It rained hard Saturday morning. The forecast for Sunday was scattered thunderstorms, with a 60% chance of rain. Conditions did not look good for our 6AM Sunday start.
Saturday, June 4th, was Orientation Day. Bruce and I brought our bikes and paperwork to the Cow Palace in the early afternoon. There is a precise organization to the AIDS/LifeCycle ride, as to be expected for an event involving 2500 riders, 600 roadies and staff, over 7 days and 545 miles. After parking our bikes and noting the section and row, we headed for the Safety Video.
The Safety Video is serious business. Once seated, you cannot leave, talk on your phone, text, or in any other way miss any part of the video. If you do, you have to sit through it again. The video is about 45 minutes long. This year's edition was better organized, slicker, and avoided the unintentionally funny parts from past years. It started out with a long series of "way to go, you're awesome!" comments from a number of B-list celebrities and A-list politicians. The highlight was an out-take by Gavin Newsom - "What I really wanted to say is 'You're all crazy!"" The remainder of the video talked about life in the camp and presented a long list of rules and safety tips.
The rules are mainly common sense things, such as no-alcohol, no drugs, quiet after 9:30, pick up after yourself, etc.. They stress obeying all traffic laws, then add some additional rules. Drafting and pace lines aren't allowed, but in practice this is very difficult to enforce. A new one for me was at stop signs, you put one foot down. When you pass, you say "On your left", and the response is "Thank You" as acknowledgement. Another new one is that you can't stop to pee at the side of the road, you're supposed to hold it to the next rest stop. I understand the reasoning, but come on, when you got to go you got to go. As for penalties, they only say that anyone caught breaking the rules could be pulled from the route for that day. More serious safety violations could result in expulsion from the ride and being banned from future rides. This does happen.
A new motto for this year was "One rider, one town, one permit." What this is supposed to mean is that one rider caught doing something stupid on one town could result in the permit for the ride being pulled and that's the end of ALC. They need to work on this one, it really didn't catch on.
At the end of the safety video, they fasten an orange band on your wrist that you can't take off until after the ride. If it comes off, you have to watch the video again.
Next, we picked up a packet containing rider numbers for our bikes and helmets, dog tags you wear around your neck (presumably so they can identify the remains), tags for your gear and tent, and another wrist band, the color indicating if you are a vegetarian or meat-eater. After a stop at the ALC store to pick up the 2011 jersey (a nice one this year), we found our bikes, affixed the number, and went home to finish packing.
Packing this year had the added challenge of preparing for rain. We decided to bring fenders and lights, just in case, and rain gear for on the bike and in camp. Everything went in plastic bags. A text message arrived in the evening saying there would be an announcement at 4AM regarding a possible delayed start. Oh boy.
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