San Diego Retreat

We spent the first couple of days of our trip as a work retreat in San Diego. We learned what to expect in a typical day on the road. When riding, we learned how to communicate (via volleyball-like hand signals to point out hazards, slowing, etc...) and how to ride as a group. We went on a couple of scenic rides around La Jolla and the Torey Pines Golf Course area as a trust building exercise. When riding as a group and drafting (i.e. within 2 ft of the wheel in front of you) you can save 1/3 of your energy expenditure. The trade off is that if the person in front of you taps his/her breaks without telling you, you and the rest of the line goes crashing. We also learned how to manage our 3 support vehicles which we will be leap-frogging along the course making sure that all riders are doing okay and equipped with food/water. As you can imagine, this trip is a logistical nightmare and our leadership team has put in countless hours of prep. For the educational side, we spent a good deal of time creating and practicing the Powerpoint lectures that we will be delivering in our coast-to-coast lecture series.

The Jewish Community Center that hosted us was a museum/resort-like facility and was very gracious to put us up and feed us dinner during our stay. The group is meshing well. Many seem to be the "outdoorsy" type, although only a few of us have any significant road bike experience so our local "biking gurus" have handled several questions.