Hello again lets get to the actual CAF ride!

For Day 1 of the ride they started us out with the normal giant breakfast-I had 4 servings of bacon….

then they had a big group photo of all the riders and then they fine tuned to the “2 day riders” with the Challenged Athletes which is below:

In this picture we have only 50 of the 170 total (i.e. its a big group) and u can see shred and I in the back row (Thats where Rylo always has felt most comfortable)  in the center! After the Photo ops they corralled everybody into the starting area and sent us off in 2 large groups vs the normal daily 4 group ride options.  Which group you joined depended on which of the 2 ride options you chose for the day–they had the Epic, which Dave and I chose (74 miles), or the Classic for those wanting a bit less at the very end of the journey down the entire state (55 miles). The difference was the epic route  rode back up and around RPV–sort of a giant loop way up to the top of the hill where you get up high enough to have a great view of the entire Valley Of Death–Wilmington.

You then cruise down these fantastic winding roads and go back down into RPV before heading back to the PCH and due South. I had never been that way and it was really a nice ride. Here are some pictures of the morning:

Dom made sure we had a Destroyer following us along the coast in case we needed any extra “support”!

Instead of the normal route through the Valley Of Death we went along the water front for most of the way but there is no escaping it you have to go through the main trucking route across the bridges which is always exciting! Shred and I took every precaution but despite that we were nearly run over by a bus. Yes somebody apparently hired a bus to run us over and they made their move in Wilmington!  We were riding along minding our own business singing show tunes when the bus tried to run us over by abruptly cutting into our lane which forced Dave and I to take evasive action, which we did, by riding  up onto the sidewalk on our bikes and praying which luckily worked well. The funny thing is this guy on the sidewalk started giving us a bunch of crap about riding on the sidewalk and it started to escalate quickly so Shred and I sent Dom the prearranged signal for We Need Chuck :

And literally 30 seconds later Dom was on scene and the situation was resolved:

That was the only difficultly so for the rest of the ride we enjoyed the coast and made our way through Newport/Laguna and into Dana Pt where we stayed the night. Here are some more pictures of that part:

Our serious pose at the Shake Shack-

We finished off the day with a formal dinner program and LARGE dinner which was quite yummy.  Next I will cover the quick ride into LaJolla where we met up with Nathan and STR! I hope to get to that tomorrow!