Golden Gate 1000: Taking Time to Smell the Roses On a Death March

The other evening a friend asked me how the Golden Gate 1000 went and - without thinking at all what came out of my mouth was: “it was a death march… with nice scenery.” With these big rides, my feelings about the ride seem to vary wildly depending on the mood I’m in at the moment and the parts of the ride that are foremost in my memory. Obviously that evening, when asked, I was remembering some of the less pleasant parts of the ride. But to be fair, there was much more positive than negative about the ride. My friend just happened to catch me somewhere on the coast highway in the driving rain, climbing an 8% grade into a headwind with no shoulder and a semi blasting by.

Day 1
We gathered Thursday morning in downtown San Jose for a 5:30 AM start. There were 27 riders in total doing the Golden Gate 1000 and I was the only non-local, everyone else was from one of the four bay area randonneur clubs. Rob Hawks, the San Francisco Randonneurs RBA very kindly introduced me during the pre-ride announcements and asked the others not to make too much fun of the fenders on my bike seeing as how I was from Seattle and didn't know any better (which of course they immediately all did, but boy would they regret that later). After some more pre-ride announcements Rob led us in an oath that essentially had us promising to do nothing stupid out on the roads, and with that we were ready to roll.

Starting the Climb up Mt. Hamilton

The View from Mt. Hamilton

After a few minutes of meandering through San Jose, we were on the edge of town and starting the climb up Mt. Hamilton. I had spent some time prior to the ride worrying a bit about the climb, but the worrying was unnecessary as it turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the ride. The sun wasn't fully up yet, so it was cool and comfortable for climbing. The road up Mt. Hamilton was almost totally car free and twisted and undulated like the dancers in a Lady Gaga video. Never terribly steep, the road ascended at a moderate pace with a couple brief reprieves until we finally could see the Lick Observatory at the summit.

Lick Observatory

At the Summit

After the summit the sun was up in the sky and the temperature quickly rose from the 50s to the 80s almost completely skipping the 60s and 70s. The descent down the back side of Mt. Hamilton is like an E ticket ride at Disneyland with banked hairpin turns and bumps and dips galore. Eventually the road levels off some and starts meandering northward toward Livermore. When I say "levels off" I mean that in a macro sense rather than micro sense. That road is constantly going up or down, but doing it in fairly equal amounts.

I mostly rode alone through the morning and early afternoon, occasionally seeing other randonneurs and chatting briefly, but with the constant ups and downs it was difficult to form any lasting alliances. After Livermore the route dipped into the suburbs here and there but still spent most of the time on quiet rural roads and slowly worked its way past Pleasanton, Dublin, Castro Valley, Moraga, Orinda, Pinole, and finally across the Carquinez Bridge to Vallejo.

The Carquinez Bridge

By late afternoon I was entering wine country, through the Suisun and Wooden Valleys and then over the ridge and into the heart of the North American wine universe, the Napa Valley. I haven't done any research to prove or disprove this theory, but I suspect the average blood alcohol level of Napa Valley drivers late in the day is similar to that of sailors on shore leave. I had no close calls, but did notice a couple drivers who seemed to feel overly constrained by the lines on the road.

Entering Wine Country

Coming Over the Ridge into the Napa Valley

As always happens somewhere on a long ride, time began to slow to a crawl as the sun was sinking over the Napa Valley. The vineyards were all looking alike and my cycle computer was counting the distance travelled in inches rather than miles. At least the riding was easy as it was flat and windless through the valley, but every minute seemed to take a week.

Sun Setting Over the Napa Valley

One thing that's helped me in the past to get through these randoneuring time warps is to have a mental "project" to work on. So, I went looking for a project. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but there was a time in my life when I knew every lyric to every song on Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album (come on we were all thirteen once, right?). Those song lyrics were buried deeply, but with hours to kill it seemed like the perfect project to attempt to dredge up every verse, every chorus, every bridge from Love Lies Bleeding to Harmony... beginning to end. Dirty Little Girl, Candle in the Wind, Roy Rogers, Sweet Painted Ladies... the whole double album. I can't say I was successful in remembering every song, but the project accomplished exactly what it was intended to accomplish. Time started to fly by as I meandered through the valley belting out "Some punk with a shotgun... killed young Danny Bailey... in cold blood... in the lobby of a downtown motel..." into the darkness. I stopped for a quick convenience store dinner in Calistoga and then continued on into the night, "Your sister can't twist but she can rock and roll... she out bucks the broncos at the rodee-doe-doe... she's only sixteen but it's plain to see.. that she can pull the wool over little ol' me..."

"Goodbye Norma Jean... Though I never knew you at all you had the grace to hold yourself..."

When I finally pulled into the overnight control at the Best Western in Cloverdale a few minutes after midnight, I was almost disappointed that I had to stop singing Elton John songs. Almost. I chatted with the volunteer support team while gobbling a couple bowls of chili and then made my way to my hotel room for a quick shower and all the sleep I could manage to squeeze in between then and when my alarm would go off at 4:30 AM the next morning.

