The WildFlower Century

Debra and I rode the Wildflower Century on Sunday, April 30th. Originally the idea had been to ride with four other people from our spin class, but one of the riders came down with food poisoning, one decided to not do the ride, and the other two got disoriented by the complete lack of route markers and was unable to complete the course. The Wildflower Century is a 100 mile ride starting in Chico, CA riding up to Paradise and then back through Oroville after swinging around Table Mountain. It has three very steep climbs and the temps were above average nearing 85 degrees this year. Over 4500 riders participate in this ride and it is crowded to the max. The one lane roads are often packed with riders and sometimes it seems you cannot manuever without hitting someone. The ride was pretty good overall with some issues on the way. The lack of route markers was a real problem and caused many people to get lost or disoriented during the ride. Some of the so called helpers at the reststops were downright nasty and in one case rude enough to a woman that if it had been Debra the dude was treating that way I would have knocked his filthy beard off. We lost a lot of time due to helping one gentleman repair a flat tire and had to perform EMS duties on a woman who had crashed down in a peloton (large group) of bikers and really tore herself up. Lots of cool blood. We got back so late that we missed the majority of dinner, and as you can see in the last picture we pretty much were the last to leave the parking lot. Anyway, here are some pics of the ride.