Our first ADA Tour de Cure experience in Northern California will stand out above all other events for a long, long time.  Never had we been placed at the helm of an event that soon became engulfed in a serious storm putting so many people at risk.  Before we could get everyone stationed on the course, the weather began to pelt the participants with sheets of rain and howling winds.  Temperatures dropped quickly and our radio frequency began to clog with traffic.  Under good conditions, we knew keeping our cross-band links across the mountain ridge would be difficult, but when the weather closed in with its building thunderstorms, I knew we were in for a battle against time, hypothermia and electronic gear survival.

Sunday’s event began like most others here in northern California.  Almost always at this time of the year we have an early morning overcast that is usually a temporary marine layer.  On most days the cloud cover burns off by 10:00 AM, and the Sun begins to warm the air drying the mountain roads hidden under the thick stands of trees.  By noon, temperatures are warm and the day fills with sunshine.  However, that morning when the overcast began to thicken and the daylight improved our vision, concern grew that maybe the storm scheduled for a Monday delivery would appear sooner.

Around 8:30 AM a second group of riders leave staging and head out into a light drizzle with moderate winds.  An hour later the last group of riders leave on the short course in stiffer winds and moderate rain.  We now have around 250 riders on the three courses peddling their way away from safety into a storm that is so out of character for our area at this time of year, that nobody believes for a minute that we would be engulfed in the ravages of a howling monsoon by noon. 

As riders progressed, weather sounds build in tempo as if the weather is racing the riders so it can do its nasty best before anyone can finish.  Winds at net control are gusting, forcing everything on the table to need a fast hand to curb a willingness to sail.  Our wonderful Honda generator is humming quietly under a tree in what was a good location during setup, but rain is forcing us to find a new location before long.  Under most conditions, a whisper quiet 110-volt generator increases the range of what is possible for communications in net control.  However, generators aren’t the best choice when your feet and those around you are getting soaked.  As the mist turns to rain, it is a clear signal to get the wires off the ground and do something fast to protect the generator’s power from finding ground. 

A quick QST broadcast is released as net control is temporarily taken off the air while we relocate the Honda. Within moments the generator is behind the table, off the ground, under the canopy and running.  Even still a large golf umbrella is needed to block water flying sideways.  These quick changes give us a way to stay off of battery power for the remainder of the event.  We had the means to move to battery power, but that would have meant a longer interruption and limited operating time for a communications situation where there wasn’t enough time, people or bandwidth to handle all the traffic cramming into the radio.

Out on the course our teams of motors are struggling to stay on the road and on the air.  Early in the event Warren Birmingham, K6PHW, is dispatched with Jim McMann, KF6WOR, Relay-1 control operator to establish our first relay position.  This location will relay signals across the mountain ridge from the southern and Pacific side of the course.  As Warren stands near Jim’s van holding a mast mounted "J-Pole" antenna for Jim, he prophetically remarks that he feels like "King Neptune".  Little did he know how on target he would be when we later here him report, "glug, glug..." as one of his last messages before his radio gear washed away any further thoughts of working.

As our event continued its slide into the ocean, other motors began collecting names and places of where bicycle riders are trying to hide from the pounding water and wind that is hitting almost everyone now.  As the list of stranded people grows, the list of available SAG wagons shrink, and before long we are asking event participants coming back in SAGs to go out in their vehicles and help us retrieve whomever they can find to help.  Through out the remainder of the event, SAGs are arriving, dropping passengers and leaving again to collect more people.  SAG drivers, Sandy Pacheco KG6HHP, Gordon KR6AE and Heather KG6IOI, Owen DeLong KB6MER are arriving and departing in what seems like a planned schedule.  All these SAGs lacked were a ship’s bell to announce their arrival at dock.

Collecting riders as quickly as they are requesting help is becoming an impossible goal because so many of them are giving up as the torrents of rain, and in some places hail that doesn’t let up.  Roads are greasy with floating emulsion, flowing water and mud from the sides of canyons.  Leaves and branches are everywhere on the narrow canyon roads where landslides are common and beginning to be noticeable.   Getting to riders in these areas becomes more difficult than usual as everyone is showing signs of being tired and frustrated with how difficult communications have become.  Our radios are quickly becoming useless as the stress of drenched motors increases, wet leaves attenuate signals, and weather demands swamp our capacities. 

Plaguing our communications is a repeater linking delay that keeps chopping off the first part of what most people say.  In net control we are struggling to hear and understand what is being said.  It seem as if everyone is talking at the same time making me think of when I was a DX target on the island of St Pierre as FP0EE.  During that Dxpedition, sorting out calls in the pile up was easier than this, and we ended up sending out over 3,000 QSL cards from that adventure.  Our communication situation needed a lot of understanding by everyone as we reminded ourselves that it is getting harder to remember to wait for the link and to wait for an opening.  Clearly those on the Pacific side of the mountain need us to bring them home.

