to pick any one Kodak moment from years
past. So here’s looking at ALC2 and the joyride to come.
Your 2003 embedded and tented-down correspondents will take you for a daily spin along the ride
route, and slip you into the quivering beast that lies Behind the Scenes. You’ll meet some
remarkable folks, like Allison Diamant, M.D., who works on the medical crew and finds
time to ride. You’ll see the tent city go up and down each day, ride with the caboose, and
spend some quality time with the fine lads and lasses of “Biker Scum” (a.k.a. motorcycle
safety crew). You’ll get a virtual taste of (gag me) warm Gatorade and peer into the tubs
of butt balm. Tent decorations? Ya wouldn’t believe ‘em. New lyrics to the tune of
“YMCA”? Ya don’t wanna hear ‘em. And the talent shows! Is there an agent
in the house?
With 50,000 people living with AIDS in California, and another 120,000 struggling with HIV, you’ll
also hear why riders are out there in the blistering sun, mile after mile, pumping their hearts
out for friends and loved ones. You’ll see the Positive Pedalers, orange flags flying, screaming
uphill. And the riders, bless them all, who’ve been training for a year to crank
out those 585 miles from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation to the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center.
The ride of your life? It starts on June 7.
Upload Day (Friday, June 6)
Two days before some 1000 cyclists took off on ALC2, battalions
of volunteers were “uploading” tent poles, stakes,
ropes, and sledgehammers onto almost 30 UHAUL, Ryder and Budget
rental trucks for the week-long migration to Los Angeles working
in a parking lot the size of Pacific Bell Field on Treasure
Island. They lurched back and forth on forklift trucks, picking
up boxes of supplies inside a cavernous hanger and delivering
them to the waiting vehicles.
At another end of the lot, vans with taped-on signs designating
them as “Rest Stop Canopy,” “Security,” and
the ever-intriguing “Sweep” were doing their version
of Upload. Launching their fourth ride together as a “Sweep
Team,” Jim Sutton and Warren Fujimori were going over
every inch of their assigned Grand Caravan, checking the seven
bike racks and counting bottles of water and Gatorade. Water
Warrior squirt guns and boxes of Tootsie Rolls and bubble gum
filled the cargo compartment, but the van still had room for
5 cyclists. “We take care of injured riders or riders
in trouble who finish only part of the day’s ride,” says
Fujimori. “They feel badly when they get ‘sagged’ (i.e.,
picked up by vans that patrol the ride), and it’s our
job to tell them that it’s okay.”
Sutton and Fujimori throw themselves into the role of support
staff with themed outfits that would be the envy of the Laker
Girls. One day, they’re dolled up in red, white and blue,
and on the next it’s Hawaiian leis.
Then there’s Ric Uggen, who’s two-piece pink bubblewrap ensemble turns head at the
top of each day’s highest hills. In full drag, Ginger Brewlay has been cheering cyclists
over the crest of the week’s most formidable peaks for the last ten years. “I’ll
be at the top of Skyline on Day One,” Ginger promises with a sultry come-on. “And
I’ll be in full feathers.”
On Upload day, the medical teams are also counting boxes of
Betadine solution, survival blankets, zinc oxides, Blistex,
elastic bandages, cold packs, and 5 percent Dextrose Injection
USPs. Sheila Lindsay, a nurse with UCSF’s Bone Marrow
Transplant Unit, will be the charge nurse at Rest Stop 2 on
each day’s ride. Each of the stops - spaced about 20 miles
apart - has a three or four member medical team, and two physicians
roam the route in additional vans. Medical team captain James
Cooke will coordinate more than 30 doctors and nurses and also
will supervise the MASH-style emergency unit at each night’s
campground. On Upload day, though it’s all in the details.
Are there enough cases of IV solutions? Has someone counted
the boxes of latex surgical gloves? And pul-leese don’t
forget the anti-diarheal meds!
Orientation Day (Saturday, June 7)
By the time riders and roadies are registering, dropping off their bikes and getting tagged with
yellow, orange and green (vegetarians) plastic wrist bands that will get them in the door to the
showers and dining tents, it’s one day and counting to Ride Out on Sunday the 8th.
