Mark’s Blog

June 27, 2008

Adventure Ride for the Arts II

San Ramon to San Diego June 29, 2008

It’s Friday night and I have just finished putting on new tires, lubing, and cleaning my touring bicycle for the big adventure starting Sunday morning at 8:00am. This ride to San Diego already has taken on a bit of an adventure and we haven’t left yet. The wild land fires down at Big Sur are blocking access to HWY 1 with no estimated date or time of reopening. I have been scouring the internet and making another bicycle friendly route going down the Salinas Valley to Paso Robles and then cutting over the mountains to the coast. This plan “B” route will add another 60 miles or so to the trip, but there are not many choices at this point. We will be traveling south on the East side of the Los Padres National Forest hopefully outside of the fire zone. The air quality has me a little worried, but news reports of the forecast have been favorable for Sunday. Another concern we will be dealing with is the heat and it could determine how far we ride each day. We will watch ourselves closely monitoring our hydration levels and not taking any risk associated with heat. We are taking masks with us to help with air filtration, and if the air is just to dangerous to breath we will put the bikes on the support van and drive to the coast, well south of the fires, and continue the ride from that point. Our training this week has been limited to one day for a short ride to Walnut Creek due to my work schedule. I crammed as much productivity into the week as I could so I can take off ten days without worries of something not being done. This worked out for the best since the air quality for the past week has been less than healthy for hard riding. Saturday Terry and I will pack the gear on the bikes and double check our lists, and get to bed early Saturday night. Sunday we will leave at 8:00am after a nice breakfast with our families and head to Pescadero on the coast south of half Moon Bay.

This ride is about raising funds for the San Ramon Arts Foundation, which supports Cultural Arts Programs in San Ramon. We are asking people to donate $.10 cents per mile or a $65.00 for the entire ride payable to the San Ramon Arts Foundation. You can mail a check to SRAF 231 Market Pl. #378, San Ramon California 94583 or click on the Donate button on our website www.sanramonarts.org . Please feel free to contact Mark or Terry through the website if you have questions about the ride.

I want to thank all the people who have come forward in support of this ride with donations and kind words of encouragement. Through your generosity, the arts will continue to be a source of inspiration to the residents in San Ramon and the San Ramon Valley.

Thanks for your support.