Originally Posted by bigbossman

Today Rich and I took a shot at a local organized ride, The Canyon Classic, which starts and finishes in the town of Patterson, Ca. This is a Central Valley town, and this time of the year it is usually dry and pretty warm. We had the intention of doing a variant of the ride - up and back to the top of Mt Hamilton, for a total of ~85 miles or so. Turns out, it was an overly-ambitious plan, and we we ran short of both the time and energy to be successful.

No worries, though - we still ended up with 60 miles and about 4400' of climbing, and the weather was unseasonably cool. It is not uncommon for temps in the inner canyons to hover close to or just over triple digits, but today I doubt if it went past 75-76 degrees. That bit of good fortune came as a bit of a cost though, with a rain squall and some random gusty wind here and there. Unsettled weather for the most part, but on the whole pleasant.

As usual, Rich and I had a very good time and enjoyed a fine ride in the California rural environment.