Once a year San Jose Bike Party hosts Bike The Limits, a "self supported 100 mile bike ride". That means that we start at San Jose City Hall at 8 AM, and then you're on your own with a good route sheet to do the ride.

  

Before the ride started we had to get there. That involved waking up SUPER EARLY to catch the first light rail train. It was so early that we just rolled out of bed, put our clothes on and zoomed down to the station, barely getting there in time to catch our train. We ate oatmeal we'd made the previous evening on the train. Then we stopped at a coffee shop for a pit stop before making it to the start in plenty of time to be there for the group shot.

We started out by riding as a group for a while. Then the traffic lights start breaking us into smaller groups. For the first 20 miles or so I devoted all my energies to keeping up with the riders ahead of me. Then after we turned from Santa Teresa to Bailey I saw a porta-potty with no lock by the side of the road and stopped to use it. Those ahead of us were long gone by the time Virginia and I got going again, even though we were only stopped for a couple of minutes.

Then about two thirds of the way up Bailey I looked to my right and thought "That's a beautiful view. Gotta take a picture!"

  

Bailey is a two lane road with not much of a shoulder. The trees were constantly urging us to take the lane, but I'd fight back when I heard a car coming behind me. Fortunately there wasn't that much traffic.

        

By this time mostly it was just Virginia and I. She had the route on her smart phone, and my paper directions had flown away because I hadn't taped them to the handlebars before we started rolling. She'd tell me the next turn and I'd look for that name at every intersection. Maybe that wasn't as fast as following the zoomers would have been, but we kept moving forward and didn't make any mistakes. I heard later that Luke had to ride eight extra miles because he missed a turn and got lost.

After a bunch more miles Santiago, Suraj, and Jonathan caught up with us. They must have stopped at Callero Resevoir and let us pass them then or something like that. Anyhow, we all stopped at Vasona Park to use the restrooms and refill our water bottles. After that they zoomed off ahead again. This time we didn't catch them again.

     

We stopped on Rainbow Drive in Cupertino to eat peanut butter sandwiches. By that time I was tired of carrying the camera and just wanted to keep moving forward. I snapped a candid shot of Virginia catching up on others from the event's facebook page. Then I put it away in my trunk.

She kept using her phone to take more pictures every now and then. That's how we got this one of me fixing her flat on Tasman.

        

To make a long story short, we were the last ones to finish, setting a new record for slowest Bike The Limits time. We finished at about 9:11 PM. We took those pictures to prove we got there.