On Saturday, January 8, 2022, Greg Kline and I hosted the inaugural run of the Pier Review 200K, a super flat, super scenic, super fun and super car-free ACP brevet with our beloved home randonneuring club, PCH Randonneurs!
We had a remarkable 27 cyclists complete the route, the 2nd brevet on the PCH Randonneurs 2022 calendar. Not bad for a non-PBP year according to Greg!
Thank you to our amazing RBA, Kerin Huber, for the guidance on our 2nd (I think) brevet hosting event. Thank you to our amazing board, Terry Hutt, Jeff Arita and Lori Arita, for making the brevet hosting process super straightforward!
What a treat to meet so many new faces and to catch up with old rando friends. Kudos to Shai Shprung for his 1st official brevet since his recovery. Of course he completed it at an R-60 pace and a sub 8 hour finish, in spite of taking the bike paths out and back! Way to come back strong, Shai!
Congrats to our PCH Randonneur, Steve Speciale, riding his 1st brevet and who had the special treat of riding with Kerin Huber. Nice way to begin a randonneuring career to be sure! Congrats to our other newish RUSA members riding today in great form!
We had incredible weather for a wintery Saturday in January. It was a balmy 56º and totally dry at the start and only dipped into the 40ºs for a bit on the SART as we headed north to Green River for a quick latte.
There were some spectacular finish times and everyone finished in 10.5 hours or less who didn’t have a mechanical. Greg and I departed at 6:46am and had no hope of riding with other randos when we rolled up on Greg Goebel and John Marino as Greg G. was repairing the first of his 3 flats. Lucky for us as we were able to ride with Greg G. and John for the entire ride, an absolute treat!
John Marino is preparing to ride London Edinburgh London this summer and that took up a large part of the convos on the ride. Greg G, Greg K and I are planning to ride PBP 2023 and that consumed the rest of the conversations! Good luck to John Marino this summer and good luck to everyone training for PBP 2023!
I was able to convince almost everyone to take the ocean bike paths instead of PCH. It was so much more peaceful listening to the ocean and not that much slower given the lack of stop lights. Even Shai Shprung stayed on the bike paths and completed the course with an R60 finish time of under 8 hours!
El Burrito Jr was a big hit at lunch, and when the manager came out with our lunch, he thanked us for coming every month and bringing new friends this time. He said “see you in a few weeks!”, he knows us so well!
Charlie Martin was quite the topic of discussion after his 50,000K/5 K-Hound year. I felt like Will Ferrell saying “I know him!”
Thanks to everyone who showed up to ride the course, what a fun day to be sure!
Greg and Stacy ride 