The Fearsome Foursome, 3 Bears Ride

Our ride this Sat. was dedicated to Maxx.
Pump it!
I made it. Who's your er daddy? Or was this Mamma Bear?
Almost there....
Thank goodness I made it to the top, otherwise I would have missed out on these goodies (:

These pictures capture the beautiful scenery. We've been so blessed with great Cali weather.
Some of my teammates

What a week! I felt like the Tasmanian Devil, but it was a great week. Andrea, my "virtual co-worker" was in our S.F. office- in the flesh! She’s actually someone who is crazier than I am, so it was obviously love at first sight when we first met in August.

We went to Eva’s (another co-worker) house after getting nice and buzzed at work (After work, of course. C’m on. They may be French, but we do leave the wine and cheese for after hours). So we hung out at the office for a while, so Andrea could mess with people's screen savers and then headed to Eva’s for dinner- which consisted of Oreo’s and chips with salsa. Nutritious!

We headed downtown to meet up with some other girls and found reggae central. I had a scrumptious Pearl pomegranate martini (I hardly see Pearl carried anywhere, so I had to take advantage), stole a wine key from the bartender, and since my duties were obviously taken care of there, headed to this crazy underground reggae club. It kind of felt like a college party, except they hadn’t run out of alcohol- thank god. (Just kidding, but not really). At one point I went to the bathroom, but then couldn’t find everyone, so I was just sort of standing there dancing alone (happy as a clam). Finally I see Andrea waving to me from the middle of the dance floor (I don’t know how I missed her) and she said, "EZ (yes, this is the name the Frenchies have given me) what the hell are you doing?!" I told her that I couldn’t find them, so was just chillin’on my own. She about died laughing. We finished up there and took a cab back towards her hotel. I don’t know why b/c we had such a filling dinner, but we were hungry and found this great pizza place. Who’s idea it was to order another round of beers (at 2 AM) is beyond me. Clearly we didn’t need them. Walked back to the hotel, and crashed only to wake up 4 hours later to head to work. Friday was painful, but it could have been worse. Had Indian and Naan -N- Curry (love that place) with the staff and before I knew it we on our way to Chevy’s for Margaritas. (I had an additional motive to get Mario a sombrero to block out the sunlight that puts a glare on his computer screen).

Our waitress must have been brewing her own special concoction of crack in the back. I can’t even get into how out of control she was other than the fact that she served me a virgin strawberry margarita (Hello! It’s happy hour on Friday) and chicken enchiladas (after suggesting black beans instead of refried beans since I’m a vegetarian). Then she dropped the birthday cake all over the table and just said, "Oh well. Do you want another one or not?"

Took BART home, and was really dreading my Saturday morning ride after 2 nights out and definitely not ample sleep.

BUT…. The ride at Pinole was spectacular, and I have to say that I am a rockstar for taking those hills on, lack of sleep or not. This ride was dedicated to Maxx, a 21-year old patient diagnosed with lymphoma. He originally had ulcerated colitis, and the treatment led to lymphoma. He has been having a very difficult time, and 3 days before his scheduled bone marrow transplant at Stanford, he came down with pneumonia. It brought tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat, and all I can say at this point, is thank you Sheryl, for sharing this story with us and letting us ride in his honor this Saturday. If you want to make a donation to support research and support for Maxx and families like his, you can do so here by visiting my donation page:

http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/tntgsfECloern

After last weekend’s ride in S.F. I was pretty apprehensive about hills in general. But, I picked up by newly tuned up bike (Merci Sports Basement… you are Bike Gods) on Wednesday and did an evening ride, as well as runs on Mon. and Thurs. Who would have guessed that doing additional training on your own would help- duh! So I was feeling pretty good on Sat. and ready to go. Until…my first flat tire.

At first I didn’t know what had happened. I kept hearing/feeling a thump thump thump. I thought it was the road..somoeone forgot to call out, "rough road". But when it continued on, I thougth maybe it was something with my bike. Putting 2 and 2 together, I realized if I went faster so did the thump thump thump. We got to the bottom of the hill and pulled over to see what was goin’on. Yep. My back tire was completely flat (see picture above). Bamberger took charge, and I sort of stood there looking like an idiot. But even he had a difficult time. Once we got over that initial bump, it was smooth sailing. Getting through the 3 bears definitely boosted my confidence, and how great is SAG (support and gear… basically you get hooked up with all sorts of goodies throughout the ride)?! We got split into a group of 4 ( hence the title the Fearsome Foursome) due to my flat which included Steve (party captain), Steve (Bamberger), and Monica who I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting before, but she rocks (I had a hunch she would be cool when I saw her Sierra Nevada water bottle- where do you get those?!).

After the ride, I drove home, and crashed from 3-6:45 only waking up to eat dinner, watch and episode of Alias, and go back to bed. Sun. I was up and out early to drop off the ‘rents to the airport. A week in Hawaii sounds pretty nice. I hope they have fun. Then I went on another ride with Sheryl. Of all the things that could be sore, it was my butt that was killin’me, but we did a light ride at Coyote Hills, and I felt better after the ride than I did at the beginning. Then it was off to the barn to give Pokey some lovin’and ride her. Am I a maniac or what?! Jesse- I could give Tornado Anne a run for her money!

Phew. I think that’s it. Thank you all to everyone who has made a donation in my name to the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. I just got word this weekend, that the Solvang Century Cyclists (just the S.F. group) has already raised over a whopping $18,000!!!! Whooooooooo hoooo. If you have questions about how to make a donation or about the society and its mission in general, I welcome comments on my blog and/or emails.

To all my friends residing outside of CA, I miss you and send you many many bisous, abrazos, and baci e abbracci. Have a great week.