Sunday, June 5, 2011

ALC Day 1 - San Francisco to Santa Cruz

It took me a bit of time to connect to the internet from my tent in Santa Cruz, so I'm starting to use up more than my 30 min/day (the netbook's battery life won't give me more than this if it's going to last 7 days). No time for photos unfortunately. I'll have to post something tomorrow.



Everyone gets a newspaper every morning which covers the details for that day. We covered 82.5 miles today. What a rush! The first 16 miles was a breeze and it didn’t really get tiring until about mile 50. At mile 61 I was pretty much cursing and hoping this would end, I finally arrived to rest stop 3 when I contemplated whether or not to continue.


The moment I got up off the trike, I started getting light headed. Not a good sign. That mixed with cold fingers and toes didn’t sound like a healthy situation. I sat back down on the trike, took a few minutes to reset and then went to the food line to collect something to eat.



I walked my handful of stuff to the picnic able and began munching. Slowly I was starting to feel better. That’s when I went back in line to grab even more food. Gold fish! My favorite! The bag was too big so I didn’t finish it all. They ALC staff also called out that there was only 12 minutes left before they close the rest stop. That means if I don’t leave soon, I might not make it to rest stop 4 in time.

I made it! Rest stop 4 was only 10-13 miles away. After that, camp was only 5 miles away! What a beautiful way to end the ride for the day!

Then rumors spread that it was going to rain. As I’m typing this, I hear dripping outside. In a few moments anything outside will definitely be wet,, I’m glad I finished my shower and ate my dinner already. It’s 9:08 and I’m heading off to bed soon, We’re waking up at 5am tomorrow to get ready. We need to break down our own tents and start out at 6:30am, I can use all the time I can get, so I’d like to leave by then. Tomorrow is one of the longer days. I think it’s over 100 miles!

I’m here alone in the tent b/c Angela’s still working the medical tent. She has a meeting that started just a few minutes ago. I imagine she won’t be back here to the tent until about 10pm. I’ll try to get some rest soon.

Good night.

2 comments:

  1. Go Brian. Good to hear that you made it through Day 1. Don't give up that easily. There are many people cheering you on. Peace brother and don't let the rain discourage you. The sun will continue to shine beyond the clouds.

    --Sam

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  2. @.

    It's weird how I only discovered this comment thing recently and have finally enabled the reply feature on this blogger thing. Thanks for your support! The rain wasn't too bad. It was actually nice to get cooled down.

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