August 18, 2012, 5:30 am. Preparing the cars to reach the starting point: “Postes”, the door to “La Primavera” Forest. After some details, we started at 7:00 am, 9 cyclists, even with some drowsiness, which was blurring as we climbed to the “8 1/2”. Charly, Fer, Rommel, Eria, Liz, Robert, Andrzej, Przemek and Ro (yes, me). And without aluminic two great friends, whom supported us during all day long, Eli and Francisco at the front of the battle, followed us with support cars through the freeways…
It was a great challenge, while not completed as planned, it fulfilled what we expected. We enjoyed this feat more than 8 hours riding, cleaning, walking and carrying our bikes. As if we were a bolt, we crossed “La Primavera” forest that was just woke the Saturday morning, we reach heights to climb from the Tecuan village to the Lagunillas town on the edge of the Sierra de Tapalpa, to no more than 10 miles of Atemajac de Brizuela.
We passed the Valencia dam and the Villa Corona lake, enjoyed a delicious breakfast of “quesadillas” and “gorditas”, complementing with a cookie or a chocolate to seize power.
And best of all, in my opinion, we enjoyed an unique company, Frodo and Sam would have had with them a community of bikers as we had. We rode my land with courage, with joy, with conviction, with fellowship and with the good taste of sharing this experience that will stay here for a while.
At the end, we did not reach the original goal that was Tapalpa, we rode around 80kms (50 miles) of 110 kms (68.75 miles). But is is the perfect excuse to repeat the feat, and again take up the challenge, take note of what we missed or what we left over, as the mud and the breakdowns … he he. But we have the conviction that stands to cyclists, to ride it and ride it again ….
Here’s the map and altimetry of our riding, where I indicated the maximum constraints, it was the mud becoming almost a swamp some sections of the trail, which we have made delayed arriving at Lagunillas at dusk, and then we decided to catch up and get to there …
