WOW! This event presented so many bizarre and out of left field anomalies that were impossible for an outsider to precognitively have grasp as possible or even probable. Let me out line the time line… The host of AirBnB told us the place they had available was just down the street from the Start - Finish Line. In reality it was 5 miles away half way 2/3 of the way to the north end of of Big Bear Lake just off the main highway into town so you couldnt have windows open due to car noise and once parker we had to carry our belongings back through a maze of sidewalks to get to our place. Its saving grace was the living room sliding glass doors opened to the pool and jacuzzi but there was no other windows or other non mechanical means to bring in Mountain Air. On to the Big Bear 100: we came up Thursday so I could pick up my ride - race packet. They said that the earliest date participants could pick up their packets was Thursday noon time. By the time we arrived, unloaded the car, and needing a meal, we decided to go picl it up Friday. We go to Registration the next morning at 9am and they tell us we can’t pick up a packet until 10am! We go out for early lunch… come back… “The Packet” is just a white plastic number plate thats got electronic sensors in thr right and left back side so electronic readers at the Start and Finish can track your Start and Finish. Here’s the rub: its huge - like about 6-7 inches tall x 8 inches across like whats commonly used in BMX racing back in the day and they issue esch rider bread bag twist ties to attach them under thr front of your bikes handlebars like a fricking bill board out front! and they expect you secure it’s bottom hard edge to your head tube grinding the paint away over the span of 100 miles! They didnt even offer safety pins as has been in use for over 100 yrs in international bicycle road racing! I felt insulted that they expected all the riders to put such a billboard on the front of their bikes in such a way that would create massive wind drag - meaning everyone would have to generate even more heat via burning more calories and sweating more water on a day of temperatures touching 100 degrees while climbing up to 10% grades for miles with zero aid stations once one leaves Big Bear heading for Onyx Summit at 8000 something feet. My creative spirit immediately began to think about how I could find some safety pins and knowing cutting the size down wouldn’t work because of the super sized electrical circuits stuck on the far right and left sides of the “billboards”. In a small mountain town nearing evening rush hour of folks coming home down below, I walked into a liquor store - market on the highway side of our AirBnB cluster and asked themnif they had safely pins? They reponded No, but said they had paper clips! And proceeded to give me a hand full for free! So I figured out how to use 3 of those in such a way as to attach the hard plactic plate to the center rear pocket of my jersey without putting holes in the jerseys fabric! On to the next weirdness… Ok so I finish dialing my gear in for the big event Saturday morning. I wake up Saturday morning with this weird sensation of gloom and doom and like I was going to dye today. My insides felt like pins and needles. Once my wife wales up she says she woke up with the same sensations! At that point I knew we were reading some kind of energy pattern that was kind of like a premonition and to stay alert and attentive. I also realized that in sharing that experience with my wife verbally, the sensationa in my body were suddenly dissipating! I load up thr bike in thr car and head over to Big Bear Ski Lodge where riders park their motor vehicles and the Start - Finish is on thr street out front of the lodge. Theres a several block long line of vehicles waiting to get into the lot at 630am. The ride - race launches at 7am. As I approach the lot I here one of the traffic directors telling the folks ahead of us that the entire lot in front of us (big enough to park over 1000 cars) is for “Prepaid” parking clients only! I’m like… WTF? I’m a prepaid registant for the 100 mile bike race! The guy lools at me and says “The free parking is down the road you came in on & tells me to do a u-turn. There was nothing on this events website nor anything stating that parking lot was for prepaid some bodies only! I was pissed… But what do you do? I drove a miles or so back down the road and was directed to park in a giant gravel covered coned off lot with probably a thousand other riders cars, trucks and SUV’s throwing up dust. By the time I’ve parked, got the bike out, shoes, helmet, gloves, Oakley META glasses and phone on, back pockets stuffed car keys and micro wallet, reading glasses with calories for the 100 miles and full water bottles, it’s 654am. I still have to find a way out of the gravel lot that will make my bike tires look all chalk covered. Its a grade that tilts up to about 7-8% to ride back to the Start - Finish. With traffic I cross the Start line 5 minutes after 6! They’ve set off the 100 milers, the 70 milers and the 40-something milers all together already. So i use another mile or so to warm up , then I drop into full on Dragon Mode 🐲🔥🦶🏽🦵🏾🫁❤️‍🔥👁️🚴🏾 25 - 35 mph across Big Bear - across and onto the other side of the lake. The first Aid Station was half way to Running Springs along Highway 330 where I topped off both bottles. I got to the turn around with great speed and held my own on thr climbs and blew past everyone just a head or who managed to pass me on the climbs on the descents. However after getting back on the road from the Aid Station the terrain seemed to have more climbing than coming outbound had. So I got passed by quite a few. Surprisingly, one of the last in about a 6 person group was Jules - my former riding partner that disappeared a couple of months ago for unexplained reasons. She was nice and said Hi and I back in kind. It was at that moment I remembered the energy and the synergy we seemed to manifest when we rode together. She has some kind of aura af presence about her that somehow ignites Dragon Mode in me making for some really spirited rides and event collaborations. She’s super strong in and of herself and I was always amazed that she stayed so tucked into my draft at speeds and for long intervals that few to almost no one else in our riding circles could do! I miss that… Anyhow, I suddenly felt that synergistic wave of energy even though she was at times a half mile up the road hanging onto the back of thr group she was riding with. And I felt suddenly as if i could command any amount of power I wanted to and found myself climbing and descending at rocket like speeds. I flew past Jules and her group as if they were doing a tourist ride! I thought perhaps since I am normally the slowest climber in any given group due to my beefy proportions, I’d use this rush of speed to create