This whole week I have been looking forward to doing a big ride today. We didn’t really have anything planned other than “doing a big ride” until last night. We decided we were going to ride up along the coast through Camp Pendleton and up to Dana Point. We figured it would give us about 100 miles, which would be our longest self-supported ride ever. It sounded awesome, so we called Ryan to see if he wanted to ride with us.

I haven’t been sleeping very well this whole week, so I was fairly anxious about how ready for this ride I would really be in the morning. I slept really well last night and woke up ready to rumble. Charmaine picked up our usual breakfast before a big ride… McDonald’s. I swear there’s nothing better than a Sausage McMuffin with Egg before a big ride. It has the perfect mix of carbs (32g), protein (21g), and fat (27g). I also loaded up one of my water bottles with a mixture of Red Bull and XXX Vitamin Water.

Ryan got here at six and we headed out by about 6:30. I was a little worried that it would be cold in the morning, but it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, the weather for the entire ride was perfect. I would guess it was about 60 degrees when we started and probably didn’t get above about 65 the whole way, except when we stopped to have “lunch” (banana pancakes, bacon, and more eggs) at RJ’s Cafe in Dana Point. It was really warm and sunny at lunch, but almost as soon as we got back on our bikes, the sun went back behind the clouds and we had an amazing ride home.

I did manage to crash my bike again. I’m getting pretty good at it. This was definitely my best crash yet. They have been doing a lot of construction along the west side of the 101 through Solana Beach, so we took the back roads on our way home. As we were heading down the hill from the back roads to get back on the 101 and head home through Del Mar, I decided to cut up onto the sidewalk where another biker was already waiting for the light. It looked like the sidewalk was all graded down to street level, but I quickly realized I was mistaken. The curb was graded down to street level on both the left and right of where I rode my bike, but between those two sections it was a full curb. I’m still shocked that I didn’t see it at all. I slammed my front wheel directly into the curb, stopping my bike immediately and sending me flying through the air over my bike and onto the sidewalk. Ryan said I looked quite acrobatic in the air. I wish someone had recorded it so I could see it. I rode away with only a few scrapes on two of my fingers and a bruise on the front of my leg. That’s amazing considering the violence level of the crash. I think it may have killed my crappy ($20) bike computer too. I’ll have to see if I can fix it.