Death Ride 2009

This post is a shout out to Stan - a friend and fellow traveler on our recent Japan tour. He is taking on the Tour of the California Alps as I write this. The official banner says it all - 129 miles, 5 passes, and 15,000 feet of vertical climb. Or as I say - batshit insane.

At the moment I have my leg wrapped and on ice after getting the knee scoped yesterday. I am eating painkillers, and making my first efforts at restoring some range of motion to my knee post-surgery. I only mention this in order to point out that I'd still rather be me than Stan on a bike in the heat climbing those mountain passes today.

There are some news stories but not much real-time coverage of the event. This guy (cyclocore?) said he would try to tweet and YouTube along the way, but is apparently hampered by crappy ATT coverage. Hopefully I'll update this with pics and results after I hear from Stan.

Good luck and good riding my friend.

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UPDATE: 12-July-09

Received this e-mail from Stan at 10:10 last night:

"Did the death ride - made it to the end."

Congrats Stan! One hell of an accomplishment.

I don't know when or if we'll see pictures from Stan, so I'll just embed a few videos I found from the "cyclocore" guys. To be clear, I have no idea who these guys are, but they are the only ones I could find on the intertubes who were trying to do some real-time posting of the event.

The start:



The finish:



An assessment of some scary weather at the finish - I suspect Stan ran into this:



It'll be interested in hearing how Stan "weathered" the end of the ride. Maybe I can talk him into a guest post.

UPDATE: Stan sent me this picture
Stan and Terry at 8,600 ft heading for the top of Ebbits pass. This is why I can't be a biker - well... besides the discipline and the hours of training and the dedication needed to do a ride like this... besides all that - you have to wear these outfits. That is one step over the line for me.