That’s a first. Another 4am start at the San Luis Obispo Brevet Series and this time we left with the main group. For some reason I thought I would hang on to the guy with Zipp wheels (read $$$) up the first climb. Luckily he knew the descent and told me what to expect, so I held on tight and bombed down in the dark and cold. Eventually Brian would bridge up and we rode the whole day together. The whole day being 18 hours and 251 miles.
Everything is everything. There were only a handful of stores or towns for the first 225 miles of the ride, the organizers had to have water at the control points and even some of these were 70 miles apart. We’d have heat midday on the out-and-back to the Pinnacles National Monument and on the last big climb, up highway 46 out of Paso Robles over to the coast, we watched the clouds and fog roll in, obscure the last minutes of sun and drop the temperature 15 degrees. Brian and I had been riding hard all day, but on the coast, with the fog and darkness and low temperatures, we took it easy. When we finally rolled back to the Main’s house (at 10pm) they had vegan barley soup for us and we sat around and talked for a bit before we went to the van to sleep (luckily I had left the window open, because Dan and Michael got done at 130am and we didnt have a key).
Easter morning (see picture of Brian) we packed up at 630am to drive back to Los Angeles. I was stoked that my favorite coffee shop, Home of the Velvet Foam, was open in SLO.
Now only the 600k is left to qualify for Paris-Brest-Paris.

So said Fat Dan, aka Fast Dan, aka Dandonneur, in regards to Tania as we passed Hearst Castle on the SLO 300k. Wit is especially appreciated on a long ride, even more so after 40 miles of head winds. Thanks Dan! His dope VW Eurovan had made the Friday night trip from LA as comfortable as I can imagine being, which I soaked up before our ‘night’ of sleep at the ride start.
After 3 hours of this sleep-like horizontal thing, it was comical riding up the coast in the dark, at 430am, in a slight drizzle and a haze of fog. From the coast we headed up over the ridge and out past Paso Robles. Not comical was the 39 degree, slightly wet, gloveless descent. The first control was the earthquake capitol of the world. It’s a one trick town and there were no earthquakes happening so we left. The last bit back on PCH goes up to Ragged Point, one the most beautiful sections of the California coast. We finished the 187 miles in around 16 hours, much slower than anticipated, but the burrito lunch was worth it.
We did not get back to LA in time for the midnight tunnel sprints. Sucks! Jack won and Megan got second female so Swarm! still represented.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcLxssg8HQs]

DNF. Booooooooooo. Sheared the bolt on my carbon FSA cranks about 30 miles in. The odd thing was that we started on time and were more or less with the front group. After I called to report our situation the super nice guy from the SD Century Riders actually came and picked us up. Thanks Mike! Probably kept me from stripping out the crank arm or spindle.
Spent the rest of the morning chillin in Pacific Beach looking at purse girls and guys who say things like ‘total mosh sesh’ and ‘killer bro’. Then ate some vegan Asian ‘fusion’ at Sipz before enduring the drive back to Los Angeles. My bike looked all fresh with new Armadillos and the FSA wheels I peeled the stickers off of (pre-crank bolt shearing), too bad. Now I have to go up to SLO to get my 300k in.
More regarding Brevets, etc at Rusa.org

Start of ride. Notice that everyone else is gone.

Is Randonneuring French for Beauocracy? In preparation for yesterday’s 200k I sent off my membership to Randonneuring USA (RUSA) and included Swarm! as my club. About a week ago I got a response from someone at RUSA saying that my club was not official and that he would just put that my club is RUSA. Funny thing is, Jack just made our club official with USA Cycling. Politely I relayed this info to the membership coordinator or whomever at RUSA and he said we still did not count! What is a club then? I ride bikes almost every day with my friends and then we do long distance rides on the weekends. We were a club pre-namesake, unlike, I imagine, most ‘clubs’. Our list of 2006 events is pretty impressive (doubles, triathlons, 508, Messenger World Championships, etc) so I passed this on to him with our President’s info (Jack Lindquist) and Chris Kostman from AdventureCorps as a reference. Finally, he said we were borderline, but he would count it anyway. Thanks for the favor. He also refused to recognize the ‘!’ in ‘Swarm!’.

Despite all that, at 345am I was up and ready to head to (near) San Diego with Paul and Zack in Paul’s truck. Budge decided not to go last minute after not sleeping a wink. Plus he hasn’t ridden much. Not much traffic at 430am and we are there early! The Randonneur scene is like a subculture of a subculture. Wasn’t sure what to expect, but the riders were similar to the double century crowd (some racers, some fast-looking old dudes, some people with racks and tons of stuff and mostly non-descript guys and a few females, on bikes). I paid my $5 and both Paul and Zack joined RUSA in order to get medals. Then, even after being early to the start point, we were late leaving. Fifteen minutes behind the group start, which is a mental fuck.

I had heard poor things about the route, but is was not too bad. We saw our friend Lynn on tandem who insisted on introducing me to everyone as ‘Matt who did 508 team on a fixed-gear’. I looked like I should be much faster than I am, but this is not a race it is a Brevet. Therefore it is also self-supported; my jersey and seat bag were filled with 2 bananas, an apple, 2 lara bars, 2 clif bars and some Sustained Energy. The self-support thing may be an issue for the longer rides, but for this it was fine. It makes Brevets an interesting combination of ultra-distance cycling and bike touring.

Other highlights:
I ate a Clif bar out of the garbage at Control Point 2
Rode to almost dark!
PCH route to SD- Had memories of with Justin, in 2002 on the way to Belize, when we saw the steel worker who had ridden from Ohio after he lost his job. That was almost five years ago! Also, Matt Pro and I were on this route when we did LA to SD in one day training for my first double in 2004. Self-supported 175 or whatever it was, was so huge back then.

Zack signing his route card after finishing. Paul celebrates with a donut.Afterwards we headed up to El Segundo to hang out at Brian’s dad’s place again and pretend to live the life for a night. Food, chillin, hot tub (this time there were some females at least). In the morning four of us went for an hour run on the beach. Yeah, California!