by The last leg of the Tour was upon me. I had over seven hundred miles in my legs from the last nine days. I just had another 85 lines to get to Provincetown. I had most of Team Kinetic Karma with me. We were looking great in our new kits.
We pulled out of Captain Dave’s house at the 5:30 sunrise. That would put us well behind most of the riders on the Cape Cod route. We had 10 miles of riding to get the Cape Cod Canal and to get on to the PMC route.
The Ridings were our heroes. They drove our bags up to the Bourne pickup for delivery to Provincetown. They also took flat Linda, with a PMC luggage tag on her arm, for delivery to Provincetown.
My legs were tired, but that was no surprise. I’d be digging deep to help Cap’t Dave and the team to Provincetown. First a quick stop at the Canal for a group picture.
It just a quick pedal down the canal. It was clear that we were behind the PMC riders. We only saw a handful of riders. The PMC is not a race. It’s not about getting there first. It’s about the experience.
The next part of the experience was stopping to greet our masseuses from last night. The waited in the misty morning for us to finally make our way to their spot in Sandwich.
Next up was the Barnstable water stop. It was hard to tell if the rest stop was a lesser creation than prior years. There certainly many fewer riders and volunteers than we are used to encountering. We knew that there was only half as many riders on the route and we were far behind most riders. We did find Bill who was volunteering at the rest stop.
The misty rain was continuing as we left the stop and headed down 6A towards Brewster. We came up on a pack of red-shirted Shawmut Construction PMC riders. This was the same group I had encountered Saturday morning in Newton. They were moving fast so we decided to ride fast with them.
It was sad coming along the hedge and not seeing the usual crowd at The Hedge. Cape Cod Sea Camp closed because of the pandemic. In years’ past, Team Kinetic Karma would have a champagne toast for the hundreds of campers cheering us on from behind The Hedge. This year was just silence.
We were still riding with Shawmut as we pulled into the Brewster rest stop. It’s usually a lot of riders in a small footprint. There were fewer riders, but the party atmosphere was in full swing. It was a bit weird, but there was ice cream.
Up ahead was tradition that had survived for this edition of the Pan Mass Challenge. There would Twizzlers at the top of the first climb on Ocean View Drive. Lance’s family has been stationed here for years handing out Twizzlers to tired PMC riders. They were here again, with Red Bull for us.
It was a quick stop at Wellfleet then off for the final leg. We were presented with a choice to take the dunes of Provincetown or save 4 miles and head straight to the finish. We chose the dunes. We would regret the decision physically, but not mentally.
It was weird crossing the finish line with few spectators. There was no champagne toast this year.
The big question would be whether Flat Linda had made it to the finish line. We pulled into the baggage area and there she was, cheering us on in two dimensions. We had to include Flat Linda in the finish line photo.
What to do with Flat Linda after the ride? Time to recover and have a good time on the way back to Boston.
