Some of us
did have a nice ride. And by "some of us," I mean me. All the forecasts I saw said rain was unlikely between 8-ish and 5-ish, and I didn't get the "cancelled" memo, so I was there at 10:00 a.m. at the corner of Edgewood and Canada with my fendered wet-road bike (1978 Eisentraut), wondering where my so-called friends were. (Truth be told, I figured it out pretty quickly.)
When I got to the corner of Willowbrook and Alpine, I turned right instead of left because (1) I'd never been on the part of Alpine and (2) because the entire group - again, consisting of entirely of me - agreed to calling an audible. I rode it to the dead-end. Bee-yoo-tee-full road up a lovely forested canyon with a quite full stream, almost no traffic, and a gentle climb that became a moderate climb until it morphed into a pretty hard climb. What a glorious road! How I've missed it all these years I don't know, but it is definitely on my radar now.
From the park at Portola and Alpine, I headed back via Portola Valley instead of the usual loop because that way is shorter and easier and the group was feeling lazy. It ended up being a 24 mile ride instead of the usual 28 or 29. I'm glad I had the fenders - the roads were pretty wet for the first half of the ride. A surprising number of riders were out (including the inevitable multiple Alto Velo terrorist pelotons blasting along Canada and Portola Valley Road).
Per the usual protocols, here is every bike that made the ride. (That is not a very accurate rendering of the green, at least on my monitor, but you get the idea.)
