525-Mile Journey Brings Home a Lesson

Thursday, Day 5, 46 miles to Cachuma Lake

*

Iwake to the sound of laughter.

Three-time California AIDS Rider Daniel Moeshing is breaking down his tent and chatting with a fellow member of Positive Pedalers, a cycling club for HIV-positive riders. “They made an announcement about the Positive Pedalers Club, and someone said, ‘Oh, I want to join!’ “says friend Merle, snickering.

“You’re kidding!” hoots Daniel. “They wanted to join? I can tell them how to join Positive Pedalers real easily. I can help them join!”

“It’s easy!” Merle guffaws. “I can get you in, no problem!”

“We’ll get them a bike flag and everything!” Daniel howls, and the two double over in laughter, a moment of dark humor in the face of the pandemic.

Later Daniel tells me, “People think I’m out here having fun the whole time, like this is some kind of vacation for me. I cry sometimes when I’m out there on the road, but people don’t see that.”

And we hit the road again, we 2,275 cyclists pedaling 525 miles in California AIDS Ride 3.

This is a day of hills. We ride, a narrow line of polychrome jerseys and iridescent bikes, between roaring gravel trucks and broccoli field drainage ditches. Then comes a long, churning climb out of Santa Maria, a steady six-mile grade that by 9 a.m. has us drenched in sweat.

We lunch at 10, then face the first of two harsh climbs, a near half-miler the organizers dubbed Heartbreak Hill.

Next comes the Wall, a hideously steep half-mile incline. But most riders reach the top without walking and are rewarded with a face full of mist squirted by cheering volunteers.

At the top, HIV-positive rider Brian Vatcher is stopped, hunched over his Bianchi before a sweeping view of Santa Ynez Valley vineyards. I ask if he’s OK.

He looks up, damp-eyed. “I’m OK.” A gentle smile. “I just had to cry, that’s all,” he says, and a short while later he rolls into the next pit stop to tank up with water and josh with friends.

On the long, slow descent to Cachuma Lake, a clutch of bikers veers off the pavement, drops their bikes and sprints across the busy road to a corral.

Ostriches. A herd of them stare glassy-eyed at the nylon-sheathed goofballs who gape, point cameras and giggle. Bikers lean closer to pose, then run away cackling when the massive birds take huge, thumping pecks at their helmets.

Cachuma Lake is a broad, cool oasis. Barbara Quattrocchi rests atop a wall after dinner.

This ride is harder on her than her first, in 1995. “I started out to ride up Heartbreak Hill, and then I felt really weird,” she says. “So I turned around and came back.”

She fell asleep on the bus on the way up to camp, then chided herself for being weak. “But then I went by the medical tent and saw them carrying some poor woman out on a stretcher, and I thought, ‘It could have been me, baby.’ ”

Friday, Day 6, 89.8 miles to Ventura.

We cruise out through fog-bound Solvang, bleary at best.

Riders talk of having good days and bad days.

For me--and a few other riders I meet--this is a bad one, full of the crushing, physical part of the ride.

Not long out of camp, I signal and come to a quick stop in a left turn lane to avoid an oncoming car. A rider just behind me slams on her brakes and pitches headfirst over her handlebars to the pavement.

She curses and gets up slowly, grabbing my gloved hand for support. She is trembling, fighting tears. “Please hold my hand for a minute,” she begs, and gingerly wiggles her wrists, elbows, legs. “I don’t think I hit my head, but, oh God, I’ve never wrecked before.”

I walk her over to where an AIDS Ride motorcycle flagman is directing traffic.

We dive down from the mountains now to the Gaviota coastline, and roll south under leaden skies.

Then we cross into Ventura County, the sun melts the haze and gilds the Rincon cliffs, and everything changes. I am on my way home now.

It is on this leg that I think most of Gary Gorman, whose photo I carry in my map case.

He was a veteran Times reporter who transferred to Ventura in 1990 and later became my editor.

AIDS killed his lover, Otto, a few years back. While Gary spoke only casually in the newsroom of visits to the doctor or of not feeling well, I could not help but think as I worked with him that he was next.

He left The Times two years ago August. Word came from his parents in Ohio last year that he was in a great deal of pain and that the disease had struck him blind.

He died in February, before I got to know him as well as I had hoped. He was 44.

Saturday, Day 7, 70.3 miles to closing ceremonies in West Hollywood.

I’m beginning to get a sense of what California Aids Ride really means. The bones and meat and spirit of the event lie in the people. They treat each other with kindness. They break stride to pull over and fix flats for each other. They cheer each other up hills and whoop in unison while speeding downhill.

As we pull out of Ventura this morning, buzzing past Oxnard’s strawberry fields, we have become a small community, chatting over Power Bars and Gatorade.

Straights treat gays and lesbians with courtesy, and courtesy is returned with warmth and even budding friendship.

On the way down from Gaviota yesterday, I was rumbling along and some passing trucker yelled out the window, “Faggot!” And suddenly I was 14 again, pedaling my bike to school and swerving in fear he would veer over to hit me.

The clouds lift, and we roll into West Hollywood amid sunshine and applause. Riders slap high-fives, hug each other, guzzle sodas--it is all over but the last few blocks.

We don multicolored T-shirts and line up in rows of six, then parade at the slowest speed of the entire ride through the streets of West Hollywood. Family and friends--a crowd estimated at 15,000--clog the sidewalks.

Riders whoop and holler, hoisting bikes overhead and flinging water from grimy bottles into bright arcs in the sun. We fall quiet for speeches by dignitaries including West Hollywood mayor and AIDS rider Paul Koretz and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who rode the final day. Then ride organizer Dan Pallotta puts his finger on it.

“I don’t think that hope exists. I think hope is a hoax, it’s an illusion, some excuse that somebody made up to avoid taking action.” Pallotta said he found hope nowhere on California AIDS Ride 3.

“But I’ll tell you what I did find. I found $8 million in cold hard cash for care of people with AIDS. And that’s real, and I can touch that. And I found 2,275 people who are not willing to sit around on their couches and say what they can’t do. And you’re here, and I can see you.”