But, advance route-marking crews are already on the road, scooping out twists and turns and marking
dangerous intersections with big, orange “Bicycles on the Road” and “Bicycles
Single File Please” signs. Captain Tish Martinez and her ladies of the night left San Francisco
Saturday afternoon, and spent that evening and well into Sunday morning hammering directional
signs on every other wooden pole, and tying “This Way” arrows onto metal posts. With
Halloween-style lite sticks looped around their necks and dangling from the side mirrors of their
two vans, they hop-scotched down the coast on Route 1, passing probably glorious vistas in the
dark starry night.
Day 1 (Sunday, June 8)
The first riders began rolling into Harvey West Park in Santa
Cruz early this sunny afternoon after grinding through a soupy
fog along the coast. Big, white tents had sprouted over night
like dozens of magic mushrooms, and volunteer crews of chiropractors
and massage therapists were waiting for customers. On the dinner
menu: baked and vegetarian lasagna, followed by Italian ice
and The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.
How tantalizing.
Day 2 (Monday, June 9)
Where to go, to hear the real stories of ALC2?
“Their bodies talk to you,” says Mark Hollenstein,
captain of the massage team. “We are the ones who probably
hear the most intimate details – their motivations for
why they ride, who they loved, who they lost.”
After doing four rides as a cyclist, Hollenstein joined the
massage crew for ALC1, and is back again this year with a team
of 10 therapists sponsored by the World School of Massage and
Holistic Healing Arts in San Francisco. They’re open for
business daily from 1:00 to 9:00 p.m., on a first come, first
served basis.
Dressed in a neatly frayed T-shirt for “Hawaiian day,” Hollenstein
leans into his client’s back and works the deep, apparently
troubled tissue in a treatment that lasts 20 minutes. While
the therapists represent a number of different styles, they
all listen with the same intensity. “We want to be sure
everyone’s fine for riding,” he says.
That’s the collective goal of the four teams that work
as one unit throughout the ride: medical, chiropractic, massage,
and sports medicine.”Unlike in the real world, where you’d
have to get a referral from your doctor for a chiropractor,
the four teams totally jell,” says Julie Trent, an occupational
therapist from Las Vegas who’s served on the sports medicine
crew for six years. “We realize that riders are riding
for a cause and we all work together, to do our best to keep
them on the road.” Which can mean literally taping riders’ knees
as they walk to bike parking in the morning.
A physician works with the sports medicine crew to be sure
that riders with pains and bruises aren’t experiencing
more serious injuries, and the team also has an ultrasound unit
that can target deep-muscle difficulties. The 16 athletic trainers,
occupational therapists and massage therapists do soft-tissue
work to loosen sore muscles, and also teach riders how to stretch
more effectively to combat pains that typically begin in the
knees, migrate to thighs and then travel to the ankles. There’s
a nightly knee-pain clinic at 7:00 p.m.that draws a sizeable
crowd.
Yvonne Zandi, a third-year sports medicine student at Cal
State Northridge, is one of three students on the crew. She
rode ALC1 as a cyclist, and returned this year as a volunteer
because her course schedule precluded year-long training. In
addition to the practical experience she’s getting, Zandi
has helped to organize critical theme days, like pajama day,
boxer shorts day and piercing and tattoos day (anything one
chooses to show). Her favorite? “Inflatable item day,” says
Zandi. “They’ve asked us not to go too far.”
Support volunteers on the Sweep teams, who cruise the ride
in minivans, looking for riders who are injured and in need
of a ride to the next rest stop, also are called on for medical
assistance. Barbara Plock, a former rider from San Clemente
who’s driving van MV12 on ALC2, spent part of the first
day on the ride caring for an injured motorcyclist who wiped
out on Skyine Drive. “We happened to be there, and I know
all the people on the ambulance crew, so called them,” she
says. Later in the day, Plock picked up a cyclist who had taken
a nose-dive when her wheels stuck in a railroad track, and feried
her to the medical tent: “She was tough as nails.”
Last year Plock’s son Kane was with her on Sweep. “He
was a high school junior, and I think he must have yelled encouragement
to every single rider we passed,” Plock says. “This
year, cyclists pass us, and yell, ‘Where’s your
son?’ And I have to tell them it’s Senior Week and
he’s at the prom.”
Day 3 (Tuesday, June 10)
Bikers are shepherds?
“Or maybe it’s more like sheep dogs,” says
Rocky Mullin of Biker Scum, a.k.a. Motorcycle Safety Crew. “We
tell riders to avoid hazards on the road, ride single file,
and hold up in intersections. And because we’re in orange
vests, a lot of cars also stop and ask us what to do.”