The numbers for day one:
Distance: 241.2 miles
Rolling Time: 16 hours 12 minutes
Total Time: 18 hours 40 minutes
Climbing: 14,206 feet

Day 2
After three blissful hours of sleep my iPhone reminded me that I had another full day of riding ahead of me and this was no time for sleeping in. I dug out the clean clothes, grabbed some breakfast, loaded up my bag with food for the day, grabbed a quick look at the forecast for the coast and... crap! The forecast was for temps in the mid 50s and rain all up and down the coast all day. Oh well, I'm a Seattle randonneur! I can't let a little rain ruin my day. Besides I've got fenders on my bike! So I added a couple more layers to my kit and headed out the door.

Awake, more or less

After a couple of false starts (first I headed the wrong direction from the hotel for about 10 minutes, then after I turned around, retraced my route and got back on course, I realized I had left my phone back in the hotel room) I was on my way toward the California coast on CA-128 with the sun just starting to peak over the hills. At least in Cloverdale it was shaping up to be a nice day.

Sunrise Over Cloverdale

CA-128 would be a lovely cycling road if not for the fact that it generally has no shoulder, and lots of logging trucks, semis, RVs and the like blaze by at 60 mph refusing to yield more than a few inches of the road to us annoying cyclists. For the first hour or so the traffic wasn't too heavy, but by a couple hours into my day I was routinely getting strafed. It was a welcome respite when I pulled into Boonville around 8:15 AM where the town was absolutely hopping. Boonville was hosting a Roots Reggae/World Music festival and every hippy, former hippy, hippy wanna-be and hippy-like person from several western states had converged there and was at that moment crawling out of their tents and VW vans in the Mendocino fairgrounds and wiping the schmutz out of their eyes. The smells of frying bacon and dank bud filled the morning.

My Favorite Sign

After breakfast #2 in Boonville I pushed on, braving the aggressive truck traffic. As CA-128 entered a grove of coastal redwoods, the rain began to fall, lightly at first, but with bigger and bigger drops as the coast got nearer. By the time I reached the junction with CA-1 and turned north toward Fort Bragg, it was neither misting nor sprinkling nor showering intermittently. It was just plain raining.

The Coast at Last

In spite of the rain and the continuing heavy traffic, I made great time up the coast to Fort Bragg where I stopped in at the Safeway for lunch. I had been attributing my blistering pace to good genetics and exceptional physical conditioning until one of the other randonneurs I met there pointed out the fact that we had been riding with a brisk tailwind for the past 40 miles. That was a bit of a downer for two reasons:

1. It meant I wasn’t really pro peloton material.

2. Fort Bragg was the northern most point on the route. From there we would head south into a headwind for the next 100 miles before the route would finally turn inland and give us any hope for a break from the wind.

Fort Bragg Harbor

Typical CA-1 Traffic

Scoping Out Potential Burial Places

The trip down the coast highway from Fort Bragg to Jenner stands out as the longest, slowest 100 miles (well, actually only about 97 miles but who's counting?) I’ve ever traveled by bicycle. I left Fort Bragg at 12:30 PM, and it was 10:30 PM before I finally made the turn inland on Hwy 116. Nine of those ten hours were filled with a Sisyphean pattern of slowly climbing the 7% – 8% grade of the shoulder less highway up and over a 100' – 300' high coastal headland, where once on top and fully exposed, the headwind would reduce my already slow progress to an even slower crawl, and then as I’d start descending the twists and turns on the other side of the headland, trailer towing motorhomes would do their best to force me off the road at every opportunity. Then you repeat the process about 30 more times. And did I mention it was pouring rain for most of this? To make the last few miles particularly memorable, after the sun went down the rain was replaced by impenetrable pea soup fog.

Elevation Profile - Fort Bragg to Jenner

Of course, the whole point of a randonneuring ride report is to take this awful stuff and make it sound even worse than it really was. So to be fair, that ten hour stretch wasn't entirely without some rose smelling and rainbow pots o' gold. For example, my dinner stop in Gualala was a little taste of rando heaven. About the only choice for food in town was something you might get if you put a Mexican taco truck in a blender with a pizzaria, a road side burger joint and a French bakery. The menu offered burritos, chili cheese fries, bacon cheese burgers, pepperoni pizza and much more. For dessert you could have pain au chocolat, chocolate chip cookies, churros... It was like the United Nations of fast food. I ordered the chili cheese fries without hesitation and had no regrets.

The Best Chili Cheese Fries in Gualala

After leaving the coast, the journey back to Cloverdale was mostly uneventful. The rain and wind had stopped, the fog had cleared, the truckers and RV captains were snug in their beds, and most of the day's hills were behind me on the coast where they would give hell to a new batch of cyclists tomorrow. I arrived back at the Cloverdale Best Western feeling more than a little beaten down at 2:45 AM.

I rode alone for the entire day, only seeing other randos briefly when I stopped in Boonville and Fort Bragg. But apparently I wasn't the only one who had had a tough day. The next morning I heard that of the 27 riders who started in San Jose, ten chose to abandon the ride on Friday.

The numbers for day two:
Distance: 222.7 miles
Rolling Time: 17 hours 18 minutes
Total Time: 20 hours 33 minutes
Climbing: 12,256 feet

Day 3
It doesn't seem right that you should pay full price for a hotel room when you only sleep in the bed for an hour and a half. There. Got that off my chest.

