Once the Sea Otter mtn. bike race had passed, the pressure to get miles on the SS was off and I could concentrate on the road rides I had coming up.
The weekend following Sea Otter, I headed up to Chico to do the Wildflower metric with my sister and brother. This is my fourth year doing Chico and the third year I’ve done it with the two of them.
My sister is one of those really fit, always active Tahoe people that we all secretly envy...she’s managed to get older without actually aging. I can remember skiing with her when I was in high school and not being able to keep up. Now, a "couple of years" later things are still the same. She’s fitter now than I’ll ever be, she skis, plays tennis competitively, rides her bike and manages to juggle a family at the same time.
My brother on the other hand, works hard. He’s an iron worker out at the lab and has one of those jobs where you have to actually work all day long. I don’t mean listen to customers complain, deal with broken computers or even balance budgets. He has a job where you have to lift stuff, move stuff, fix stuff, run up and down catwalks and in general are on your feet and working all...day...long....like for at least 8HOURS!!!
The difference in the two lifestyles is interesting actually. My sister enjoys exercise and whether, biking or skiing or playing tennis, the better the workout, the more fun it is. My brother on the other hand, sees work as his exercise and anything that resembles exercise, therefore resembles work and should be avoided unless there’s a paycheck involved. (which actually makes sense when you type it out that way)
So, every year, my sister looks forward to the Chico ride as a fun day outside with her brothers. My brother sees it as one more day when he doesn’t get to relax and enjoy his backyard patio. It’s his once a year bike ride and he doesn’t see any reason to do it more often than that.
Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day and after sitting up until after midnight getting caught up, none of us saw any reason to rush into the ride.
So, after waking up at the civilized hour of 7:00am we wandered across the parking lot to Denny’s to fuel and caffeinate the machines and then decided to head out to the start.
Technically we started out 3 different times, but my sister kept remembering stuff she left in the truck so after 3 laps of the Motel 6 parking lot we really headed for the start.
Turns out the group doing the metric century left at 8:00 so by 9:30 when we started, we had the route all to ourselves...so much so that we weren’t quite sure which way to go at a couple of intersections.
Turns out we did ok though and made it to the first rest stop to find we had caught some of the early starters that weren’t making as good of time as us.
At the second rest stop we were joined by the 100 milers and from there to the end we had a nice crowd to ride with and made it the rest of the way with people ahead of and behind and passing us…..(lots of people passing us)
Once again, Maureen and I had a great time on the bikes enjoying family time, beautiful weather and pretty scenery while Bob got it done once more and out of the way until next year.
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