Many Miles to Run Off the Rain

We looked at the skies and wanted to cry. The weather guessers had promised us good weather for the weekend's Hill Country Ride for AIDS, but Saturday's first light showed dark clouds and lightning tickled the skies. At least we didn't have three days to worry about the bad weather, like last year's ride. The system appeared so quick the TV stations didn't even have time to update their Web sites. Up in the Panhandle it snowed. Snow anywhere in Texas after March is as rare as an uncured ailment in a faith healer's meeting.

But we took to our bikes after a two-hour delay, a time when our ride director told us their biggest concern was avoiding hypothermia. We added extra layers, donned ponchos and slickers and hoped for clearing skies. (From left that's my friends Ron Wilcox and Steve Hardwick, my gal and me, all trying to pretend it's not hypothermia weather.) Although rainfall for the first three months of the year was above normal, April had been unseasonably dry. It was the 12th-driest April on record, according to the National Weather Service.

Except for April's last day, of course.

Then Texas worked its atmospheric miracle, and by lunch we had brilliant sun, warming temperatures, and rising low water crossings. That kind of turnaround happens often down here as the cold fronts pummel through, leaving postcard skies in their wake. This rider at left was one of the daring ones, taking a turn across the bridge on his saddle instead of walking his bike across and using the sandbags set down at each bridge's edge by our safety crew. It was so slick at one bridge that a SAG motorcycle rider dumped his bike twice in as many crossings.




We made our way toward Krause Springs in Spicewood, Texas, 50 miles of pedaling for our first day. The day featured an impossible hill that I managed to ride up anyway, lifted by the spirits of all those donations -- as well as the knowledge that no matter how hard it hurt, living with AIDS was much harder. Still, my heart rate was above 180 at the top of that monster. I had to stop at the summit and let my beat recede to decent levels. After shortening the ride a little to make up for our stormy delay, the organizers gave us a 100-mile course. It meant we went to bed knowing that we had to crest that hill again, tomorrow in the homeward direction.

This year my Abby rode for the first time. First-time riders are the most special, really, because they face the fearful miles without the experience that they can do this very hard thing. This year I helped lead the team of Ride Leaders, those who weat the Yellow Helmet covers to bring along riders who were building their first success. I was proudest of Abby when she rode into Pit Stop Two today, the last rider in for that leg — because she'd climbed up the hill leading out of the Pedernales River's riverbed. About a 13 percent grade, that one, the kind that makes your car change gears twice as you drive up. She defied gravity, powered by her own sponsors and more than a little prayer.

Lance Armstrong rode up that very same hill earlier that day, according to our safety crew, now in training for his seventh yellow jersey. He was riding faster than any of us amateurs, but his climb was no steeper. The Hill Country is a challenging course to climb.

More important than the climbing was the fundraising we powered. The Ride's 2005 total stood at a record $420,000 tonight when we honored those we'd lost to AIDS. For 10 minutes the names of the missing were read aloud, while the memorial tags we decorated and wore during our riding day served as backdrop for the ceremony. The sounds of the camp along the river were a mix of trickling springs and snoring riders. People dropped off into sleep wearing their ride clothes, too tired to change. For some of us, pedaling another 50 miles tomorrow seemed like a fantasy. But we'd seen a day when the weather showed us a fantastic change, so perhaps it would be possible.