Day Three, King City to Paso Robles

Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Today we left King City and began a long, gradual climb which culminated in the hill known as Quadbuster. It does go on a bit longer than it needs to, but otherwise it's manageable.

I ended up behind a woman who had an accident- she was just going too slowly, started to tip over, and couldn't clip out in time, so she fell to the right and hit her head on the guard rail. Along with another woman who happened to be nearby, I sat with her until the medical team came. (Update: from what I gather, fortunately she is OK and will be back on the ride again after a day of rest.)

While I certainly have been enjoying the ride, there does tend to be a rotation of irritations I go through, being out on the bike alone with my thoughts- this morning my knee was hurting for a bit, then I realized my bike computer stopped working (but my knee felt better, gratefully), then it was my eyes.

After Quadbuster I pulled into rest stop 2, and my eyes were bothering me so I got another eye wash. It helped a little but soon thereafter I was having trouble again. Rest stop 3- another eye wash. From there to lunch, riding with one eye open, blinking a lot, not very safe. At lunch in Bradley, I had a med tech who just pried my eyes open and flushed them with saline for upwards of 30 seconds each (as opposed to the others who had dripped a little in). This helped a lot more, but with the dust and smoke in Bradley, I'd be back where I was a few minutes later. I got another eye wash after eating lunch but ultimately decided it wasn't safe to keep riding in that condition, so I got on the bus and headed back to camp. I've never sagged out before, but this seemed like the wise thing to do.

When I got to camp my eyes were burning and it hurt to keep them open for more than a few seconds, which made walking around, well, interesting. My nose was also running like crazy. I got an eye wash at medical but they also gave me some medicated eye drops and they sent me home with Benadryl and Claritin. A while after taking the Benadryl I started feeling better. I've never had any real allergies so that didn't come to mind as a cause. Apparently the rain, then heat, rain then heat, we've had recently has produced quite a hard core allergy season, and thinking back to all those fragrant strawberry fields, everything must just be sprouting right now.

I'm just glad to know what's going on. Hope this only lasts while I'm out here in the wild, and perhaps whatever this irritant is will not be present as we move South.

I'm so grateful to everyone who's donated to the ride. It's also great to see the donations coming in even as I'm doing the ride, and if you've been thinking about donating but haven't done so yet, it's not too late. Cheers!