Some of you have been following my adventures qualifying for the
Paris-Brest-Paris ride, here is a report on the 400km (250m) brevet
I did last Saturday.

Long rides can vary.  Many people find it difficult to believe,
but usually they are actually fun. If you are in good shape and
nothing untoward happens, you can enjoy being out on country roads
with friends.  Sometimes long rides turn into a boring grind.
Sometimes they are an ordeal.  This one unfortunately tended toward
the latter.

Five of us (me, Elaine, Jaye, Carolyn, and Michael) started in
Marin at 5AM .  The course goes up to the Russian river and then
inland to St Helena.  That first 100 miles was fine.  But in the
Napa valley, it was bloody hot, which is always hard on me and as
we headed north towards Cloverdale I started to get into trouble.
I was baked and my brain started playing tricks on me.  When we
made an unofficial stop in Jimtown, I just flopped down in the
shade on the concrete in front of the store.  It was about 2PM and
the store people said it was 101.  My companions poured water on
me and our fellow-rider nurse Carolyn took my pulse and insisted
on heroic measures.  They bought a bag of ice and iced me down.
After about 15 minutes of that, we continued on towards Cloverdale.
Equipped with ice bags and three water bottles of ice-stuff, I
barely made the 13 miles to the Cloverdale checkstation as I was
fading out again.

I cooled out there for a while and then we started heading back
"home".  We plowed into a stiff headwind, but it had a virtue: the
marine influence dropped the temperature about 20 degrees and I
started to feel reasonable again.

Seven of us (the original five plus Clayton and Tony) rolled out
of the 300km checkstation in Guerenevill(sp?) at about 7PM.  It
was now getting cool and every time we stopped, I got cold.  The
evening was actually pretty pleasant and it was mellow rolling down
the coast at reasonable speed.

We stopped so Tony could change his lightbulb about 30 miles from
home and an unfortunate thing happened to me: my stomach spasmed
and that was it for my fuel supply, I left it all on the ground by
the side of the road.  I didn't have the heart (or stomach?) to
eat anything more, and I was feeling OK, but it exacerbated my
tendency to get cold.

7 miles from home, we suffered a truly bizarre accident.  We were
going slowly up a hill when Clayton shifted, his gears jammed, he
stopped and toppled over, and disappeared down an embankment about
20 feet into a creek!  Nurse Carolyn was called on again, she and
Elaine had a lot of trouble climbing down to him.  He turned out
not to be badly hurt, but it required an ambulance and crew to drag
him out of there at 2AM.  I went totally hypothermic waiting for
the reinforcements to arrive and left to generate some heat riding
back to the finish before the ambulance turned up.

We got home at 4AM, tired but OK.  Clayton was home when we called
at noon on Sunday nursing bruises and broken ribs, but in a remarkably
good mood.  He seemed more preoccupied that I had done heat
prostration and hypothermia in the same day than he was concerned
about his mishap.

If all distance rides were like this one, I probably wouldn't do
them.  I don't think I'm THAT MUCH of a masochist.  But most are
better.  Even this one had it redeeming spots.  The night ride down
the coast was sweet and good companionship carries you through the
hard spots.