The Ride to Vegas: Day 6 the last ride

The day started early for the fast guys that were choosing to ride another 120 miles. They rolled at 6:45a. The rest of us ate breakfast and loaded bikes, gear and bodies into the vans to be shuttled out part way. They decided that my group would ride 50 today and the casual pace group would ride 30 or so.

At the drop off point, it was drizzling so we gathered the appropriate gear and got going. The terrain was rolling hills, challenging at times but offering recovery in between efforts. We had a great group. I was highly entertained by John and Johnny from High Desert Bicycles in NM. They are like watching a stand-up act that is always in progress. World Champion Rebecca Rusch and her boyfriend Greg chose to join our group this day, as well. They worked extra hard all week physically pushing one of our riders to keep her in her group. My friend, Doug, from UBikes Boulder was also a welcome addition as we were feeling pretty like-paced all week and he's a Moorestown native so that makes him a cool guy. Patrick from Red Kite Prayer, Robert from Right to Play, and Simon from Specialized rounded out our group.

We mostly tried to keep it together. J&J rode off for a bit by themselves, no doubt continuing their schtick. I was mentally feeling closed in by trying to maintain other rider's climbing paces, so I went ahead during a flat fix and pedaled some solo miles.

We got to the designated meeting point for the three groups and started to roll with the slower group, riding easily so the big boys would catch us. They had 14 flats en route so they were further back than expected. We mistakenly thought the bike path from here on would be about 10 miles before our arrival into Dirt Demo. Too many miles later, we were all hungry, tired and ready to be done when we finally saw Dirt Demo ahead of us.

We arrived to cheering and lots of cameras but were more interested in finding the food that awaited us. They popped open about 8 bottles of Champaigne and we celebrated the finish of a great 6 day effort. It's always bittersweet when these things end. Our bonds and our memories will last a long time, but it was good to know we wouldn't need to get back on our bikes again soon!