Life As A Roadie

Here's the bike parking team posing for a final group shot in Ventura with all of our work very nearly finished.

I was totally impressed with how well our team worked. Even though we were sleep-deprived and under some stress, we got along really well (as far as I saw). No outbursts of temper. If you watched us working you'd think we'd been doing this thing for years. A lot of our tasks require more than one person to accomplish because of the heavy, cumbersome equipment. Most of the time you could just set yourself a task, go to it, start to lift your end and another team member would almost magically appear on the other end.

We had enough people to do the job safely. If someone needed to take a break, there were still enough people to keep working. Even so, we didn't have luxurious chunks of free time. My day started at 4:15 when I'd dress in the dark and grab the bag of stuff I put together the night before and head out for a porta-potty visit and then breakfast. On the schedules, breakfast is supposed to start at 5:00, but it actually begins at 4:00. I would wear my headlamp so I could sort of see what I was eating.

Breakfast was followed by toothbrushing and a return to my tent where I packed up my stuff and (unless my tentmate was still in) took down the tent and packed it up too. After hauling everything up to the gear trucks I rushed over to bike parking where I was usually late (but earlier than the team captain!).

We'd begin to prepare bike parking for the departing cyclists. That meant taking down the snow fencing that was supposed to provide a very minimal level of security, setting out water, mixing gatorade, preparing the butt balm for distribution, and distributing the daily route sheets. Cyclists could hit the road as early as 6:30 (6:00 in Ventura for the last day's ride), so they would begin flowing in about half an hour before that. Things would be fairly busy from then until about 8:00. I would usually walk around handing out the route sheets and sharing my opinion on the beauty of the day's ride to anyone who wanted to hear it. Occasionally I'd help a cyclist find his bike. Sometimes we would have to move a bike, but often a cyclist would simply forget where he left his bike.

Cyclists had to be out on the road by 8:30...and that didn't mean standing in bike parking pumping up tires, it meant ON THE ROAD. So after 8:00 one or more of us would start cruising through tent city (sometimes with the bullhorn) reminding riders of the imminent hour. I prefered to go up to anyone who looked like a rider preparing to ride (the shoes were usually the defining element) and remind them, and see if they needed help. There were a few occasions where I helped riders take down and pack tents and carried their gear to the trucks after chasing them away, telling them to hurry to bike parking. Some cyclists refused help even though they were down to the last 5 minutes.

One morning I was surprised to see a group of cyclists doing group stretching at 8:20. Honey! Do it a mile down the road, or you're only stretching for a bus ride. As I walked by them, their leader acknowledged the time, so I left them alone. Five minutes later I found them bringing their gear to the gear trucks where one of the guys wanted to chat with a gear roadie. I reminded him of the time again. He sauntered away to bike parking where I caught him at 8:30 still mixing up his own electrolyte replacement and pumping his tires. At that point he was getting careless in his rush, but he made it onto the road.

On another day it was 8:20 when I reminded a cyclists walking away from breakfast of the need to hurry. She said she would make it. Didn't see here again until 8:35 when she came to grab her bike and had the gall (unmitigated) to acknowledge she was just going to take her bike to camp while she packed her tent! Hardly! We snagged it from her, and she was on the bus for the day.

In one camp I found a cyclist at 8:25 just taking down his tent, so I shooed him away. Told him to get on the road and I would finish up for him. I was midway through packing his tent into its bag when another roadie came along to critique my packing style! These are the very same sort of tents we've been using since California AIDS Ride 2 in 1995 and I've managed to pack my tent every morning. There's no need for elegance, since the same tent will be unpacked in just a few hours in the next city. This roadie told "Oh, we'll have to go back and start at the beginning!" Fine! I didn't have time to discuss or argue this with her. Obviously, she was currently free from her roadie job and if she thought she had the time to make an elegant packing, then she was free to do it. I dropped the tent. Told her to take care of it, that I had been doing it for a cyclist, grabbed the cyclists bags to take them to his gear truck, and moved off. I would have told her my moose turd pie story, but bike parking's work is only half done at 8:30.

At 8:30 we grab all the bikes still in the parking area. These include "held" bikes, which belong to riders who are not allowed to ride that day either because of medical reasons or they've been a bad boy (failure to shout " On your left!"); bikes that were sagged in (riders who chose not to ride all or part of the previous day); and bikes belonging to riders who have chosen not to ride this day. No rider needs to come to us to excuse himself from riding. If we have his bike at 8:30, it's ours, and we trust he knows how to find the bus on his own.

Those bikes are handed over to the bike transport team, who have a few trucks just for carrying bikes.

Then we break down parking and pack the truck. Two of us would take the truck to the next site, while the rest of the team rode the bus. I was always on the truck, never taking the bus.

When we'd arrive at the next overnight stop we (in the truck) would have to locate where they had put bike parking. First we'd encounter the traffic roadie team who seemed to all have a hearing loss. As I came to a stop I'd shout "bike parking" to 'em and then have to repeat it. Then it was park the truck, hook up with the rest of the team (who were usually later getting to camp). Then, depending on the time, we might have lunch. The info services roadie team has somehow separated the correct number of lunches from the thousands of lunches prepared, and put them in a box labeled "bike parking." One of us would go fetch the box upon arrival in camp.

Except in Ventura (Friday afternoon) a few cyclists would always beat us to camp. Their bikes would be leaning here and there near the bike parking area. We would go ahead and set up the bike parking area and then retrieve those early bikes and check off their numbers. Those early riders (they were the same every day) didn't even know there was a check in process, so we really surprised them in Ventura when we got all set up before their arrival.

From about 1:00 or so, until the very last rider was in, our job was to check off the riders as they rode in. This was not so simple as it might seem. Some riders had their numbers obscured. Some riders wanted to fly right by us. Sometimes a fat horde would descend on us all at once and shout numbers. Nonetheless, we probably achieved better than 99% accuracy.

While we did this we were also supposed to try to spot any rider who might need medical assistance. This wasn't a major problem on this ride due to the moderate, dry weather. But we did have a couple of riders who just fell over as soon as they stopped.

In theory, the route closed at 7:00 every night, but the weather was always good, so if there were a lot of cyclists still out on the road, someone at a higher level would make the decision to keep the route open. On the day of the first century (Monday, Aptos to King City) the last rider came in about 8:00 after riding her first century. She was pretty jubilant.

The late riders never come in alone. Besides our own team, lots of riders and roadies come out to line the entry to camp to welcome every rider as they pedal in. The very last rider is accompanied by the caboose (yet another roadie team, this one with a yellow pick up truck) and a squad of motorcycle riders (the moto roadie team).

Finally the last rider is in, we gather together the check-in sheets, the snow fence is up, the nighttime security guard is present and our daily work is finally DONE. We rush off to find dinner (which ends at 9:00) and a shower (which ends at 10:00) and then collapse into our sleeping bags.

At 4:15 AM the alarm beeps again.