The Gold Rush Randonnee started at 6pm Monday, July 6, 2009 by the North Davis Ponds in Davis, California. I arrived at about 5:40pm. We all left right at six. I was one of the last riders out of the parking lot.
We stayed together as a group for the first mile. A front group took off after we turned west onto Road 29. I was in the second group, well-positioned behind a tandem, rolling easily along in the low-20s. About three miles out, not long before the turn north on Road 99, I began running through a mental checklist. I’m not sure what triggered that process. Whatever the case, I soon feared that I had left my clear lenses at home. I use prescription lenses, and couldn’t ride at night with sunglasses, so I had to make sure. I pulled over, looked through my bags while rider after rider passed me, and sure enough, they weren’t there. So I turned around and rode for home, which was about three miles back. Once there, I went inside, went right to where I knew the lenses should be, grabbed them, and got back on course. So, thirty minutes into a 90-hour ride, I was already 20 or 30 minutes behind schedule, riding alone, and running DFL (dead fucking last).
And that’s kind of how the rest of the ride went. Me riding alone and losing time to contingencies I had avoided, ignored, or just not foreseen. All of this despite 10 months of planning, training, packing, and rechecking what I thought was everything necessary.
Being alone, awake, and active for the better part of 82 hours gives one lots of time to think. I want to summarize the ride, but I also want to get across some of the processes and conclusions and observations I came up with during the ride. Rather than separate all of the elements, I’ll try to combine them here. I hope it works.
Here’s the ride, in all its subparts: