How to Get Free Pie

I love pie.  Pie of any sort.  I particularly like Cherry Pie, Chicken Pot Pie, Lemon Meringue Pie, Blueberry Pie, Chocolate Cream Pie, and Shepard's Pie, to name a few.  And of course pizza pie.  I also like cake, and have had minor obsession with cakes in the last month, but that is another story for another time.  This is a story about how to get Free Pie.

Climbing Jamison Creek. 

First, you sign up for the Death Ride with Team in Training.  You will be nervous and excited and a little apprehensive at first.  But that's okay.  This is natural.   Just keep your eye on the prize.

Then you will need to do some training.  Not just any training, but Death Ride training, which of course involve climbing every hill known to man in the Bay Area on you bike.  Along the way you might experience the following:

• Saddle sores
• An increase in expense of bike gear
• Deep hatred for volcanic activity that created the hills you are riding
• Ravenous bouts of hunger that drive you to make 2nd breakfast and 2nd lunch parts of your normal eating vocabulary.
• Ability and desire to eat a whole avocado with only a spoon at your desk.
• Deep cravings for carrot cake, coconut cake, and ginger cake, for example.
• Amazing abilities to endure pain and suffering, and in the end being able to say, "It wasn't that bad."
• Strangely long conversations about nothing in particular with the same folks for 4 months straight.
• Forgetting what a "normal" Saturday looks like. 
• And a longing to be on your bike whenever the weather is nice.

So you do that for 19 weeks straight.

Snarky, mean, big-hearted friend.

Then you go on a ride around Big Basin State Park and Santa Cruz that is 113 miles long and involves 12,000 feet of climbing.  It's not advisable to do this until you have done all of the above.

You need to make sure that you have a snarky, mean-spirited friend providing SAG (support and gear) for you, following you in a car least something happens to you or your bike along the way.

Be sure to climb a good 7,000 feet before you bike into the gnarliest 20mph + head-winds you might ever experience on Hwy 1 near Pescadero, CA around mile 75.  As you are pulling your team in a paceline, you will point longingly at a sign that says, "Slow for Pie" next to Pie Ranch.  Be sure to exclaim how you would normally slow for pie and how you would kill to have one.  But then put your head back down into the headwind and keep pulling your team.

At this point, its fairly imperative that your snarky, mean-spirited friend take a break and go to Pie Ranch, purchase a pie, and what apparently is excellent coffee.  He should then go outside and sit on a hay bale right by the road, as your teammates ride by in the headwind.  Be sure,  and this is critical, he says "Cheers!"  as the bikes pass by.

Then, continue riding your bike up a series of long steep hills in the headwinds until you reach mile 96, where very kind volunteers await you with water and snacks.  Then be sure your snarky, mean-spirited friend shows up to ask you if you're having "fun."  At this point, its completely appropriate to curse him and berate him repeatedly for not bringing you pie.  Remember you are very tired, your bum hurts, and you've been on the ride for 10 hours.  And you still have another 2000 feet and 15 miles to go.  Also, its nearing dinner time and you're highly cranky.  So make sure when you lay into him, you do it really well.  This is also critical for your plan to work.  You need to make sure you will appear to be overly dramatic,.

Finally, you may finish your ride, at a perfectly respectable pace and time with your awesome teammates.  You may also drink a beer as soon as you arrive in the parking lot.

And if you have done everything correctly, you will find a beautiful free berry pie awaiting you in your car, delivered to you by your snarky, mean-spirited friend who intends to both make you feel bad for laying into him about not bringing pie, and also really pleased that he is big-hearted enough to give you a pie.

 And then, sit back and enjoy eating the whole pie by yourself.  Because your master plan worked and you earned it.



PS.  You know what would be even better than pie?  Curing cancer.  Can you help me reach my goal of $5000?  My deadline in coming up in a few weeks!