Daily ramblings and interesting things I find.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Tour de Corona 2007

The attendance at this year's tour was much slimmer than last year's. Partly because I gave less than two weeks notice, but also because nobody likes to climb Bedford Road.

The proposal was to start at my house, climb Bedford to Main Divide, take a right and go down Silverado Motorway. From there we climb back up Maple Springs to Four Corners, back down Main Divide and back down Bedford.

And that's exactly what we did, with a nice long break at the bottom of the Motorway. John twisted out of his pedals wrong and ended up on the ground with his left foot pointing behind him!

The ride stared with 10 of us:
Dave (me)
Joe
Bob
John
Jeff
Adrian
Patrick
Nick
Andrea
Steve

...and ended with 9 of us back at my house.

We headed out about 9:30 am, for a nice, easy stroll up Bedford Road. Uh, yeah. The good thing was that nobody was racing this time, which took a little bit of the edge off. During the climb, we had the typical group splits, with Patrick and John in the front, followed by a strong Steve and Jeff, and me way in the back.

I planted 10 gallons of water at the top of Bedford so that we didn't have to lug full Camelbaks and bottles up that dreadful climb. I realized that it was a great decision when I saw everyone refilling and thanking me at the same time.

Going north on the Main Divide was pretty uneventful, except when Jeff slid out while trying to avoid going over the cliff on a sharp left turn at top speed. He ended up with a bloody elbow and knee, and a piece of his inner-tube coming out of his rear tire. So the engineers congregated and devised a plan to place many Gu packets on the inner wall of his tire... Chocolate was the flavor of choice today. Jeff filled his tire up to about 30 pounds and off we were.

Going down Silverado Motorway was a blast. This was my first time, so I was loving it. Miles and miles of single-track... that's what I'm talking about. Bob and I were the first ones down, followed by Steve with some bad news... "John broke his leg about a half-mile up." Oh crap, what do we do... we're almost in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no cell phone reception.

Steve and I proceeded to the nearest house and ask if we can use their phone to call 911. The woman literally rolled her eyes, sighed, and said "just don't give out our address or phone number". Apparently, this has happened once or twice before.

So I call, and we return to the base of the trail to see Jeff. He said the whole group only had 400mg of Ibuprofen, so I rushed up the hill to give him 600 more. Poor John was in some serious pain, but handling it like a true fighter. Three other guys were standing above him to provide shade, and we basically just had to wait.

Eventually we saw a Sheriff's helicopter hovering over us, then a Fire helicopter, then 2 paramedics hiking up the hill with full yellow fire-fighting suits on, then 2 more with a gurney, then 3 more, then 4 more... Of course it was the older guys in the back, huffing and puffing... but they made it. Eventually we had 11 or 12 firefighters up there on this little narrow trail, right on top of a huge washed out section just waiting to suck someone in.

They went to work, took John away in a helicopter, and Jeff caught the whole friggen thing on video. (.ASF 138 MB)

After it was all said and done, John ended up with a broken tibia and a cracked fibula. Because he got to the hospital fast enough (helo-ride) the doctor could reset/realign his tibia before his muscles contracted causing further damage. John said that re-setting his leg was very painful. After the realignment, the 2nd set of xrays looked good. He ended up with Intrameduallary (IM) Rodding and will need about 6 months to recover. Hang in there John!

Brian met us in the canyon, but was too sick to ride. He resupplied us with water and snacks, then he was kind enough to take Jeff's bike back to my house (Jeff rode John's bike because it was more reliable) and join us for the bar-b-que.

The climb up Maple Springs was looooong and tough. Of course, I ended up in the back again with only Patrick and Nick behind me. Eventually, I see a Jeep drive past me with Nick in the back smiling back at me. That little bastard! So I plug along, Patrick catches up and we continue up together to regroup at Four Corners.

Now the fun begins with the rest being pretty much all down hill. We basically blazed down the Main Divide and Bedford, hitting some of the final single tracks towards the end.

Amazingly enough, there were no flat tires this time, although Patrick ended up with a slow leak towards the bottom.

We returned around 5:30 PM. We scarfed down some well-deserved burgers, dogs and beer, and watched the UFC on my back patio with a nice warm fire pit on the side.

Can't wait to do it next year! Here are some Google Earth photos of the ride...



Overview of the ride from my street, facing south-west.


Overview of the ride facing north-west.


Overview of the ride facing north.


Overview of the ride facing east.


Overview of the ride facing south.


Overview of Silverado Motorway, where John broke his leg, facing north-west.