The Chico Wildflower Century Ride

There was wind and there was rain and there was cold and a flat tire and hills and losing each other and sun that scorched our skin. It was an adventure.

My Christopher and I partook of the Chico Wildflower Century Ride this past Sunday. For those unfamiliar with the world of road riding, a “century” is a 100-mile bicycle ride and despite its grueling nature such events are wildly popular. Nearly every bicycle club around sponsors their own annual century ride, making it into a sort of bicycle gala.


The Chico Wildflower is a very popular century. It is one of the first of the season anywhere and is so named because of the wildflowers that adorn the north central valley (CA) in early spring before the prevailing hellish heat and lack of any rain char the earth. They have great food at lunch and the rest stops, give out creative goodies to riders and the weather is fairly uniformly splendid this time of year in that area – except this year, of course. A dry winter meant a lack of many wildflowers and then this last weekend was unusually cold and rainy.

Layered in Capilene and donning wooly socks to protect us from the cold and rain, Chris and I started the ride before seven in the hopes of getting a jump on the 3,600 registered riders. A flat tire at mile 6 deflated that idea. During the 45 minutes it took to replace the tube (one technical issue after the other) I watched the masses stream by. But we weren’t alone in the flat tire department – we must have seen close to 100 people with flats that day. I’ve never seen anything like it. At times there were people pulled over every fifty yards and I spoke to one woman who had two flats while Chris spoke to a guy who’d had three!

Next we lost each other. Chris had been really great about waiting for me frequently and I was doing a good job keeping up with him. Around mile 35 or so he was about 30 seconds ahead of me and I could see him if it was straight for a bit. By now the rain had stopped and it was getting warmer and there was the toughest climb of the day ahead of us. I wanted to pause to rearrange my layers but was thinking he would stop soon to wait for me. I considered trying to get a message to him via one of the speedy dudes that would periodically pass me but didn’t. After rounding a corner there was what seemed to be a bathroom stop (there was no marking or anything) but I didn’t see Chris waiting for me. Though I didn’t want him to get further ahead of me I had to stop and rearrange myself. I thought maybe he’d run down to the bathroom (he’d been taking potty break after potty break) and would be out in a few minutes. I got myself straightened out and still didn’t see him so waited a few more minutes before taking off (because I didn’t want to get farther and farther behind him.)

Pretty soon after was the big giant climb but my Christopher wasn’t waiting for me at the top or at the bathroom stop a mile past that. I made it all the way to lunch at mile 55ish and still didn’t see him. I searched the lunch stop twice and didn’t find him. Certain that he wouldn’t leave lunch without me I lurked by the entrance. After half an hour I was quite concerned. I didn’t understand how I could have beaten him to lunch, but knew he wouldn’t leave without me. I asked the sheriff and one of the ride volunteers if there had been any accidents on the road but they were useless. Finally, just as I was about to cry from it all, my Christopher pulled into lunch. It seems that bathroom stop way back when I’d taken some layers off had actually been a rest stop set off from the road a bit, but with no signs or markers explaining that it was a rest stop. Chris had waited for me at the rest stop for 45-minutes, very worried, and had even ridden back a couple of miles trying to find me. We were both quite relieved to finally find each other at lunch. I enjoyed the ride much much more when we were actually riding together. The twenty or so miles where we’d lost each other really rather sucked.

But we found each other and the remaining 35ish miles were fairly flat even if we did have a hefty head wind for much of it. What with the flat tire, the losing each other and breaks for lunch and snacks and all, we didn’t make it to the end until nearly 5pm but we finished! By the time we got to his brother’s place we were both limping and our sunburns had started to settle in (I had triangles on my forehead where I was burned through the gaps in my helmet!) but we were feeling rather proud of our accomplishment. We definitely weren’t even close to being the strongest ones on the ride, but I don’t think I’ll need to turn my Sturdy Girl jersey in just yet. There were quite a few people walking their bikes up the hills – I was pretty close to walking my bike up the toughest hill myself – and we contemplated a couple of shortcuts but we both rode every inch of those 100 miles!