We were annoyed. My friend Silas Lum and I had noticed there were not one, but two "Wildflower Century" rides in California. We had just completed the Chico version, which we liked well enough to want to repeat. We also wanted to attempt the other ride, the San Luis Obispo Wildflower Century. But the two rides, we realized, are always held on the last weekend in April. Thus we found ourselves annoyed that we would have to choose one century or the other.

Or would we? The SLO club century is held on a Saturday, the Chico Velo club runs its century on a Sunday. The first ride offers 6,500 feet (1981 meters) of climbing in the Coast Range mountains of central California. The second century has about 5,000 feet (1524 meters) of gain, almost all of it coming with just three climbs, in a land where two major mountain chains meet in northern California. True, the distance between the end of the former ride and the start of the latter is about 350 miles (563 km). But Silas and I know how to drive a car as well as ride a bike. Both of us have completed at least one century a year for the past decade. And if we could put the two April century rides together, we would notch the "Wildflower Double Century!"

However, we were also both in our mid 50s, and after each of those previous long rides we sometimes felt, at least until we'd had a good night's sleep, fairly well hammered. Thus consecutive centuries without massive amounts of training - even with massive amounts of training - might lie beyond our grasp. We wondered what would happen as we reached the extreme limits of physical ability. Would our legs turn to jelly? Would we suffer leg cramps? Saddle sores? Bordem? Would we become grumpy - grumpier - old men? And could we drive 350 miles in a state of fatigue after the first Wildflower? 

Sanity said to choose one ride over the other. Of course we signed up for both rides as soon as registration opened.

The day before the ride, Silas drove down from his home in Monterey and I came up from mine in Los Angeles. We spent the night and had dinner with friends, who providentially live a few miles from Creston, the little community in the heart of the Coast Range mountains, where the ride starts and ends. Well rested the next morning, I donned - of course - my Chico Wildflower jersey, and Silas and I joined 1246 other bicyclists in front of the Creston elementary school for the start of the ride. Unlike most of the other riders, Silas and I were on hybrid bikes. Silas had a road bike tricked out with a mountain bike's rear derailluer ,and flat bars. My bike was a full-on hardtail mountain bike, fitted with exceedingly narrow tires and mini-bar ends; both bikes, if not built for speed, were comfortable for the long haul.

We made our get-away from town (which seemed to consist of a couple of picturesque Old West-themed restaurants - the Long Branch and the Loading Chute - a school and a church), with the sun weakly poking through the clouds. Flat for a while, the route ran through the completely rural and totally beautiful countryside, here and there lined with lupines and other wildflowers, and began to turn uphill, taking us through groves of massive oaks. Warming to the task, we stopped to strip off our wind breakers; then I had that odd sensation of being warm on the inside and cold outside as we resumed our climb.

After a long, twisting descent, and not being speedy on our own, we hooked up with lines of faster riders now and then, and soon reached the first rest stop, after 18 now mostly overcast and fog shrouded miles from Creston. Next, a long climb turned us eastward, where we topped a ridge and rode out of the fog and into sunlight. The sun stayed with us the rest of the day, as did long views of the beautiful Coast Range landscape, as we rode into and out of valleys and up and down the green mountains.

For now, the route dropped into a broad valley and ran through Pozo (a community even smaller than Creston), before making another longish ascent, and we noticed the oaks were interspersed with pines. The route contained a few more good climbs that kept us warm in the cool air, before we almost reached the top of a hill and the second rest stop. On the way down I swung a bit wide on a turn, and was almost flattened by a trio of tandems that were moving at warp speed. We turned onto Highway 58, and on the last climb before a third rest break, I heard someone breathing hard, coming up on my left. A rider in pink shorts and jersey slowly passed me, then swung in front of me, and then he immediately slowed down! Annoyed at this show of rude impertinance (although I'm sure no offense was intended) I stood on the pedals and came around the rider, as I shifted into a higher gear and then another. I pushed to the top of the hill and wondered all the way that perhaps I should have been more concerned with conserving my energy for the next 150 miles, rather than expending it in a silly fit of pique.

Some while after the rest stop, Silas and I joined a group of tandem and single riders along flat, flower-lined Shell Road, in a long valley where the grass had already gone brown. We rocketed along with the other riders for miles until we reached the town of Shandon, along Highway 41, where we stopped for lunch. The rugged and beautiful landscape here was more broken, eroded, and dry. After lunch, we found more climbing, now past vast vineyards, and I found myself about a minute ahead of Silas. I stopped for a quick restroom break at the last rest stop - when I came out, it slowly dawned on me that Silas thought I was ahead of him - he was nowhere to be seen.

A twisting descent brought me within spitting distance of Creston, before I turned off for a final 20+ mile loop and another 1500 feet or so of gain. Along the way two riders overtook me and invited me to fall in behind them. The dragged me up and down a few hills, until we finally caught Silas, who was making his way up one of the last hills. We were tired but felt good, and we finally dismounted our bikes back at the school. My cyclometer read 108 miles. I felt a sense of elation and accomplishment, a good feeling I've often encountered after a long ride.

