how can we be there if we aren't going anywhere?

Velo Girls, Michelle Goldberg and Patty Namba, participated in a unique fundraising ride. Michelle shares her experience:

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A little background on 100 MILES OF NOWHERE..... Three years ago, Elden Nelson of FatCyclist.com fame, decided to ride 100 miles in honor of his wife Susan's battle with metastatic breast cancer. He wanted it to be a ride with no destination, just to ride for the sake of riding, and rode it on his rollers.

Last year, he had the ride again but opened it up for people to join him. The only requirement was that you ride nowhere, again, just for the sake of riding and supporting folks fighting cancer around the world. There was an entry fee, but all "sponsors" gave 100% of the entry to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. A special call out to Twin Six, as they have been a HUGE supporter of FatCyclist.com and Susan's battle that eventually took her life, working with Fatty to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to LAF!!!

I had registered last year, but wasn't able to do the ride on the arranged date due to having the nasty Flu. This year, Fatty has the ride again -- version 3. He loosened the requirements a bit - you still had to ride nowhere, but you could do as much or as little as you wanted to ride and you could do it on any day. I told my friend Patty about the ride and she, being as insane as I am, thought it would be a great experience. We had decided that if we couldn't each do 100 miles, we would at least do 100 miles as a team... hence Team PaMi was born.

Team PaMi started out with a warm up on the Los Gatos Creek Trail for the first 10 miles. As the trail got very crowded, we moved our adventures to the city streets of Willow Glen. After riding several streets to design a loop, we settled in on a 1.1 mile course with a minimum of stop signs and car traffic. Around and around we went... and went.... and went.

Mile 25 brought us to our first break as it was time for lunch.

Mile 35 brought us to our second break and tent setup for LiveSTRONG. Our roadie, Heather, got us set up with rocking tunes and a TV showing Lance racing in the 2005 Tour de France. We had lots of LAF/LiveSTRONG brochures available and even Guidebooks in case anyone wanted/needed one. We had some visitors, but it was generally pretty quiet for Heather, who manned the tent while we rode.

We kept riding, and riding, and riding, around and around and around, with a few visits to the Creek Trail to break it up a bit. Neighbors were starting to wonder. One neighbor, sitting on her porch, eventually fell asleep watching us go around and around and around.

At one point, I asked Patty if we were there yet. Her response was "How can we be there if we aren't going anywhere?" So very true that was.

As the afternoon winds started picking up and temperatures started dropping in anticipation of the rainstorm expected on Sunday, Team Pami had already accomplished our goal - to ride 100 miles as a team. We rode a total of 115 miles in all - Patty finished up with 60 miles, yours truly with 55 miles. Of those miles, we did about 18 on the Creek Trail. That meant about 37 times around the hood. Patty said she'd never ridden that many miles never shifting her gears. I shifted a bit on the Creek Trail to mix it up a bit.

The day was almost like a time-lapsed series of photographs. Every few minutes we saw changes in the houses we passed, cars parked on the street, people walking their dogs. Quite the experience!

Fight Like Susan!

Michelle