Van Exchanges - sometimes like finding a needle a very annoying needle

Most of the Van exchanges that Van 2 witnessed were not too bad to get to. Then there was Exchange #5. Which started innocently enough disguised as a nice little drive through the mountains and ended as the never ending winding ride. Props to Mark for getting Van 2 to our destination while maintaining Sanity and to his copilot Robyn who expertly handled the garmin GPS and the TOM TOM to save the day!

So, we left the canada college in the quiet region of Redwood City. After handing the running reigns over to Van 1 we decided to start the trek to the next van relay and get some sleep and eat whatever they had there. We followed the instructions and could not find Highway 35 (Skyline Blvd). We drove for a little while and ended back where we started.

We asked some people sweeping outside the store where Skyline Blvd was and they just looked at us and shrugged. Perplexed, Mark entered the store and inquired. They directed us down the way we had just adventured. Hmm, maybe we missed it, so it turns out that the instructions failed to mention a step about following HWY 85.

So, we are now on the right track, we figure, OK, we should be there before long... The road was the windiest thing ever invented. about 13 miles of the winding road seemed closer to 100. After this turn was another and then another and then....

So we finally popped out on a somewhat non windy part of the road and we thought wow, we have to be close, nope, another 20 or so minutes and we finally end up at the van exchange and then found out that there was not any place to eat. Luckily, we had an huge supply of Peanut Butter and Bread. So our 2nd Breakfast of the race consisted of Peanut Butter sandwiches and granola bars. Not quite the pancakes or the awesome breakfast from the day before. But that is the way to rough it!

After the grub, some of the members napped while the rest of us mulled around, checked out the area, and found out that we had no Internet Service. So no updates came at that time.

The cops at the leg 30 exchange were very picky about your tires being completly off the road. We later heard that van 1 actually got a ticket for the tires being just inside the white line.