The ride had lived up to its name. Thanks to plentiful rain over the winter and spring, lupine and poppies and all manner of wildflowers lined much of the roads and the hillsides and mountainsides around us. The ride support was terrific - sag wagons all over much of the route. While hilly, the pain was spread out over the course. The route was very rural, very scenic. Traffic was minimal, there very few stop signs, and not a traffic light in site for the entire ride. The food was great, too (the club motto is "We Ride to Eat - We Eat to Ride!"). Mmm...I had slathered peanut butter and cream cheese on peanut butter cookies at rest stops! For lunch, there had been do-it-yourself deli sandwiches and sweet strawberries, and more awesome cookies!! And we had lots of chicken and all the fixin's at dinner after the ride, where Silas and I probably lingered a little too long, savoring the day. We could not have asked for a finer century.

By 5:30 p.m. we loaded the bikes onto my mini-van, and we were off, on what we assumed would be the most difficult feat of the weekend - driving to Chico (where I'd gone to college) without passing out from fatigue. We had known we were in shape for a one hundred mile bike ride. But were we up for the drive to Chico? Backtracking along Highway 41, we turned onto Highway 46 near Shandon and drove east to Cholame, where actor James Dean met his untimely death on his way to a stock car race. Then we breached the Coast Range to drop into the Great Central Valley and reach Interstate 5. The forecast for Chico all week had called for probable showers and we seemed to be under a heavy cloud cover as we headed north. A beautiful sunset, though, made us remember "Red Sky at Night, Sailor's Delight, Red Sky at Morning, Sailors Take Warning," and a radio forecast now called for inclement conditions to arrive no earlier than the following evening.

Silas brought along about a gallon of Endurox, a "performance recovery drink" that we chugged down. I suffered one serious cramp during the drive, when we pulled into a roadside rest stop; I pulled my leg up to put on my shoe and it felt like my thigh was in a tightening vise. Silas told me to walk it off and allowed my cramp was a piffle: over the years, his own cramps had knocked him to the ground (I quickly downed the rest of the Endurox when he told me that).

We stopped in Stockton around 9 p.m. to have another dinner - we were hungry again! - with more friends, Jack and Wanda Snyder; I'd gone to college with Jack. We enjoyed recuperative showers before venturing back onto I-5. Silas napped after Stockton. Somewhere past Sacramento I woke Silas and he took over the driving while I slept, until we reached the home of more friends in Chico, finally tumbling into our beds about 1:30 a.m. I was asleep in moments.

Arising slowly the next morning, we were on the bikes by 7:30 a.m, with not a cloud in sight. Silas and I were both still tired, but we felt physically good; maybe Endurox works! Of course I put on my new SLO Wildflower Jersey, and we headed over to the Silver Dollar fairgrounds, where the ride began. We were joined by our Chico hosts, Dan and Dolly Dominguez, on their tandem (their teenaged kids declined to ride the family's bicycle-built-for-four, which apparently is somewhat famous in Chico). Dolly, we discovered to our amazement, helped launch the first Chico Wildflower Century back in 1981. I forgot to ask if she helped design the route sheet, actually a handkerchief with a colorful map of the route printed on it (to save paper - and it's so pretty I left it in the car, so I could hang it in my office if I survived the ride).

Chico is an achingly lovely college town - home to the Cal State University of the same name, and in fact voted "Best Bike Town" a few years ago by one of the bike magazines. Chico sits at the base of the mountains, where the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade ranges are seamlessly joined. Pedaling past tree-lined residential streets on our way out of town, we began the first climb of the day. We traveled up bumpy Humboldt Road that took us past wildflowers and fences constructed of rocks (probably well over a century ago) and views of snow-clad Cascade peaks. We finally topped out along Highway 32. 

The day continued with glorious riding. Silas and I had worried that we would be too achy and too cranky to enjoy the ride. But that didn't happen. Instead, we felt euphoric. We traveled along Butte Creek, the water rushing over Sierran bedrock, with the canyon walls above us formed of ancient Cascade Range lava flows. We traveled with many more riders than we had seen the day before, most of whom seemed to pause for a break at the beautiful Honey Run Road Covered Bridge (I'd kissed a few girlfriends under that bridge years earlier). Then we began the second major ascent of the day, up Honey Run Road to the town of Paradise, spread out amongst the pines. Only one car passed us the entire time we were on Honey Run Road - with so many bike riders, the drive up for a car must have been frustrating. As we climbed up the side of the canyon, we could look north and see the layers of lava laid down over the course hundreds of thousands if not millions of years.

