AIDS Lifecycle 6
Supporting benefit rides is just one of the many outlets I use to practice my bike repair skills. The opportunity to volunteer for the AIDS Lifecycle 6 came about with phone call from Cannondale’s Bill Rudell. As the official tech sponsor, Cannondale was responsible for stocking and staffing a mobile bike repair giant for the almost 600 mile ride. The ride would take nearly 2800 cyclists 7 days to complete as it wound south down the coast of California.
Equipped with 1300 700c tubes and just about every other part that could possibly break on a standard road bike, Bill and his team of 9-15 mechanics and fit gurus converged on the AIDS Lifecycle registration at the Cow Palace, just outside of San Francisco. For the techs, the registration day was dedicated to getting the riders’ bikes unboxed, built, and working as smooth as possible. This day was my introduction to the massiveness of the event and the diversity of the participants.
Each bike I built was an introduction to a person I had never met before. I would try and find the bike shop sticker on the bicycle that might give me the geographical lowdown on each bike and it’s rider. The conversations were typically focused on the wheres and whys of these people, many of whom had traveled great distances to participate. Besides the prospect of riding nearly 600 miles in 7 days, the $2500 minimum donation showed a level of commitment you wouldn’t see at most other charity rides. I suppose that’s why the 2800 riders raised over $11 million before the start of the ride.
Often the bikes I built were loaners, yet unridden by the person standing in front of me. Other times I would remove bikes from the boxes they had been so carefully sealed inside of at the end of the previous Lifecycle. I admit my skepticism about certain riders’ readiness was high. The comedic highlight came at the expense of a person on a department store bicycle. The seatpost was cut leaving no room for adjustment, the seat was always down, and the frame had a 20lb. U lock around it. I guess you had to see it to appreciate it. You should know he made it all the way to the end.
Each day was a new adventure for this country mouse. The team of mechanics would wake early to have cyclists on the road by 6:30. As the flow of riders would decrease to a trickle, teams of mechanics would race to various rest stops along the way to set up a make shift bike shops before the riders started arriving. As I set up shop at the lunch stop on day one I paused to take in the scenery. The ocean lapped at the sand only a few hundred feet away as the seals soaked up the sun, birds soared, dived, bobbed, weaved, ate, slept, and a multitude of other activities, all for my viewing pleasure. The participants started pedaling in within a short time.
The bikes I saw suffered from ailments of all varieties. Usually it was a simple shifting issue, but I witnessed many broken spokes, broken derailleurs, slashed tires, crash damage, and just about anything else that could go wrong with a bike. The mechanical feat of the week was performed by Murray of Cannondale and Q of Shimano with their zip tie remedy for a lost b tension plate on a Campy rear derailleur. It really opened my eyes to the power of the zip tie, especially since it was still running strong at the end of the ride after breaking the first day. Bill would scurry from shop to shop, sometimes hitting 8 in a day, just to meet the mechanical needs of the participants’ bikes. The proprietary spokes and Italian components seemed to be the hardest items to replace on the road.
Besides tubes and tires, pedal cleats seemed to be in the highest demand. The amount of walking was a cycling anomaly with some riders going through 3 pairs of cleats during the week. The Look and Shimano cleats were definitely the most prone to wear, while Speedplay and Time faired slightly better. The cyclists that showed up with cleat covers and used them religiously were spared the anguish of worn cleats. If I was going to ride in the AIDS Lifecycle I would definitely be using my mountain shoes and pedals. My feelings about common, easy to locate and replace bike parts was certainly strengthened over the course of my repair endeavors. A snazzy wheel is no good if you can’t find a spoke to fix it.
Fortunately for the cyclists with bike problems that weren’t immediately fixable, Cannondale was loaning bikes to those in need. The Cannondale loaner bikes were the latest and greatest and typically an upgrade for the riders needing to borrow them. By the 4th day of the event most of the demo bikes had been loaned out, saving the ride for many participants.
The bike shop would close in the evening when all of the bikes that could be fixed had been. This usually freed us bike mechanics up around 10:30 or 11 at night. The tent cities that formed our temporary homes was impressive both in size and efficiency. The night life was minimal as the staff and cyclists were exhausted, but the portable cities had most of the luxuries of home and left little to want for. Then in the AM they would pick it up and move it to the next spot leaving no hint that these metropolises had ever existed.
Hopefully I’ll be back for the AIDS Lifecycle 7 next year. The people I met and the places I saw made the experience unique and rewarding. The event even had me fixing bikes in a red dress, hopefully all of those photos have been destroyed. A big thanks to Cannondale for the invite and all of the other volunteers I met along the way. Do yourself a favor and meet me there next year.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:57 am
THANK YOU for this POV, and for being a part of the event. ALC6 was my fifth as a cyclist since 2000, and I will return next year as a roadie volunteer. Having taken 3 years away from the experience before this most recent one, I remember so well what it was like to be a newcomer to it, and I’m happy to hear you were smitten by the spirit of that incomparably crazy and special traveling community. Until next year!