"Drivel"? Nah, I enjoy reading all of these stories. You learn a lot about yourself and others on brevets, and also have a lot of time to sit with that.
My college buddy and I rode the Apple Valley 300k in Minnesota this past weekend. We went into it with some jitters, as this would be his longest ride ever, and I hadn't ridden this far since 2015. We tried to channel that anxiety into our planning, the major focus being on calorie and water intake. If we kept on top of that, we reasoned that we'd be able to finish strong and feel like we could ride even further. Success begets success. So lots of food, definitely too much, made it into our bags along with electrolyte tablets. Stroopwafels, caffeinated energy goos, plastic jars of mandarin oranges, Kind bars, bacon, Chicken In a Biskit crackers, Easy Cheese, kipper snacks... (!) The idea was that you will crave different things along the way, so why not bring a variety?
As with the previous ride, we both had Garmins, but maintained brevet cards just in case. The first 35-40 miles followed the same route as the AV200k we had done the previous month, so we felt especially strong and confident in the beginning. The weather was perfect, too -- 70s/80s with only a mild wind out of the south. I feel like we deserved that after so many ultra-windy days this year. At the 52 mile mark in Goodhue, both employees at the gas station that was the control refused to sign our cards. "I can't, too busy." (Place was dead, BTW.) "We don't sign those anymore." Neither one obviously wanted to be working there, but it was as if I'd asked them to go against their religion or something. I didn't press the issue, but made sure to save that receipt as evidence.
As the ride diverged from the 200k route and went further south, it started to get a lot hillier. We made a point to take it easy on climbs to save energy, and my confidence at coasting on the downhills (never a strength) increased. The hills had me switching chainrings more often, and I noticed that the front derailleur's high limit adjustment was slightly off. Each time I shifted from the small ring to the big ring, I had to trim it back a bit to avoid chain rub. It wasn't a major issue, but I wished I had double-checked the FD adjustment after removing and reinstalling the crank a week before. I contemplated ways to turn the high limit screw in without a proper screwdriver, but decided to just live with it and take care of it when I got home. At the next control town, we stopped for ice cream, which hit the spot.
The car and truck drivers were less deferential here than in the Cities, but still gave plenty of room when passing. Stopping at small town bars for a beer now and then was an interesting study in contrasts, but pretty much everyone we ran into was cool. A few were fascinated by the idea of these long-distance rides, and very supportive.
Somewhere after the 136 mile mark, my Garmin decided to randomly power down and stop recording. Had being jostled around in my handlebar bag caused it to change settings? It always seemed to happen while I was in the midst of a significant downhill, and in no position to futz with gadgets. It wasn't running out of battery -- learning from the 200k, my buddy lent me a battery pack to make sure it was topped off the whole time. After a few stops to restart the thing in the hopes of stitching together a GPS track from multiple pieces, I gave up and turned the thing off. We only had one more control before the end, so I would just plan on getting a signature and a good selfie of us at the finish (the EXIF data would be proof of the time.) Not long after that control, my buddy's Garmin died. We had not been expecting that, and it's what we had been using for navigation! Thankfully, he had downloaded the route to his phone, so we used the dot tracker and memories of the 200k route as we rejoined it to get back to the finish. Good thing we had been filling out our brevet cards, too!
We got back to Caribou Coffee for a time of 18 hours 47 minutes, reflecting a lot of breaks. Being more efficient off the bike will be something to work on, but our goal for this year is just to complete the rides and get (ACP) credit for them. We were over the moon with how well everything went -- no mechanicals or physical issues, we stayed on top of nutrition and hydration so that energy was rarely a problem, the weather cooperated, and we just had a great time hanging out overall.