2 // From Sea Otters to Hollywood
For those who don’t know, the Sea Otter isn’t just a bike race. It’s arguably the biggest bike expo in the world. For Australians, think the Sydney Royal Easter show but JUST bikes, and instead of having cattle paraded around a ring, it’s athletes mostly in lycra doing their thing.
I just felt so calm in the lead-up to this race. The unknown scares us, but for me, racing is so familiar, even halfway across the world. I know how to pin a number on, and I know how to clip into my pedals when the gun goes off. From there, you just have to do your best and focus on what you can control. At the start line, I just felt this huge sense of surreality as I squeeze into the pen filled with Elite Women & Life Time Grand Prix athletes. They’re doing the call ups “6 x World Cup winner” “4x Olympian” “winner of the Absa cape epic” … “Ella Bloor, part-time cyclist, part-time architect…” (only joking, I absolutely did not get a call-up). Maybe one day!
The course was relentless. 3000 vertical meters of climbing in 110kms, along sandy single track and rocky, exposed climbs. During the race, I honestly had no idea how I was going. It was a chaotic start into the single track, and I took a little tumble (I literally scorpioned OTB in what would’ve been a very comical capture) but brushed myself off to keep pushing on. Shawn Lewis (fellow Canberran, now Colorado Spingster), helped feed me, and I was surprised at the finish line to learn I was somewhere in the top 15. 13th place out of 51 elite women starters, and 9th place in the LifeTime Grand Prix standings is something I’m proud of. I feel like I deserve to be here, and I can’t wait to continue to build now that I’m settling into life in the US.
After the race, I packed up in Monterey and headed north to Santa Cruz to visit Bede, another Canberran who was about to start the PCT! What a nutter.
From Santa Cruz I began the journey South to LA. Not long into the road trip, I began to smell the classic smell of a burning clutch. Within two hours, the clutch had completely gone leaving me stranded on the side of the freeway 40 miles outside Paso Robles. I was pretty deflated, I had just spent a small fortune in Monterey getting the ball joints and control arms replaced, and I knew this was going to be another blow to the bank. However, there’s something so powerful about travelling by yourself. Having a tantrum isn’t going to solve the problem, there’s no one else to lean on, so you just get on with it. Within an hour, I was getting picked up by a tow truck, a mechanic had been organised & a rental car awaited. This silly jeep can be a ‘next week me problem’.
The last few days in LA have been a wild contrast. I’m now in the most deluxe ‘guest studio' at a fellow Aussie’s A-list celebrity home. If there’s one thing I’m learning about being on the road, is that Australians have each other’s back, and the ones that have done it before know a friendly face and a bit of generosity means the world when you’re finding your feet in this crazy place. The riding in LA is incredible, I’m recharging my batteries & I’m currently on a bus to play tourist for the day. I have literal shit on my shoe, hoping from a dog & not a human… but I’m continually just finding myself smiling that I’m in the US with my bikes!! I feel as free as the woman cracking into a bottle of Rose at 9:30am in the seat parallel to mine…
Next up: The journey across… Will Jenny the (junkheap) Jeep make it to Colorado?
