Oh no!!!  This was the forecast leading up to the ride:

“Sunday, May 15: Mostly cloudy. A chance of showers and a slight chance of thunderstorms. Some thunderstorms may produce small hail. Highs in the lower 60s.”

I don’t want to ride 65 miles in that.  I tried to negotiate with Dave, but he wasn’t having it.  He kept telling me that I should still do it.

My perfect solution… I ride to the first stop, if I am wet from rain and miserable, then I just finish up the ride with the 25 milers.

It didn’t quite work out that way.  The different routes were marked by different colored arrows on the road to show which way to turn.  I think we got 2 miles into the ride when all of a sudden the green arrows (for the 25 mile ride) were gone.  Now I was stuck.

In retrospect, I am glad that I didn’t have the choice to chicken out.  I would have missed out on a lot.  We were fed every 10-15 miles. One rest stop I must make special mention of is Gizdich Ranch.  At that stop we got to enjoy crepes, fresh apple pie, fresh apple juice (the best apple juice I have ever had), and fresh lemonade.  Next time I’ll know not to eat so much at lunch so that I can have more pie and crepes.  We also rode through fragrant strawberry fields.  And I didn’t mind a three mile incline even though it was toward the end of the ride because it was through the scenic woods near Mt Madonna.  A couple of things I did choose to miss out on were biking up two inclines.  I didn’t want to be one of those people Dave saw last year who went so slowly up the incline that they lost their balance and fell over because they couldn’t clip out of the pedals.  So to avoid that I clipped out early and just walked up the really steep portions. Aside from those two moments, I would have to say the ride was really enjoyable and completely doable.