Mullin is one of 23 Biker Scum who position themselves at one-lane
bridges, freeway mergers, busy intersections, blind curves,
railroad tracks and any other hairy spots they see as threats
to riders’ safety. “We’re protective of the
cyclists,” says Glenne McElninney, who patrols the ride
on her gleaming blue BMW 750. “And we try to facilitate
some fun, too – like stopping cars and letting riders
use a downhill safely to save on knee and pedal power.”
For several months leading up to the ride, motto safety teams
in cars scout the ride route, looking for potential hazards.
Once the ride is launched, they carry caution tape, road marking
signs, hammers, nails, and electric pumps, all in an effort
to smooth the way for riders. They deftly circle holes in the
road on their monster 1200s, aiming upside-down nozzles of neon-flavored
construction marking paint at cracks that might snag thin bicycle
tires.
Captained by former army colonel turned vintner Carl Olson,
the Biker Scum perform cop-like maneuvers, making quick stops
and tight U-turns, splitting lanes, sliding in and out of loose
gravel and dirt. And as they’ve cruised through the Salinas
Valley, they’ve re-discovered that truckers are our friends. “The
artichoke trucks, broccoli trucks, strawberry trucks, lettuce
trucks – they all wait for our directions to pull out
on highways,” says Mullin. “They know we’ve
been watching traffic patterns for hours, and they’re
willing to wait and be safe.”
Cars, however, have been a continuing source of irritation,
or worse, for the men and women of motorcycle safety. “I
hate cars,” McElninney says bluntly. “They’re
mean to riders and generally rude.” Earlier in the day,
a soccer mom on a cell phone had blown by McElninney, who was
waving frantically in a bright orange vest, and missed a cyclist
by inches. “She went around my block and kept right on
with her phone argument.”
There are a smattering of Hondas, Ducatis and Kawasakis on
the crew this year, but the adventure touring bike of preference
is a Beamer. “We’re kind of geek, gadget-head, high-mileage
riders,” Mullin says. And Biker Scum make great cheerleaders,
as well. Outfitted with fuzzy dice, yellow pom poms, sun umbrellas,
super soakers, and bubble machines, they’re a roaming,
mobile yell team. “It’s all about trying to make
the ride more festive,” says McElninney.
Day 5 (Thursday, June 12)
With two days left on the ride, the coastal hills are taking
a toll on knees, and the “sag” buses, which transport
injured and tired riders from one camp to the next, are filling
more quickly. Riders now have stories about broken chains, repeat
flats, and being chased by Rottweillers. There’s even
a rumor making the rounds of camp that a cyclist lost his way
early today, struck out across a field, and had a close encounter
with a cow.
Perfect timing -- ta-da! – for the annual Red Dress Day,
with costumes that would put Beach Babylon to shame. Sequined
tutus and briefs sparkled in the early morning sun at a 7:00
a.m. stretchathon hosted by the sports medicine crew. And 50
miles down the road, Advanced Set-Up Team A was already in place
at the next campsite in Lompoc, rushing about in a scarlet blur
to prepare for the tent city that was about to sprout there.
“We’re in camp a day before riders get there,” says
Michere Schott, a first-time roadie. “We spend a lot of
time setting up the tent grid, depending on how many trees and
gopher holes we have to work around.”
Working with a tape measure, the 9-member advanced team stakes
out sites for some 740 tents that measure 8 by 8 feet, allowing
for a 4-foot aisle. “And, yes, that means the tents are
kissing each other,” Schott adds. The team also sets up
the critical signs in camp, including “This way to showers.”
By the time team members had stuck a card in the grid for
every tent this morning, the 24-foot trucks of the Gear and
Tent (a.k.a. Queer and Bent) crew were arriving under the guidance
of Caravan Mistress Devon “rhymes with heaven” Flint.
Drivers backed up to the grid that corresponded to the truck’s
designated letter – A through H – and the set-up
crew rushed to help unload duffel bags and gear, and separate
them into color-coded piles: tons of black bags, plus some blue
ones, with a smattering of red, green and yellow gear. With
energy to spare, the set-up crew then moved on to the dining
tent, where they set up tables and folding chairs.
The advanced crew also is known for the toy box it maintains,
where cyclists can borrow frisbees, kites, foam footballs, paddles,
and water guns. The influence of Sherry West, who works for
an event catering company, is apparent in the pink flamingoes
and Hawaiian batik that decorate her tent. “We’re
just a very festive little team,” says Schott.
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