Saturday, August 1st, 2015
Start/End: Orland/Kelseyville, CA
Mileage: 99.9+
Weather: Hot and sunny, with a little bit of a breeze
Well, it was another amazing morning in I4K with a sharp 4:40 AM wake up, which seems a little crazy, but the team all agreed that they would rather leave early and avoid the heat. Fortunately, our amazing hosts who had offered to provide breakfast, we also ok with this early morning wake up and arrived and set up an amazing spread including bagels, eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy and lots of fruit. It was deli scouts and we did not seem to make a very big dent in the food…strange. We are so thankful for the crazy amount of generosity we received from the First Lutheran Chruch of Orland that truly went above and beyond with hosting us.
Today our ride was dedicated to a rider’s aunt who passed away two years ago today to her fight with breast cancer. This trip has been a huge reminder of the progress that has been made with certain types of cancers, but also a reminder that not all types of cancers are the same, nor are the diagnosis. We are very honored to ride for her today and our thoughts are definitely with her family today.
The ride started off not too hot at all, fortunately. It was mostly flat for the first part of the ride and not too exciting. One thing that was noticed was the large amount of fire trucks that passed us. They were coming from all over, with more than 12 departments were counted by riders. For lunch, we stopped at a really awesome fruit stand. They had fresh raspberries, blackberries and just lots of other great stuff, including flavored pistachios and almonds. It was really nice to be in the shade and enjoy such fresh fruit.
Around mile 65 where we had a rest stop, wee started to notice smoke rising up into the sky in very large amounts from a nearby wildfire. At this point, though, we could not smell the fire, nor were we impacted by the smoke. As we continued along the ride,mew had some beautiful spots of downhill that curved around the hills. These were well deserved, but we could see that we were getting much closer to the Rocky Fire. Around mile 80, we started to be impacted a little by the smoke and for safety’s sake, many groups pulled off at that point at a gas station where they could hang out inside outside of the smoky air. Based on the wind, even though we were going away from the fire, we made the decision to shuttle riders the remainder of the route. It was not a fun choice to make, but most of the riders, even though we wanted to get more miles in, agreed that was the right decision to be made.
Our awesome ride leader did some exploring after we all arrived at the stayover and found us a route that will keep us out of the way of the wildfire to,or row, so we are all very excited about that. We had our traditional dinner of pasta and lentils tonight as we sat around in a circle as we had done on our 90 mile training ride day. We told jokes and told stories about the ride and it was just a lot of fun. I think we are all going to miss this group and the lifestyle (though showers and a bed sound super appealing for us right now).
Today was our last long day and we are pretty excited that tomorrow we will have normal wake up at 6 AM! Some of us have already laid down though… It has been a long couple of days in the heat, so here is to hoping for some cooler weather and a safe journey tomorrow!
-LAH