The cadence of the Race Across America goes like this:
Mike Ridgeway and Robin Smith pose on Race Avenue by Buchanan Park, where Dream Ride Projects was laun
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Ride, sleep, ride, sleep, ride, sleep ...On and on and on for seven days. And then ... You're done.
Only in reverie can the sensory overload be calmly sorted and distilled.
That's the way it unfolded last week for bicyclists Mike Ridgeway of Lancaster and Robin Smith of Mount Gretna.
They sat in the morning sun in Binn's Park, piecing together impressions, still a little wonderstruck by the adventures of their 15-member Cycle Smart team.
There was the time in the desert that Ridgeway bunny-hopped his Trek over a scorpion.
There was the moment that Smith spied the towers of Monument Valley punching violet holes in the sunrise.
"I can close my eyes now and see it," she said.
And who could forget the afternoon in Arizona when fate punctured their bid for a first-place finish?
The simple, monstrous, sleep-deprived duration of the thing?
Now that they're back, they have until July 31 to finish raising between $75,000 and $100,000 to benefit the 14 charities they've pledged to support.
Conservatively speaking, RAAM has to be the least relaxing vacation on earth.
Ridgeway and Smith said they're already thinking about next year's race.
"It's too much fun not to go back," he said.
Trust the PropstThe 26th annual running of the RAAM began June 11 in Oceanside, Calif., with the Pennsylvanians hacking and headachy.
The West Coast air was polluted.
The Cycle Smart gang was happy to get out from under the inversion layer that was trapping fumes from a gazillion cars.
Team 414 included Robert Ansell of Greensburg and Denise Stone of Long Valley, N.J., who, with Ridgeway and Smith, took turns pedaling the 3,000 miles east to Annapolis, Md.
Escorting the foursome in an RV and two sport-utility vehicles was a Lancaster County support contingent consisting of Matt Propst, Jim Drumm, Deb Feather, George Stoltzfus, Jim Miller, Sylvia Newcomer, Barb Searles and Judy Flowers.
Rounding out the team were Yvette Hess and Mark Jones, of Maryland, and Brenda Weaver, of Long Valley, N.J.
Only Ridgeway, the founder of the Dream Ride Projects charity fundraising organization, had previously raced coast to coast.
The cyclists were among six four-person mixed-gender teams.
Nearly 70 teams and soloists set out from Oceanside last month; Jure Robic won the solo competition with a time of eight days, 23 hours and 33 minutes.
One of Cycle Smart's earliest moves was to truck through the lowest real estate in the United States, Salton Sea, Calif., elevation minus 228 feet.
"We whipped out a spare [inner tube] and we made one of the crew people do the limbo," Ridgeway said.
On June 12, after crossing into Arizona, they passed two pannier-laden bicycle wanderers who, to Smith's astonishment, cried out to them by name.
The pair turned out to be Steve Farrah, of Lancaster, and Joe Peko, of York County, who are bike packing their way across the country this summer.
"For the first thousand miles," Smith added, "we saw more [competitors] than I thought we were going to see."
A race it was, but not the cutthroat kind.
Smith had the chance to bag her first prairie dog sighting.
During the lifetime that it seemed to take to crawl across the plains of Kansas, Smith said, Cycle Smart riders leapfrogged two Swiss guys. She hollered out when one of them blew by an exit.
"The team passed us then," she added, "and they were so grateful." A little farther down the road, when she took a wrong turn, "Their rider saw me and came around and got me."
Cycle Smart had topped out earlier in the Colorado Rockies. The cyclists ascended to 10,200 feet and then shot down the other side of the pass in the middle of the night. The temperature was a wind-chilled 30 degrees.
"By that afternoon," Smith said, "I was in 115-degree heat. And you know what? I wasn't complaining."
She laughed heartily.
The yuks had been fewer, though, outside Flagstaff, Ariz., where the team suffered a seminal deflation.
Ridgeway had been cruising across a high plateau at about 3:30 in the afternoon. He reported being within 25 yards or so of catching the fastest team.
The faithful Cycle Smart SUV had his back. But then, abruptly, it didn't.
"I crested a hill and realized they weren't behind me," he said.
As luck would have it, Ridgeway had no cell phone or two-way radio to summon the others, who had gone ahead. Evening was approaching. RAAM rules forbid riders to ride backward along the course or continue without support.
Instead of taking the lead, Ridgeway had to stop and watch seven or eight other teams spin past.
He eventually learned that two nails and one screw lying on the road had laid the SUV low.
The flat came at the worst possible time, he said. "It set us back a lot."
Still, he said, one of the lessons the trip taught — besides the value of carrying a radio — was to avoid dwelling on stuff.
Pre-trip fretting over sleep schedules was a case in point. (Except for catnaps, Ridgeway states unequivocally, "The real gist of RAAM is you're not going to sleep.")
The Midwest flooding was another example. Everybody yakked about it to the point of distraction.
But in the end, the riders had to make only one fairly minor detour.
During the entire race, Smith reflected, "I got sprinkled on for 10 minutes."
By the time they bridged the Mississippi, the team members were casehardened.
"The terrain melts into the pulls" to the extent that it doesn't really matter whether you're going uphill or down, Ridgeway said. " 'Bring it on' becomes your attitude."
The Appalachian Mountains posed the last great geological hurdle.
"The Appalachians are short, steep and hellish," Ridgeway said. "It's where a lot of people do crack."
It did not occur to Smith to fall to pieces.
"I loved riding the Appalachians," she said, adding that the weather was crisp and autumnal when they were there.
The racers' bikes proved durable, too.
The biggest job tackled by Cycle Smart mechanic Matt Propst was straightening a derailleur mount after Smith crashed in Kansas.
Propst, who turned 18 during the trip, said it was "very cool" to span the continent, but less captivating to share an RV with 14 people for seven days.
"Shuffling everybody in ... no sleep ... . You have yourself a party," he said.
Comic touches injected levity throughout the trip.
There was the laying on of hands by Propst. He touched the bikes at the start of each shift as a tongue-in-cheek blessing.
It worked, and a motto appeared on the wall of the camper: "Trust the Propst."
Ridgeway recalled another ironical one-liner, tacked up by crew chief Mark Jones.
"The RV is not a quiet zone."
The caravan's early-morning entry into Annapolis, though, was decidedly subdued.
Team 414 finished its cross-country trek in seven days, 15 hours and 12 minutes. The racers placed fourth place in their class.
"Understated" would be a good way to describe the reception, said Smith, who had harbored Tour de France visions of media and champagne.
The celebration was an inner one, concluded Ridgeway, who was planning to go out on his bike and log 2,200 more miles this month.
The RAAM was behind him. And ahead of him.
"I don't think it's as sick a ride as everyone says," he said. "It's life affirming because you feel alive."
Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.
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