Blake's Journey: Day 2: Sweeps

Course: Napa to Sacramento

Distance: 65 miles

Elevation: 3,528 ft

Weather: Partly cloudy

Total moving time: 4.5 hours.

Yesterday evening a bunch of us guys were sitting in the hotel hot tub when fellow rider Luke and I agreed to volunteer to be the sweeps for today. Each day, two guys are chosen to be the "sweeps" for the ride. That means that they ride behind the last pace line and do not pass them. Their job is to make sure that everyone makes it to the destination without getting left behind. We began the day at an early 6am. Luke and I took off last and stayed behind the group in front of us with ease. Generally, the sweeps are stronger riders, but since we volunteered that wasn't the case for the both of us. I was drafting behind Luke for over half of the day.

Within the first twenty miles, we hit a hill that reached a whopping 1,500 ft. Not fun, but it was like riding through a Bob Ross painting. Luckily, the group in front of us was struggling a lot so I could pass off my fatigue as waiting for the guys in front of me. We stopped a lot going up the first climb, but it was all downhill from there. Literally though, it was a blast to ride down that thing. We hit about 35 kmh.

After the big downhills, it was all flat. We had a nice and smooth ride to Sacramento. When we finally arrived, we had a sponsored lunch by a mother and father of two Pi Alphas from '09 and '11. We ate sandwiches from Mr. Pickle's that had "Dutch Crunch" bread. I've never been so impressed by bread in my life. It was so delicious I was eating the morsels of everyone else's bread.

After lunch we got in our arrival positioning. Our van escorted us and we rode in a side-by-side double pace line. Since Luke and I were sweeps for the day, we got to be first in line for the arrival. Our arrival distance was about 1 mile in the double pace line, and we managed to mess it up. There was some miscommunication and we all took a wrong turn and wound up on the wrong side of the Sacramento Capitol Building. When we pulled up (and were still thinking that we had gone the right way) we only noticed one guy clapping. I didn't really know what to think so I just waved and went to stop my bike in the lawn. I suppose he could have been someone really important that we were arriving for?

We finally got word that we made a wrong turn and headed around the block back in arrival formation and made it to the right side. We arrived to a few families as well as a handful of people with disabilities. It was heartwarming to see those people cheering us on as we pulled up. I can't imagine what D.C. is going to feel like.

After arrival we headed to the Southside Art Center for a friendship visit. It's a place for people with disabilities to go and indulge in music and arts. The people there are so creative, too! They had painted things I can only dream of being able to make. After a tour of the place we all ate dinner and then the clients of the Art Center put on a concert for us. They were a full fledged band! All of them were amazingly talented and they played some classic songs like Move it, Move it and Roller Coaster. One client that played the xylophone and tambourine was a 51-year-old with down syndrome. He would take breaks from playing his instrument and come dance with us out in the crowd. He was a machine on the dance floor.

Overall the experience was great. Tomorrow we ride 50 miles and have a friendship visit in the morning. It's a little bit of a recovery day before our 95 mile and 8,000 foot climb in Kirkwood. I never thought I'd call 50 miles a recovery day.