As the crescendo of signals to net control increases, it is apparent they can’t be handled fast enough with our small three person crew.  Our capacity to deal with request overloaded us early on as request for help appear faster than we can write them down, or even instruct someone to take action.  Some place in all the confusion, I remember begging an ADA organizer to ask the bicyclist to help us SAG riders back.  As help appears, it begins to make a difference in getting the tide turned, but the confusion that is escalating is becoming laughable and tense. 

Adding to the confusion and tension are request to look for friends not returned.  These request are a needless chore for net control because we are already trying to bring back everyone we can find, still we acknowledge the need and go back to work. 

It is easy to see how stress clouds our ability to respond to the radio and sometimes to the cell phone ringing like crazy.  At one point, our net control area is stuffed with so many chattering people that it isn’t possible to hear the radio, or even each other.  One woman goes beside herself as she berates us to tell her what we did with her husband.  He was an event participant who left two hours earlier in their van to bring riders back.

This weather fiasco created situations where people assigned to pickup in one location would go to another because they got lost and didn’t know how to solve their dilemma.  When lost SAG wagons began showing up where bicyclist were waiting for help, they would return with the riders, but without net control knowing the pick up happened, other vehicles were dispatched to these locations only to find nobody waiting at the assigned place.  This was compounding our issues because those waiting for the earlier lost vehicles, were now feeling abandoned and scared.  Did I say this is crazy making?

Four hours into our battle with Neptune, hypothermia is becoming a risk for our motors and riders still out on the course.  Motors who showed signs of distress, or had trouble with their radios are asked to return to net control, or go home.  As this message is acknowledged, it is a welcomed signal from motors as they drip their way into net control’s area.  Warren K6PHW is streaming water from inside his jacket.  Larry McDonald, K6ACE, has blue colored hands and a bright red face.  David Sawyer, K1DRS, dressed only in a light leather jacket looked way past drowned and dripped everywhere.  Don Weber, KA7QQV, had a good coat for protection, but is very cold, tired, wet and complaining about the event sign pink stains on his white GoldWing.  The stain on the trunk looks like a large kiss.  Motors that had chaps on probably found them three sizes too small now that they are dried out. 

On the short course is Don Younker, WA6JNM, who leaves a trail of water behind as he came and went from net control.  In one situation, we send Don Younker out to find the husband of a woman circling net control for the last half hour.  It seems she left her husband with a flat tire so she could get the car and go back and get him.  Only problem is he has the car keys, and she needs Don to go get them.  Don agrees to go find the husband and get the keys.  Before long Don reports the man isn’t where he was last reported even though he knew he was coming.  He is missing because he flags down Sandy in her SAG to take him back while Don is still looking.  Oh, what fun it must be to chase someone who isn’t there while pondering how to get a radio to work better under water. 

Reports of steam billowing up off hot engines became a regular statement as motors who still had working radios told us they were having trouble seeing their windshields and roads because of the thick clouds and rain.   Rest Stops are operating from inside of cars as bicyclist arrived at the designated respites, turned public baths under the wave of crashing water deep in the woods.   In most events, a handful of SAG wagons are all that are needed to pickup the unfortunate few riders who experience problems with tires, hardware, or inflated ability.  On this day, we had a stream of vehicles on the road and most didn’t have a ham radio and even still, this wasn’t enough SAGs.  Still, the effort of slogging through the thick of it until everyone missing is found is accomplished. 

Around 3:00 PM, everyone we can find is back at the finish line where they are reporting how appreciative they are about not being abandoned on the course.  In a brief note from the ADA the day after, they tell us how amazed they were with our ability to operate under such difficult circumstance and stress, and how happy that we were there to help them through a very difficult day.

Communications didn’t work well that day and cell service isn’t available on most of the Pacific side of the mountain.  On the bay side, cell phone calls were the best way around the radio clutter that appeared and were used by many to get their needs met.  With a person on the radio, it allowed another person to handle the cell phone. 

When the weather turned our event into a circus, we really needed to have more than one way of handling traffic.  One microphone to only one repeater certainly limited our capacity.  If we do this event next year, we must find an alternative to having just one repeater connect us across the mountain.  In addition, we probably need a way to handle emergency traffic only.  There was only one injury accident on this event and that tumble occurred on the road about 700 feet from net control.  The radio had become so cluttered with calls for pick ups that had there been an emergency, I don’t know if it could have made it through the pile up.

Our team of 23 ham volunteers was truly amazing in so many respects.  First of all, they slugged it out against difficult condition without retreating from a storm that was later reported to spawn 5 tornados touchdowns.  Second, they never abandoned the riders and nobody lost their sense of humor during the height of the insanity.

To remember and to acknowledge those going above and beyond are the following: