Copper the Llama

We joined veteran rider and training ride leader Doreen on an east side Chain Gang ride. Doreen has the distinction of being the only person who’s ridden all the AIDS/LifeCycle rides and all the California AIDS Rides (the predecessor of AIDS/LifeCycle.) So far, we’ve mostly been riding with Shifting Gears on the west side and it’s nice to ride with our east side friends again.

We met up with the other riders at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center. The Aquatics Center had a swim meet going on at the same time, so there were lots of people and the parking lot was filled with cars. It was a little hard to find our group. When we got to our meeting spot, I immediately saw Loren, whom I’ve known since my first AIDS/LifeCycle ride in 2003. At that time, Loren was the Board Chair of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, but now, he’s the Board Chair of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. It was so good to run into him.

Before we even took off, the morning was already warming up. It was very unlike all our training rides so far where we had bone-chilling cold in the morning. I made a last minute decision to leave my windjacket behind, which ended up being a wise choice. I did keep my arm and knee warmers on, just in case.

We rode south out of the Rose Bowl and headed to South Pasadena. We were pretty close to our house and rode passed our neighborhood Trader Joe’s on Mission Street, which was fun. The ride took us through East Pasadena and into Arcadia, where we had our first pit stop. Up until then, we were riding in the back of the pack with Doreen. We had to pull over to pump up Sam’s tire, so we fell behind a bit. But we caught up with everyone at the pit stop.

I thought the ride only went as far east as Arcadia, but I was wrong. We kept going east and rode passed Monrovia and into Duarte. Near the second pit stop, we saw something that completely caught us off guard…a llama!! There was a woman walking her pet lama, named Copper (but I kept calling him Cooper.) I’ve never seen a llama up close and always thought they weren’t the prettiest of animals. But this lama was tall and looked quite majestic. It was beautiful. The owner was very nice and let us take a picture with Copper. Cool!!

After the llama break, it was time to head back. The route back was mostly the same, except we also rode through Temple City and San Gabriel. The entire ride was mostly flat. I didn’t realize there were no hills until we got back. Still, even though the terrain was flat, I was totally winded and exhausted. I was so happy to be done when we got back to the Rose Bowl. Total miles was 37.10.

This ride is dedicated to these awesome sponsors: Kenneth Y. & Elaine S.