Dan and Dolly on Honey Run Road

That lava, which rolled over the Sierra Nevada granite beneath it, created the slab-like tilted hills that give Butte County its apt name. The road made a series switchbacks, and continued steeply upward most of the way. It was a great climb. I have to admit my legs were tired as we all reached Paradise, but I was amazed at how fit I still felt. Silas felt good, too. The air was cooler in Paradise, but we didn't notice it until we'd cooled down ourselves. We snacked on great pastry and downed Recharge, a sports drink, at the rest stop in Paradise. The subsequent long and fast ride down and out of town featured an awesome view of the Central Valley: the flat plain stretched out before us, with the Coast Range on the horizon. The Sutter Buttes, "world's smallest mountain chain," rising out of the middle of the Valley, were on view, too.

Once off the Paradise butte, a terrific descent eventually dropped us past an arm of massive Oroville Dam, and then rolling terrain showed off beautiful wildflowers along the way to the outskirts of the town of Oroville, and the second rest stop. Silas somehow once again left me behind - he thought we'd left him. He was gone for at least 10 minutes before we realized it, but when we did, Dan and Dolly and I continued to sit in the warm sun and talk and eat and drink. My friends turned around to make a more leisurely ride home, while I pedaled off in search of Silas, starting the last climb of the day up Table Mountain, which was another massive, lava-capped butte. The temperature had flipped and was in the 70s.

The road up Table Mountain is both steep and somewhat long, with barely enough shade from the oaks and pines that lined the road. The road follows contours more than it switchbacks. I passed many riders on my way up; the route was littered with people who were pedaling slowly or walking their bikes. Other riders passed me. Near the top, I found my own legs were finally running out of gas and I shifted into my lower gears before reaching the flat, treeless, broad summit of Table Mountain. Fields of blue and yellow wildflowers spread out in all directions, like colorful paint spilled on a carpet. A few dozen riders recuperated from the rigors of the ascent, under towering cumulus clouds that had sprung up to the east. It had been another great climb.

Approaching The Summit of Table Mt.

Without resting, I crossed the summit plain, and the road plunged back into the pines, past homes and ranches. After a few rollers the road twisted steeply down past the gold mining town of Cherokee, the mountains there still scarred by the mid and late 19th century hydraulic mining. The treeless slopes, looking a little like the fluted columns at Bryce Canyon National Park, in Utah, are the legacy of the California Gold Rush.

I'm usually cautious on the downhills, but two days of riding had sharpened my skills considerably on the descents. This final downhill was a long one, and it ended at the lunch stop (where I rejoined Silas). This Wildflower Century, like the one the day before, also features a wonderful cuisine: We ate duck and rabbit pate sandwiches and fresh strawberries, there was more Recharge and other kinds of sandwiches, organic chips and bananas and more than I could discover before my hunger was assauged.

Silas and I were 60 miles into the ride at lunch. We had just 40 more miles to go to complete our Wildflower Double Century, including a few downhill miles back into the Valley. The last 35 or so miles would then be over flat terrain; yet those miles would prove to be the most difficult part of the second century. Yes, our legs were fairly strong, and no, we weren't cramping. But without hills to stand up on, our fannies seemed to have caught fire, our elbows ached, our hands were numb - the consequences of two long days in the saddle. The ride had taken on epic proportions, and I began to wonder about the efficacy of my flat bars and the paucity of hand positions.

The road led west, past the little community of Durham, into almond orchards and past fields of rice west of Chico, then north, with the wind at our back, along the Chico River Road. For a while we drafted a slow moving tractor towing. The route turned toward town and we struck up a conversation with a couple of riders who helped pull us back to Chico.

After another century and 5000 feet of climbing (11,500 for the two days, or 3505 meters), we returned to the Silver Dollar fairgrounds. It had been another fine Wildflower Century and with the previous day's ride, we had completed the Wildflower Double Century!

"Oh, no, it's over!" I said to myself. There was a sudden rush of emotion for me.  It's an emotion I've encountered after completing an arduous journey. I was particularly sad to finish this challenging ride, because I had enjoyed seeing so much of the beauty of Chico and the surrounding mountains and countryside, and of course the beautiful country we'd ridden on the previous day. This century had taken me back three decades, through much personal history. I was loathe to leave my college town and my long-time friends, not knowing when I would return. At least I had my memories, old and new, to take with me.

It wasn't over yet, though. We still had another wonderful finishers' dinner to serve as our reward - boneless breast of chicken, shrimp, strawberries, salad, ice cream, Recharge, and more.

Even more adventure awaited us. We were able to spend the night at the home of another college friend, Ernie Pieper, who lives with wife, Norma, and son Conner, and his parents, on his beautiful ranch, on the west side of the Central Valley. As we arrived, the predicted storm was finally blowing in. As the rain began to fall, we had hot showers, and then Norma served us up great lasagna and salad for our second dinner (we were still pretty hungry!). We talked for a little while, and then Silas and I fell asleep to the sound of rain falling on the roof. We slept for ten hours and in the morning we began the long the drive home - 500 miles for me - significantly refreshed and wondering about our next ride together on our bikes.

Links:

San Luis Obispo Century Wildflower (reserve your spot on the first day!)
Chico Wildflower Century
Honey Run Road/Wildflower Ride Story

Grumpy Old Men

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