In a tourist town full of B&B's, this was the best deal. McCloud Hotel B&B, 408 Main St., 530-964-2822 Room 103 $148.50 includes tax and full breakfast if you don't mind eating during their serving window 8-9:30 AM.
Up and at 'em. It's going to be another hot day. We were out the door at 5:30 AM. I had spent the evening last night downloading the ridewithgps app on my phone and Jacinto's. I imported the day's route from the computer. Hopefully we would no longer have to use hand written cue sheets.
We weren't a mile from the motel when I had my first delima. The Lady said to go straight, the written directions (which I had written directly before downloading the route) said to go under the interstate. I took that route, thinking the lady would reroute. Instead, it just kept dinging and emergency sound at me and never did reroute. I got disgusted from stopping to mess with it and gave up soon. Side note that Jacinto faced the same issues, but the lady did reroute for him and he successfully followed her cues the entire route. He was happy. I guess I just gave up too soon?
Jacinto was using headphones and could hear her clearly. I use a little speaker and couldn't hear as well over the music. I did try turning the music off, but wasn't happy about that. In the meanwhile, with all of the fiddling, I think my little speaker died. No amount of fiddling with that made it work. I'm going to have Jacinto look at it tonight.
I ended up riding with Oren until Old Stage Road. It was early, not too hot. We were happy and stopped for several photos. There was no shade, but it didn't seem to matter. Now. Jim and Genny caught up and passed.
We got to Old Stage Road where the climbing started. Oren double checked I had the written directions and understood them. At this point we just had Old Stage and Hwy 89 left. I could do two roads. Off he went. I was happy for the occasional pine tree and resulting shade. Shade is very nice when it is 90 degrees.
After a few miles I caught Oren again. What was with this? I asked when he was getting on the interstate. Oren said Genny was having trouble with her front tire now, it has a big bulge. He had stopped with them and Gorilla taped the heck out of it. They were going to limp into Mt. Shasta and he was staying on their route in case they needed help. See, what a nice guy. By default, I had company.
We got to one of the smaller climbs. It was hot, no shade, I was slow, and sweating profusely. I had two bottle of Spiz earlier, but it turns bad right away in the heat. No Spiz. I drank water and drank water. Didn't feel good and must have looked just how I felt. Finally Oren said he was pulling over for a break, how about one of his Perpetuem tablets? I'd try anything at this point. We had another 1,000 feet to climb. In itself that is no big deal, but the way I felt . . . . I don't know if it was the wet bandana on my head or the tablet - but I felt immediately revived and took off pedaling.
For some reason, McCloud is a town of B&B's. One restaurant and one frosty freeze. Several gift shops and realtors. They really need more food. How in the world do all of the B&B's stay in business. Ours was right down town, a huge place that used to be a boarding house for mill workers. The new owners had just taken over yesterday and did not have our dinner reservations. But they did make room for us and were otherwise very accommodating about having granola out for an early breakfast, access to ice, and a locked area for our bicycles.
After dinner I had zero internet access, so had to update this today. The lack of computer made it pretty easy to get to bed early. It's yet another early morning tomorrow with the heat.
I spend a silly amount of time each night hand writing out ridewithgps's cue sheets. Had I known in advance we weren't going to follow ACA, I could have printed them out.
We were on Easy Street for such a short time we didn't even see a street sign. I really wanted a photo on Easy Street. I guess this tour is too tough for easy. Here's what we got instead.
There are a couple of spots on Old Stage Road where the road is hard to follow. This is the correct direction. Oren and I got a short section of bonus road.
Oren gave me a couple of Perpetuem tablets (Hammer brand). I also wet down the bandana and put it on my head. Between those two things I felt much better on the actual climb than I did the piece coming up to it. I felt much better when we took this photo, but I don't look so great. I must have been bad. Oren was worried.
