Wish Me Luck! (Better, wish me fortitude!)

In six days, I am riding my bicycle 335 miles over five days, from Big Bear Lake to Mammoth Mountain (in California). I'm doing it to raise money for the US Adaptive Recreation Center, a non-profit organization where I am a volunteer ski instructor for people with disabilities. I've raised over $1500 over the last few months. As for the ride, I'm waffling back and forth between excited and terrified! I've been training hard, but there are lots and lots of hills.

I decided to do this ride (The Peak-to-Peak Pedal 14) in honor of Emma, one of my good friends. She died two years ago. She had severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. Although she couldn't walk or talk, she loved skiing more than anyone I have ever met. Without adaptive sports programs, she would never have been able to ski. This ride is shaping up to be the most challenging thing I have ever done, but I'll be riding with her in my mind and my heart.

Just wanted to share that with my AW peeps. Any and all encouragements are welcome!

Here's a picture of Emma and I (me in red, her in blue) taking a hot cocoa break slopeside at Alpine Meadows, Lake Tahoe. She is sitting in a bi-ski, a seat mounted on two skis.

ETA: further down this post is a mini trip report!

Thanks for all the lovely wishes! I leave tomorrow morning for the ride. I've been psyching myself up and I feel mostly ready for it. When I return to the lovely internets on Monday I will let you know if i made it or not!

Whew, I made it back from my bike ride all in one piece! The short version: I had a blast! It was like summer camp for grownups. It was an amazing experience and extraordinarily challenging. The first three days we rode in 90 degree heat, and the last two days we rode in below freezing temps! It was wild. I'll definitely be going back next year! My legs are really sore right now, as are my hands from keeping a death grip on the handlebars in high winds. A few highlights from the ride, if anyone's interested:

-riding 84 miles on the second day, which was much further than i ever imagined i could accomplish. 55 miles of it were nonstop uphill climbing! I was the last person to arrive at camp that night, but definitely the proudest. During that day, I got a flat tire, fell over, skinned my knee, and damaged my derailleur (thingy that shifts the gears), but i still finished. The mechanic fixed my bike that night so I could ride on.

-Getting pulled off the road on the second day by the people in charge, after 73 miles of fighting a headwind (only seven miles from camp!), because the winds were too heavy to ride safely (about 25 mph gusting to 35 mph). That was the highest winds in the 14 year history of the ride. I was driven the final few miles into camp in an SUV, and collapsed into my tent to clean up and change clothes. It was dark and cold and windy and there was no one around our campsite. My tent was full of sand from all the wind. I was starting to feel a bit dire, so I wandered around and discovered 25 people crammed into one of the RVs serving as a support vehicle for the ride. The first thing I heard when I walked in was, 'Would you like a bowl of clam chowder?' It was like that Campbell's soup commercial, where the snowman starts eating the soup and turns into a little red-haired boy. Only I turned from a delirious snowman into a grubby little biker girl surrounded by her friends.

-Riding the final four miles from the town of Mammoth up to the Mammoth ski resort on the last day. The whole group was meant to ride up together and finish at the same time. The route was all uphill, at 9000 feet elevation, with snow on the ground around us and in the pine trees, and patches of black ice on the road. And we had been riding like mad for five days already! I was gasping for breath feeling like I had the lung capacity of an asthmatic preschooler, and I had to keep stopping to rest. They offered me a ride in a car, but I really wanted to finish it on my own. Pretty soon everyone else had passed me by. Tom, the executive director of the nonprofit we were riding for, hung back to help me. He kept telling me to breathe deeply and remember to look around at the scenery. He even helped literally push me up the hill with his hand on the back of my bike seat. Eventually we got to the top, and all the riders cheered for me. We all rode the last quarter-mile in together and lots of hugging and crying ensued. Then I had the best soak of my life in an outdoor hot tub and slept in a real bed!

If anyone was curious, the ride had 34 riders, who raised $60,000 for outdoor recreation opportunities for people with disabilities. I raised $1600 myself. Of those riders,

-11 were women
-4 had a major physical disability, including 3 wheelchair users riding hand-cycles
-only 5 were under age 40
-2 flew all the way from the UK to ride with us
-1 has ridden this event for all 14 years it has been held