50 miles & over a mountain, on bicycle, in 4 hours.

It was one hell of a ride, though very beautiful. But I did it and I think pretty well for this being my first bike event, and having never done any serious elevation climbs or a distance that long before. I finished in a few seconds before the clock hit 4 hours. Richard, another tech artist from Sony whom I went with finished a few minutes after me. There certainly were a lot of people who finished long before I did, but it felt good knowing I passed quite a few people who looked more experienced, and were riding professional racing bikes.

Big props to the guy in the full body sponge bob square pants suit who finished only a few minutes after me despite being in the most unaerodynamic outfit imaginable, that's pretty hard core. I also ran into one of the group leaders for the Friday Night Skate rollerblade group. He was rollerblading the whole course, which is quite the impressive feat, and I saw 2 other rollerbladers out there as well.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the trip as my camera would have been a heavy and expensive liability, but next time I go, because I do plan to do this again, I'll get a portable camera for the trip. There were professional photographers out there getting pictures of everyone during the slowest part of the mountain climb, and I'll probably buy mine when it gets uploaded, though I'm sure my face will be in some unflattering cross between heavy breathing and cursing the mountain.



I hung around for a little while at the finish line Fiesta, and communicated the best I could to the man serving food that I did not eat meat, which was a little complicated and I think a bit of a shock to him, but it worked out and I got a fairly satisfying meal for 2.50 US Dollars.

Also of note was seeing the Mexican flag in Ensenada, the most ridiculously big flag of any nation I have ever seen. Here's a picture I found of it online.