The Best Vacation Ever
The Best Vacation Ever was the PacTour Southern Transcontinental Ride. The ride was led by Lon Haldeman and Susan Notorangelo, the couple that run PAC Tour. Details on this and many other rides can be found at www.pactour.com.
It is very difficult to sum up a twenty-six day bicycle ride in a short article with a few pictures. If you would like to see more detail, surf over to http://jerryporter.blogspot.com and find the day-by-day story in the Blog Archive at the bottom of the page and start at “Day 1- 9/7/08 San Diego to El Centro, CA – Big Numbers”. And as I look back at the pages of the blog I wrote every day of the trip, I remember the huge range of emotions I felt on my journey across the USA.
It started with nerves. I am not the best traveler and I get stressed when I have to fly, and worse yet, I did not have my wife along to take care of the details as she always does when we travel. I was worried with the long line at the airport. I was nervous catching my connection in Denver. I was nervous finding the hotel shuttle. I was nervous meeting the people I would spend the next month with. I was nervous meeting my roommate for the next month. A couple things helped calm my nerves, my roommate for the next month turned out to be my good friend from Menomonie, that I had trained with for the past six months, Rick Gauger. However, when I made it to the rider meeting, it seemed that they were using “scare tactics” about the heat, the desert, and the troubles riders have had in the past. Looking back on that first day, I realize why I was so happy to finally get on my bike and ride.
And ride we did. The desert, the mountains, on the back roads, on the highways, and the Interstate a total of 2,914 miles with 90,200 feet of climbing in twenty-six days. That's an average of 112 miles and 3,500 feet of climbing 26 days without a break. It was the greatest physical challenge I have ever completed and left me feeling the fabulous physically, and emotionally.
Daily life included rising from a poor night's sleep with pain (stiff, sore legs and body) in a different hotel room each morning between 5:30 and 6:00 AM, and trying to figure out what the weather might be for the day because we were about to spend the next 8-12 hours in it, on the bike. Next step, get down to the parking lot with the bike, check the tire pressure, fill my two water bottles with various mixes of Gatorade, protein drink mix, or Heed mix all before the meal bell rang. At the bell we would all get our daily fill of fruit, oatmeal, bagels, juice, and coffee. After eating in the parking lot, we would head back to the room to finish packing our bag, check the room to make sure nothing was left behind, and wheel our bag out to the line of riders waiting to toss the luggage in the trailer. You also checked to make sure you had the right cue sheet and map for the day, just in case one ended up somewhere without another bike in sight (not that I ever experienced that). Then it was time to climb on the saddle, and slowly ride off into another beautiful sunrise – “Head East”, everyday.
Each of the twenty-six rides included three to five rest stops, plus a lunch stop. The time and distance between the stops depended on the terrain we faced each day. The first few days in the desert, where the temperatures exceeded 120 degrees, the stops were closer together so we could get the necessary fluids, and stuff a tube sock with ice to hang around our necks. The ice socks helped keep our body temperatures down, as we rode on to the next stop. The rest stops all started with a place to wash our hands and then I would fill my two water bottles with a mix that I thought I could enjoy in the next hour or so. We then grazed at the tables set-up with snacks, Cliff and Power Bars, Pringels, Jack Links beef jerky, cookies and fresh fruit. We would also drink a couple paper cups full of pop, V8 juice, or Gatorade at each stop. Some riders would linger at the rest stops, others would jump off and back on the bike quickly. Amazingly, everyone would end up a the lunch van and trailer within a half-hour or so of each other. The PAC Tour crew served excellent lunches every day, working very hard to make sure each rider got what they needed to be fueled for the ride. The tour included thirty total riders, including the support crew of ten that would alternate half riding every other day.
Each days ride concluded at a hotel where your bag was set out on the ground and the marker board had all the information you needed: your room assignments and key, locations of restaurants for dinner, the massage therapist, the laundry facilities, and what time breakfast was at the next morning. Also, an area was all set up to wash and repair your bike if it needed. I washed mine everyday and only had minor adjustments to keep it running perfect. Rick and I quickly figured out that we recovered much quicker if we finished with a quart of chocolate milk after each days ride. So we always tried to find the closest convenience store. The next priority was to get the days clothes washed and hung out to dry. As we rode in from the store each day, we really hoped that the hotel would have a nice pool for a cool swim. Usually the three of us from Menomonie would head out to dinner with others from the ride. It was great fun sitting down to dinner every night trying to find meals that would refuel us effectively, never worrying about eating too much.
The plan I had formulated for my best chance of completing the entire ride across the U.S. included riding steady and sticking close to my friend, Steve Brown, for the first two weeks, building strength and being ready to ride the toughest 50 miles in the country on day sixteen. Steve had completed the Northern Transcontinental route with PAC Tour in 1996. and is also a very seasoned rider knowing how and when to conserve his efforts on a long adventure. So the three of us from Menomonie rode together for most of the first two weeks. We made it through the heat of the desert, the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, and an incredibly difficult day into the headwinds of Hurricane Ike on September 14. That day we rode 105 miles from Socorro to Ruidoso, NM with over 5,000 feet of climbing and head winds gusting over 40 mph, many did not finish riding before 6:00 PM. Rick, another rider, and myself worked together by riding in a pace line, struggling to maintain six mph into the wind that day. But the challenging days are the ones you remember. So by the time I got to day sixteen (114 miles and 10,000 feet of climbing), I was feeling very confident that I could conquer the fifty toughest miles, and I did. I had a great time on the Talimena State Parkway. The road was smooth, had very little traffic, and rose to a beautiful ridge where you could see for miles on either side. Lunch was at a beautiful wayside stop along the parkway where we fueled up, took pictures, and recovered briefly before finishing one of the best rides ever.
The rides got easier, a couple of days under 100 miles, and we started getting some really nice tail winds. We even ventured off the route a couple of times to see historical sites in Georgia. We visited Plains and President Jimmy Carter's boyhood home and current residence. That same day we took time to tour the Windsor Hotel in Americus, GA and the Civil War Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, GA. The three extra stops made for a long day, but it was good fun to change things up after twenty-three days of following the route.
Towards the end of the trip it was in interesting mix of joy, sadness, pride and huge sense of accomplishment. We finished the ride as one big group, and rode right out onto the beach of the Atlantic Ocean. The group gathered on the beach for pictures, greeted friends and family, and there were a lot of hugs and handshakes. Standing around talking with many of the other riders, it was funny to hear many of them ask each other “So what's you next big ride going to be?”
The work of taking the bike apart, packing up it up in a box and getting it ready for shipping home was done quickly in the parking lot of the hotel. The last night Lon and Susan put together the last scheduled event of the trip, dinner with an award banquet where we all enjoyed sharing time together for the last time. I flew home the next morning, again nervous about things, especially about my bike making it back in one piece. After a layover in Atlanta seeing my bike lay on the tarmac of the airport, I was very, very happy walking down the steps of the airport seeing my wife waiting for me, with presents that each stage winner receives at the Tour de France, a lion and kisses from the podium girl. The “Best Vacation Ever” was over.
