Jill's Ride for Hope 2011

A friend from work told me about a charity ride called Jill's Ride for Hope in Los Gatos last weekend. This was a real treat for me, as I always end up travelling somewhere for a sponsored ride. In this case, I just had to ride my bike the 1.2 miles to the high school and ride from there.

There are two sides of the ride. The first was the ride itself. I did the 100K route, which went up over the Santa Cruz mountains, along the ridge, down to Boulder Creek and back. It was a wonderful ride, and just what I had planned on doing to train for Waves to Wine. The picture at the top of the post is from along ridge, looking down at the Santa Cruz bay. The city of Santa Cruz was shrouded in fog in the foreground, and Monterey lay shrouded in the background. And the mountains of the Ventana Wilderness and Big Sur show behind that. I just love the view. And I rode this better than I have in years: I am almost properly trained for the MS ride.

As I described in an earlier post, I received a Garmin bike computer from my wife and a HD bike/helment camera from my children for my birthday. Below is an example of what the summary of a bike ride looks like on Strava.



The second was the event and the cause. As you can see from the event website, this was a very inclusive event. Activities end from a 5K walk to the 100K ride. It was staffed well by high school students, the local Lions, and community members; there was great food and a raffle at the end, presided over by the SJ Sharks mascot, Sharkie. He was so exhausted that he took advantage of the free massage services after the raffle. And the cause was worthwhile: supporting mental health issues in high schools to help stem the tide of teen suicide. Nobody wants to talk about these issues much, so I credit Polly and Jim Nabor for opening up to the community to help others.