Day three's route started by retracing the previous evening's (or morning's) journey in reverse, back out to the coast on Dry Creek Rd, Westside Rd and River Rd/Hwy 116. It was nice to be able to do this in the daylight since it had all been in the dark on day two. Westside Rd was especially beautiful as it moseyed through vineyards and passed dozens of wineries.

Back on the Road - Day 3

Westside Rd. - Winery Central

As I was approaching the coast I was feeling pretty good (I mean that in the relative sense, of course), except that I was noticing a little twinge of pain in my right Achilles tendon. The twinge was getting worse and worse until it got to be downright painful whenever I really pushed on the pedals. I tried pedaling one legged for a while, but that made my left leg tired very quickly so I realized that with over 100 miles remaining, my only hope was to just take it easy and soft pedal my way into the finish control in San Francisco.

Once back to the coast the soft pedaling idea was not working out so well since the coast highway continued its "lather, rinse, repeat" cycle of climbing 100' to 300' headlands over and over again. Every climb taunted me to stand up and attack. But every time I tried to ignore the pain and push on hard, I was reminded that my 52 year old Achilles would have no part of that crazy "HTFU" thinking. So, with plenty of time in the bank (I essentially had 20 hours in which to complete the last 100 miles) I finally settled into to rose-smelling mindset and started just enjoying the scenery.

Unfortunately the scenery was pretty much lost in the fog.

Fog on the Coast

The fog disappeared as I headed inland toward Petaluma. Approaching Petaluma I realized that I was in the bay area's weekend warrior training ground. Every few minutes I was passed by another dentist on a $10,000 bicycle. I have nothing against dentists or $10,000 bicycles, it was just a little hard to let them all pass me without putting up a bit of a fight. But with my Achilles tendon still complaining there was nothing I could do but let them go by and admire their Dura Ace drive trains and laterally-stiff-yet-vertically-compliant carbon fiber frames.

You'd think with all those dentists on $10,000 bicycles roaming the Marin countryside that the locals would be pretty numb to the sight of cyclists in their funny lycra get ups, wouldn't you? Apparently not. In the town of Petaluma I had stopped in at the 7-11 to get my receipt for the brevet card. As I was heading out the door to get back on my bike, a tall thin young man in cowboy hat had just hopped out of his pickup truck and was headed into the store (probably for a half-rack of Coors Light). He puposely stopped right in front of me, semi-blocking my way, gave me a sort of sideways wise-ass grin and said, "do you sometimes feel like you're Lance Armstrong?" Of course, in this kind of situation I always think of about a hundred extremely witty comebacks, but I tend to think of them all about a minute or two too late. All I could come up with at the moment was, "yeah, a little."

After Petaluma I made my way back to Tomales bay where I was tempted by every oyster shack I rode past. I wanted to stop to enjoy some oysters and a big pile of french fries, but at the same time I was starting to smell the barn so I decided to push on and just be done with this big adventure.

Tomales Bay

Approaching Inverness

I got into Fairfax at about 9 PM and mistakenly thought that from there it was a short trip to the Golden Gate bridge and then a few blocks to the finish. Point of fact: there were 37 cues remaining on the cue sheet from Fairfax to the finish in downtown San Francisco. And as it turned out, that wasn't nearly enough cues to tell me what I still needed to do to get to the finish. The last ten miles was by far the most complicated maze I've ever had to navigate on a brevet of any kind. The nice folks of the San Francisco Randonneurs had warned me that this part of the route would be a bit complicated, but oh my, I had no idea. I ended up riding most of the last ten miles with my iPhone in one hand, watching the little blue dot as it moved from one block to the next and trying to figure out how to get that blue dot over the bridge from Marin county into San Francisco.

But eventually I got onto the bridge, and yes - the trip across all by myself at 11 PM was absolutely glorious, with angels singing from the bridge towers and all.

The Golden Gate Bridge - At Last

I pulled into the final control at the Motel Capri at 11:15 PM. The last 15 miles had taken me over two hours, so it wasn't my best pace ever, but hey this is randonneuring, it's not racing. Done under the time limit is all that matters.

The numbers for day three:
Distance: 173.05 miles
Rolling Time: 13 hours 52 minutes
Total Time: 17 hours 08 minutes
Climbing: 7,581 feet

Epilogue
It's a week later now and my Achilles tendon is fine; a couple of days off the bike seemed to be all it needed. Looking back on this ride, I'm amazed by the beauty of the landscape I rode through. Bay area cyclists have so much great riding in their back yard!

The San Francisco Randonneurs put on a great event. The route was definitely a challenge, but it was also an excellent showcase of the wide variety of riding the bay area has to offer. I've always been impressed by the organization and support on Seattle Randonneur rides, but without any basis for comparison I just assumed that no other club could compare. Now I know that San Francisco randonneurs are easily as spoiled as we are in Seattle (excepting the fact that they are total wimps when it comes to rain ;)). Thank you to the San Francisco Randonneurs and your great volunteers who took such great care of me for three grueling days!