Before anybody had ever heard of a Markleeville Death Ride, there was the Diamond Valley Road Race. It uses a little travelled twelve mile loop near Markleeville (or Woodford's if you know the area) which has rolling hills and beautiful scenery. So beautiful in fact, that a number of folks who visited the area in order to race have ended up moving in and calling it home. I am told that this loop has about five hundred feet of climbing, about half of which is on two stair steps out in the middle of nowhere. The summertime weather there is usually mild; it's close proximity to Kirkwood Meadows gives one the idea that the winters must be pretty harsh.
I travelled to the 1981 event with Tom Simonson, Mark Cahn, and Jim Bell in Tom's experienced Buick Skylark. Tom had arranged for accomidations with a friend, so all we had to do was to sit back and relax. We slept well that night, and the morning of the race we set out to find a restaurant. We had difficulty finding anything open that early, and ended up at a real greasy spoon. Since we were going to be riding seven laps, we thought that it would be wise to order lots of carbohydrate-rich pancakes. They turned out to be the most under-cooked pancakes that we had ever seen, but we were feeling pressured for time and had to eat them regardless of the fact that they were extremely unappealing. We were quite uncomfortable for some time as the nearly raw pancakes batter sat in our stomachs as Tom drove expeditiously to Markleeville.
The race started uneventfully in the wonderful morning sunshine. We were a bit chilly in our shorts, but we knew that in a couple hours the weather would be great. About twenty miles into the event, I complained to Tom about how my stomach still felt full of the pancake goo. Tom made a joke about time-release carbohydrate that was so funny that I cannot remember it. As the air warmed up, we all became comfortable.
The teammate who was the top candidate to do well in this race was Bob Muzzy. Bob is a fountain of energy; the night before this event he had raced on the track in San Jose a couple of hours past sundown, then made the two hundred mile drive to Markleeville alone. He told me that if he felt well, he would attempt to ride away from the pack a little after the halfway mark. Sure enough, after four laps and change, Bob and four other guys left the rest of us behind on the hill.
My job to keep the pack from reeling in Bob was pretty easy that day, and I'm sure that most of the contestants did more sightseeing than they would care to admit. Meanwhile, with a skeleton support crew and a total dearth of spectators, Bob and Company had no idea if their lead was one minute or ten minutes, so they rode very agressively. As it turned out, they finished many minutes ahead of the pack.
With about two miles to go, two roadies from the pack went blazing off the front. Since we couldn't see Bob in any of the straightaways, I knew that his lead was safe and that he had a top five placing in the bag. I chased these two guys down as I had done several times earlier, but instead of interfering with them such that they would find themselves back in the pack, I took the liberty of taking a blisteringly hard and long turn at the front. As I pulled off, I saw that we had a decisive lead on the pack, and I gave these two guys a look that said, "Let's see if you weenies can match that!" They made every effort to do so, and while resting behind them, I saw that the pack was far, far behind us. My two compatriots were classic road racers, and when they opened up for me to pull through with a quarter of a mile to go, they looked shocked when I was sitting back a couple of bike lengths, and then tried to get clear. It was easy blowing around them at the finish, and amusing to see the perplexed looks on their faces.
As it turned out, Bob got third place and I got sixth. I saw Bob struggling with his bib jersey (made by his sister, the founder of Vigorelli, the folks who brought lycra to the cycling world). He was devastated by his last two days of efforts, was really feeling the heat (in the mid-eighties), and had to urinate. He finally produced his male anatomy which was remarkably sized in the warm weather. As he emptied his bladder, his eyes rolled upwards and one could tell that he was barely conscious, but he managed to utter, "My God, I'm at the end of my rope." Never being one to resist a good setup, I replied, "Oh man, if that's the end of your rope, I would sure like to see the rest of it!" It took a few seconds for Bob's brain to sort it all out, and then as the laughter rolled out, he began to fall, but was saved by a sap laden tree. Bob was always the best one for good one-liners, but I had finally gotten his goat (so to speak).
Our friend Mark Cahn (who rode for Peninsula Velo) had won the race, and after we collected our prizes, Tom took us to a really neat place called Grover Hot Springs where steam came out of the ground and directly fed a small swimming pool. We showered off and then relaxed in the wonderful shallow pool whose temperature was just perfect. Mark complained about having only one water bottle for the entire race and proceeded to drink a couple of liters of water from the pool as we made comments about what children like to do in warm pools. A couple of years later we learned that the resort had been shut down by state officials after they discovered that the level of choloform bacteria was eight thousand times in excess of that which was permissible. Mark, however, showed no ill effect and raced strongly the day after his choloform cocktail.
We spent the night at accomidations that had been arranged by Jim Bell. Our host was a crazy man who insisted that we compensate him by placing a cold six pack of beer in his refridgerator which seemed like a small price to pay for a place to sleep that was close to the next day's race. Late that evening, our host showed up drunk, proceeded to drink the six pack that we had left him, and then left in a hail of smoking tires. He came back a few hours later extremely drunk, and angry that the six pack that we had promised him was not in his refridgerator. He refused to believe that he had drunk it already, and attempting to reason with him caused him to become agitated to the extent that only violence could come next. Fortunately, there was a liquor store nearby and a six pack of really cheap beer was obtained for this beast. After he poured most of it down his snout, we all slept well. Well rested by the next morning, we made lots of noise getting packed up, but the bear continued its hybernation without a stir.