as much distance as i could on them as thats what it would take to perhaps only get caught as I summited Onyx Pass? Just before the last Aid Station where I refilled my bottles while leaving Big Bear Lake’s southern end and headed for Onyx Summit - Highway 18 there was bicyclist crash that involved a lot of road rash from what I could see. Bike looked pretty beat up also. 4-5 guys had stopped to assist so I rolled onwards. As 18 pitched up so did the temperatures. My Garmin registered 99 degrees as the climb progressed! It was evident in the body language of thr riders along the climb that the heat was brutally taking its toll. This is the next screwup I recognized in this evente planning. They had very well stocked and reasonably spaced Aid Stations in and just beyond Big Bear at lake level where it’s relatively cool. The organizers knew of a massive heat wave coming to thr region days before August 1st. They knew that temperatures nesr 100 would put a lot of lives at risk. The next Aid Station heading for Onyx Summit was at Onyx Summit! They didn’t list that one on their site or anywhere publicly available either. They needed another on half way between the far end of BB lake and Onyx Summit. They sent riders much less altitude and heat adapted than us seasoned riders into life threatening conditions! Riders were dismounting amd seeking thr tiniest of trees for some relief. I heard tons complaining of cramps in leg muscles, dizziness and nausea. also out of water which is what happened for me despite being seasoned, 100% heat adapted and altitude adapted to about 6000 ft according to my Garmin 1050. I too ran out of water about 5 miles before the summit! By the time I reached the summit, I was also starving for ride calories. I knew upon arrival it would be a suicide ride to go on over thr summit and dice down to Jenks Lake only to have to climb back up before the 3pm closer of the Aid Station. I got my core cooler down and made more of my simple carbs and electrolytes solution to chug down for rhe ride back. The heat was palpable! I saw some heat distressed riders go ahead and dive onwards down towards Jenks Lake. I couldnt help but think of incredible suffering they were signing up for and that their brains are not in an optimal condition to think out the consequences of that decision. Then I launched back down the mountain towards BB. Blazingly fast… Thought I might see Jules and maybe Ashley (spotted her heading for the Running Springs Aid Station after I’d already left there way earlier. Ashley is a strong climber but not too into Dragon Mode tempo on thr flats or descending. But I thought maybe she jumped in with a group and picked up some speed until things went vertical for her? Didnt see either if them! My guess is the heat must of derailed their intentions also? There is narrow tar and rock spattered section of road coming back into BB with lots of huge pine trees literally growing in thr edges of the asphalt where I came upon a nasty bike crash involving lots of road rash and broken bike. 4-5 guys on phones trying to get him help. I rolled on. The next one was at the beginning of what I call The Dump Truck Alley - a section intended to route cyclist around the main road through town through quite neighborhoods until its time to cross the makn highway to head for thr Finish Line. I was approaching this ragedy section when I noticed what I initially thought was a black trash bag wobbling in the wind but upon closer view I realized it was another cyclist who had not seen the rather tall and angular top speed bump in his zeal to go fast all the way to the finish line. Heat was probably a factor also. He had tons of ripped cloths and onvious road rash filled with gravel. 2 guys pulled over as he hit the ground to assist. So I rolled on… Just a bit after crossing the main highway is a short but super steep abouy a 18-20% hill that every dehydrated, fatigued, glucose starved cyclist is directed to climb to get back to the finish line instead of the original street we alm came out earlier the same morning. I was passing a group of about 7-8 riders when the guy between me and thr right curb stood oit of thr saddle and suddenly lost consciousness and flipped over his bars onto the pavement! Heat Stroke! Myself and a couple of his club mates got him up and walked him over to the shade of a vacant housew front porch and got him laid down on his back and put his feet up. One of his team mates proceeded to pour super ice cold water into the fellas helmet vents putting him into almost seizures, violent shakes, eyes rolling back in his head. I told him to stop and to lightly wet down his chest area. A lady drivng by saw what was happening who happened to have couple of bags of ice in her van, stopped and ran over to us giving them to us. One was placed under his neck and thr team mate proceeded to put the other between his legs in his crotch! I had to intervene again. Another teammate called 911 and we had an ambulance there in about 4 minutes. I left for the ride onwards to the Finish Line only to witness a very short and stocky asian lady on a bike trying to climb that same grade the guy heat stroked on, fall off her bike and injure her ankle. I stopped for moment as 2 others nearby came to her assistance. Her ankle looked ruptured on thr inside and immediately swollen. She insisted she was going to walk the last mile or so to thr line. I rolled on… Came upon dozens of riders stopped… Some seeking shade, some just sitting in thr dirt on the side of the road looking delirious, some laying down on porches trying to stabilize their core temperature overshoots. Absolute carnage… and no ride staff, police, sag support anywhere to be seen in what’s obviously the stretch most likely to cause heat stroke on days like today! And all this is only what I witnessed! There must of been hundreds if not thousands that had these experiences today with no organizer help to be found. I would not be surprised if this event faced a multitude of lawsuits out of todays gross negligence. Theyve out on this event for years over the same courses. Theyve done so in all kinds of weather and conditions. They would know lucidly where all the problem spots exist and have tsken measures to fix them by any means necessary. They didnt! They took the registration money and hid behjnd liability wavers! I’ve been in a ton of races and quite a few organized rides in various regions of the US and Europe and never seen negligence on this scale before! I will find a way to get a copy of this recap to the organizers of this event. Maybe they will do the right things and make this event reasonably safe? So this is what my instincts or intuition was trying to tell me was the energy pattern I was riding into today. Trust Your Soul… Its the most loyal and honest and longest existing friend you’ll ever have. 👁️🧠🔍🦶🏽🦵🏾🫁❤️‍🔥🚴🏾☀️⛰️🧬🥭🐲🔥🙏🏾🌻🙃👍🏾🫡✌🏾