Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride

The Start

I left DC on Friday, August 18, with my best friend, Dave. Long flight...we left around 1:30pm Eastern, had a brief layover in Minnesota, then more flight time....got to our hotel around 8:30pm Alaska time, -4 hours from DC time. At least we saw a moose....walking alongside the highway not 5 minutes from the Anchorage airport. We were exhauseted after nearly 12 hours of flying, so we ordered a pizza, ate, and went to bed. Saturday, we got up around 6:30 and spent an hour drinking coffee. Left for the airport, and caught a shuttle for Fairbanks around 9. It was only an hour-long flight, but it was amazing. For some reason, the pilot needed to fly lower than usual...so we flew right by Mt. McKinley at eye-level, 20,000+ feet. Highest mountain in North America. We got amazing pictures, right thru the plane window. We got to Fairbanks and got a cab to our motel. It looked like a fleabag, but turned out to be a nice room. Not that we got to see much of it. We got there too early to check in, so dropped off our bags in the office and decided to take a walk. We had at least 90 minutes to kill. So we started walking up the main road. After about 20 minutes, we realized we weren't very far from the Registration site for the ride.

So we kept walking. We didn't need to be there until the next morning, but the Crew was doing their registration on Saturday. We ran into a lot of our friends and bought all our Ride gear (jersies and such) so we wouldn't have to stand in line the next day. Well, at least we stood in a shorter line. We left around 2pm, over an hour after our motel room was ready so we got a cab to avoid the walk back. We did some shopping at a HUGE mega-store a few blocks from our hotel, then went back to our room to rest for awhile. Around 6, we walked up the road and got some dinner....grilled salmon that was FANTASTIC. We had a couple beers with and after dinner, then started to leave. But we noticed another Rider sitting at the bar, eating alone. We said hello, and he bought us a beer. Then two more riders noticed the three of us as they were leaving....long story short, it ended up being six of us until 11pm. But it was great to run into other riders. Still, the 7am alarm clock the next day wasn't overly welcome. ;> We got to our registration day early. We decided to walk (to save more cab money; it was only about 2 miles) so we left at 7:45am. But, about 4 blocks from the motel we ran into a friend. He and his girlfriend had flown up a week early to do sightseeing and had a rental car. They saw us walking and gave us a ride, so we got to the center way early. The rest of the day is details no one would care about....safety video, lots of registration lines, etc. We got done by 'noon, though, so got to crash for the rest of the day.

Because my Team hosted happy hour that night....another late night, but lots of fun. Monday morning, we were up around 4am. After two days in Fairbanks with great weather (mid-upper sixties, clear skies...) we awoke to cold weather. But at least it was sunny. So we got dressed in all our bike gear (many layers) and got a cab back to the center. We barely had time for breakfast before Opening Ceremonies started, then went to our bikes. And started our six day journey.

Day 1: Nearly 100 miles. I thought it was very hilly, but learned later in the week it wasn't that bad. Temps warmed up some, so it was a comfortable day. We got to camp around 6pm.

Day 2: Nightmare Day. We woke up to cold temps, drizzle, low vizibility. We rode 14 miles to the first rest stop, and stopped for the day. So did most of the riders. Of the 1,500 riders, only 200-300 finished the entire day. Nearly a 1000 stopped where Dave and I did. But, we learned a lot of lessons about how to dress, etc. So...

Day 3: We woke to snow. But, we'd learned a lot on Day 2. Scraps of mylar and/or plastic bags covering feet and hands, and that made up for most of the lack proper gear. (truly, the temps were unusually cold for August. We thought we were prepared, then got freak weather.) Day 3 was hilly, but only about 65-70 miles. I got to camp around 5, Dave got in at 6:30. We got separated in the morning, but were running late....I pushed all day keep from getting sagged thinking Dave had already been sagged. Turns out, they were just keeping us moving. But I pushed too hard and it wiped me out.

Day 4: No snow, but we'd camped on rocks the night before. And it was still very, very cold. And rainy. And icky. And this was probably the hilliest day. We tried, but about 30 miles from that night's camp we stopped and took the bus the rest of the way. My knee was about to give out completely (after overdoing it the day before) and Dave was nearly as worn out. We decided if we wanted to be able to finish the last two days, we'd better stop early.

Day 5: Frost on my bike seat in the morning, but it wasn't raining. It was about a 70 mile day. That's about all I remember, until we got to Palmer, Alaska around 5:30pm. Beautiful town surrounded by mountains. We camped at the state fairgrounds, and the fair was going on. It was finally WARM. (well, in the upper 50's, so it felt warm.) I put on shorts for the first time all week. We walked around camp for an hour or two, then turned in. It was the first night it was warm enough to enjoy camp. (every other night, we set up our tent, changed out of our bike clothes, showered, ate dinner, and went to sleep.)

Day 6: The Last Day! Finally! And it wasn't freezing cold. It wasn't really warm, so we still dressed in layers. But after 5 of the hardest days of our lives, we were only 40 miles from The End! Throughout the day, it kept warming up. By lunch (about 25-30 miles into the day) we were finally down to just shorts and bike jersies. However, my knee had HAD it. So the last 10 miles weren't any fun. At all. However, all was better....a few blocks before the final Bike Parking area (where we all waited so all 1500 of us could finish the ride as one group) we saw DOZENS of Team DC people, waiting. Looking for our jersey or jacket, and motioning us to the side. Out of over 100 riders, we managed to get about 60 or more together to ride in together! It was fantastic!

Closing ceremonies. I'll have to write about that later. Best bet is to get a transcript of two of the speaches.... needless to say, it was very emotional. The ride's goal was to net $3.5 million for vaccine research. Instead, we netted over $4.1 million.

A lot of people went out that night. Dave crashed early, and I was too tired to go out. I had a couple beers in the hotel bar and then I crashed. We did our celebrating Sunday. Maybe I'll write about that day sometime.

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