Category: ALC 2019

I’m home safely after riding 560 miles (including the short trip from my house to the ride start on day zero, and a few repeats of the infamous “quadbuster” hill during the ride). Here’s a fun parody video that gives you a bit of a feeling for the more fun side of the ride.

Here’s the 2019 AIDS/Lifecycle video, hot off the ‘presses’:

When riding through Malibu I was thinking today is not such a beautiful day, but looking back it was. Again.

Different roadie teams run all the rest stops along the ride every day. Today rest stop 2 made a special effort for the last day. These are peanut butter or Nutella bagels with various toppings:

Lunch, after a long and very un-scenic ride through Malibu, was on the beach.

I’m safely in Los Angeles. The route through LA to the finish line went past the pride celebrations. People were cheering on both sides.

Thank you for your support and generosity. It was beautiful, tiring, emotional, fun, and now I’m utterly exhausted!

Today’s ride is absolutely gorgeous. We rode up and over the Gaviota pass then along the coast through Santa Barbara to Ventura.

It is an easy climb up to Gaviota pass then a spectacular fast descent to the coast.

Ron (right) took me under his wing on my first ALC, and Scott (left) did the same for Ron a few years before.

I had a good day today, and even stopped along the route at a great cafe in Goleta with friends.

Otherwise known as Red Dress Day, today we dress in red to make a red AIDS ribbon as we wind up the hillside.

I recycled my cat in the hat costume from past years.

It’s a relatively short day of riding, but I really was not feeling very well today. I didn’t sleep well last night so this morning I barely wanted to move. I love cycling but today I just wanted to go hide in a corner somewhere. Happily I found Ron and David to ride with, and we stopped for pizza before the end of the day. Good friends can make any day into a good day.

It was a beautiful morning for the climb up the evil twins to the halfway point.

We rode through my college town San Luis Obispo. And a friend from high school and her family happened to be in town to look at Cal poly so they met me at the lunch stop. Arthur has ridden this ride once, and Marisa knew someone else on today’s ride who was riding his 20th time.

It was a really great day for everyone riding I think. There was some wind but the temperature was perfect, the views were beautiful and the downhill from the halfway point was absolutely fantastic.

I’m now sitting under a tree at camp waiting for some cycling clothes to dry in the breeze before dinner.

Today’s challenge for us San Francisco fog dwellers was the heat. The day starts out cold and foggy but very soon the fog burns off and it’s in the mid to upper 90s for most of the ride.

The most talked about part of today is “quadbuster”. It’s not a particularly big hill by San Francisco Bay area standards. But at the beginning of the third day of riding, and after riding 110 miles yesterday, it feels like quite a challenge. It has become a tradition for some people to ride repeats on that hill usually in honor of somebody. I rode it three times, once for me, once for an HIV+ friend who rode it once many years ago but will never be able to ride it again, and once for a friend who was planning to ride this year but died after being hit by a car in December.

Today I wore the cycling kit Janeen designed for the positive pedalers. This photo is with Evan who rode almost the entire ride with Janeen the year I was roadie.

Riding gives me time to think. Today I was thinking about why it is that I’m constantly drawn back to this ride. There are lots of other bike rides and there are probably lots of other more challenging ones. So that’s not the reason. I think what this ride does is it puts everyone out of their comfort zone. For different people it does it in different ways: non-campers camping, non-fundraisers fundraising, non-cyclists cycling, non-cross dressers cross dressing… By doing that I think it helps to give me more compassion for other people who may be out of their comfort zone in society as a whole. It’s a brief glimpse into how we can all be outcasts in some way and we all need to be compassionate to one another.

Since the 90s Bradley school has been a strong supporter of AIDS/Lifecycle. The Bradley school is in a tiny farming town, and it throws a party to welcome us. They accept donations to support the arts at that school and every year cyclists donate for lunch there and generate tens of thousands of dollars for their programs.

We also rode through Camp Roberts and I couldn’t resist comparing my bike to the tank.

I managed to catch a quick photo with Deyon who has ridden over twenty times.

I think this is my favorite day. We travel from the relatively affluent coastal town of Santa Cruz, inland through Salinas and through farm country down to King city. The views are so wide and open and dramatically different from what I usually ride through.

Last night I managed to get some dinner (actually a third dinner!) with my Dad.

On our way out of Capitola we were greeted with free coffee on the side of the road! Stef was there again, this time much more recognizable.

As cyclists we are incredibly vulnerable on the side of the road. Riding through Santa Cruz I just felt like drivers thought I was in the way. Cars were constantly doing dangerous things around us.

As soon as we got inland to farm country the trucks and cars were almost unbelievably courteous to us. They would pull all the way across to the other side of the road giving us the full lane; This happened every time. On multiple occasions a semi truck loaded sky high with boxes just drove behind the cyclists until it was safe to pass. The contrast from a car recklessly almost driving into the woman in front of me to save a few seconds in Santa Cruz and the way everyone behaved as soon as we got out near Salinas was enormous.

On a lighter note: I bumped into some cycling friends at the rest stops.

I love the contrasts of the ride today: From coastal towns to wide-open farmlands to an old beautiful bridge.

For a while we even rode on the side of the freeway. Then it’s an incredibly bumpy back road for about half a mile to a dirt trail into camp.

I’m safely in Santa Cruz after a windy ride down Highway 1.

At the opening ceremony they announced that this year’s ride has raised $16.7 million. Thank you for being a part of that. That money is the single largest source of funding for the SFAF and LALGBT in their work to support people with HIV/AIDS as well as advocacy and prevention of future infections.

Before the ride out my friend Mike was there at 4am volunteering handing out route sheets to all 2000+ riders

The ride out was an unusually sunny Daly city morning. The sun lasted until we got to the top of Devils Slide to head down into Pacifica. Almost instantly the sky opened up with rain and wind.

But Stef was there with a group dressed up as lumberjacks – well, Santa lumberjacks (?) to cheer us on.

The ride down the coast was hard because we had headwinds the whole way. Usually the wind blows from the north, but today we had special treatment.

The lunch stop was absolutely gorgeous.

Here are a couple of photos to show the level of coordination that a camp for 2300 riders +600 roadies takes

I just finished dropping my bike off at bike parking. This is what 2000 bikes parked and ready for tomorrow morning’s ride-out looks like.

I got my tent assignment and they gave me my own tent! After the orientation meeting and finishing registration we have multiple wristbands that we have to keep on all week. The green one is so that I can go in the vegetarian food line:

We also get a tag with our tent grid number which is the same as the number that goes on our gear bag. We wear it around our neck all week. One less thing to keep track of. It’s become a tradition to keep your tags from previous years on that chain necklace. I have four on mine. Some people have over 20.

So now I just need to finish packing. I’ve got most of it done. Because things become so overwhelming as the week goes on, one has to be very organized about packing. I put a separate kit for each day into a separate plastic bag with a number on it. The less thinking I have to do at 4 o’clock in the morning the better.

Here is the first leg of the journey: Home to cow Palace with a slight detour along the way!

It’s Monday evening just over five days before aids lifecycle 2019. As of this evening we have raised almost $7500. I plan to post daily updates here during the ride.

Here are the photos from my emails this year: