UmneyDurak

I did RR by Holister, damn I am fat and out of shape.

JourneyLightly

Panoche, right? I did that too. Ouch. That course goes through some interesting scenery, but I only know that from riding the course earlier in the week. I didn't see anything during the actual race except the pavement and the other racers.

UmneyDurak

Yeah thats the one. I am sure it does, but between trying to hang on, catch up and going in to brutal headwind I wouldn't know. I do know the roads are craptastic, even by CA standards. lol I guess someone crashed pretty badly with 5k to go, and had to be air lifted. Bunch of riders, including me, ended up waiting for them to restart it. Sure was interesting last 5k.

obiwan kenobi

65 miles with 4800 feet of elevation gain, Ione, Plymouth, Fiddle Town, Volcano, Sutter Creek to Ione.

https://connect.garmin.com/activity/34987738

acaurora

Interesting. I've been around in the Ione / Volcano area with a few others. Is a very pretty (and hilly) area...

obiwan kenobi

Interesting how?

acaurora

I just meant that I've ridden around the area, nothing in particular about your ride.

BenRidin

On Saturday, my friend and I completed our 3rd self supported century of the month. This time, we left Livermore, headed over Tesla, made our way down to Patterson, up Del Puerto, and back via Mines Rd.

The first 50 miles we had a nice tailwind. Descending down Mines we were met w/ a fierce headwind and idiots on their flippin' rice rockets.

Good times.

BR

UmneyDurak

Can't we all just get along?

obiwan kenobi

So I missed yesterday days ride due to a sick child so myself and 2 others from the club headed up from the south gate today. I made it to the ranger station 20 minutes before they did and sat around, I should have just continued to the summit but, since it was my first time up I was unsure of the directions. Not too many tourists going up but they were out in full force coming down, crossing the double yellow line in order to be the first to the top.

https://connect.garmin.com/activity/35258470

alfredo

Sunday: 32 mile ride along the ARBT to the Jazz fest in Old Sac.

Red Rider

I've been dealing with the flu since Thurs. night. Not the weekend I anticipated.

Today we took the tandem and rode to Winters, hoping to have a cold drink at Steady Eddy's. We were an hour after the closed, so we cruised the streets and went back the way we came. 23 flat miles with headwind/tailwind. Then we rode to the market for fixin's for dinner. I guess we had 28 non-demanding miles...which is better than no miles at all.

bikingshearer 

For the last tune-up before the Mendicino Monster, the Merrie Pranksters (bigbossman, LanceOldstong, Midland, and moi) +1 (Collin, who has qa BF handle but I have no idea what it is) got together Saturday for some Fun in the Sun. We were going to meet at my friend's house in Martinez and do some variation of the Bencia Bridge-Carquinez Straits Bridge loop, but my friend decided that family obligations were more important than a mere bike ride.

Lance wanted to go about 143.27 miles of Mt. Diablo repeats as a warm-up before doing Morgan Territory, the backside of Patterson Pass and Mt. Hamilton before lunch, but cooler heads prevailed. Instead, we gathered at BBM's in San Ramon and headed off to Sunol and thence along Calaveras to where going any further means falling off a cliff into Milpitas (talk about your double-whammy). It was a warm but not hot day with just enough breeze to be refreshing. As usual, the comedy and insults flew thick and fast, and for the most part were politically incorrect, NSFW and grounds for divorce in most states and for summary execution in Berkeley.

The highlights:

-- Meeting a woman on a round-the-world bike odyssey. It would have been even more impressive if she hadn't started from Oakand the day before. I am not making this up.

-- The bald eagle nest in a power line tower 100 yards off Calaveras Road.

-- The large raptor-type bird that swooped 10 to 20 feet over my head (I think it was a bald eagle heading back to the nest, but I cannot be sure and, of course, no one else was with me at the time).

-- Lunch in Sunol, featuring good eats, a Meg Tilly look- and sound-alike waitress and a chef named "Frenchy" who treated us to dessert (a good tiramisu and a killer chocolate mousse-cake-type thing).

-- Discovering that there is no shortage of silicone in Sunol, at least on sunny Saturday afternoons. The phrase "anatomically impossible" leapt to mind. One woman in particular made Lara Craft look pre-pubescent. Unfortunately, a few seconds of conversation revealed that she also lived down to the "bimbo" stereotype. (Color me strange, but I find "smart" to be much sexier that "buxom." Not that I have anything against buxom, mind you . . . .)

-- Dan getting 25 miles more than the rest of us by (a) riding from Concord to BBM's house by way of Mt Diablo and (b) more or less riding circles around us. Oh, and he rode down the Calaveras Wall and back up it, just for gits and shiggles. (Midland did, too, but his main purpose was to induce vomiting.)

-- Collin proving himself our equal or better at insulting comedic repartee. That boy has Mad Skillz in that department.

-- Collin proving himself to be a liar par excellence. He claimed to be out of shape and not ready for 60 miles. If that was "out of shape," Collin, I'd hate to see what your mid-season form is like. Also, he demonstrated an ability to accellerate like he was shot from a cannon, a quality first observed when he decided not to stay where an SUV was trying to go at the overpass over I-580. Jeez, that guy can haul @ss when the mood strikes.

-- Midland is a man of exquisite discretion. He took and eleventy-million photos, but had the good sense not to post any here that included images of any of us.

60 miles on the nose (except for Dan, who ended up with something like 95) and 4,000 feet of climbing, give or take. Tons of fun. Y'all missed out.

gpelpel

I am pretty sure I saw Dan going down the South Side of Diablo as I was climbing, probably on his way to meet you guys.
Sounds you had a fun ride.

Lanceoldstrong

Garmin/Transitions jersey with the white, blue and orange argyle, about 9:15 AM? Yup, that was me. Hauling butt to make a 10AM meet up.

gpelpel

Yup, that's you I saw, just below the ranger station. I said "Hi Daniel" but you were already down a dozen yards.

Ygduf

That's a good portion of the DMD route, but to Ham it's only 135 miles (though you do also have to climb Mines Road).

cccorlew

I've been so lazy with my blog and posting rides that I need to post here.
MyLilPony and I went to a weeding at Saratoga Springs, north of Clearlake, near Lakeport We took the road bikes and managed to sneak in almost 30 two days in a row.
Perfect weather! Low traffic! Delightful roads! I'd love to do a long ride up there.

Beaker

I put in a ~50mile, 4400ft ride with the irrepressible brentley on Memorial Day - 3Bears in reverse, Wildcat, Spruce, Tunnel and Pinehurst. Normally no big shakes. However, having been off the bike for the best part of a month due to being out of the country, that one hurt a little more than it should have. Clearly need more miles. Also finally pinned down that my right pedal spindle seems to be a little loose (likely the source of my WCC ticking) but <3yrs wear for my Keo Sprints**********

gpelpel

That's why we were deprived of the Beaker Beats in the last few weeks. Glad to have you back. Hey, it's time to kick the Death Ride prep a notch! ... a Diablo triple in the plans?

silentben

Click for bigger

I slept in late and didn't hit the road until after 1:00pm but still managed to get a decent ride in and a lot of new (to me) roads.

The first new road was to cut off of Old Santa Cruz highway and climb through Redwood Estates. There's a whole little community tucked away up there that I never really new about. Also the roads are really steep! I eventually hit Summit Rd (which was my plan) not because the signs made it obvious how to get there but because I just kept pointing the bike uphill.

Then I took Summit southbound and turned right on Morrell cutoff which is a shortcut to Soquel San Jose Rd. It may be a shorter distance but I think it is slower. The pavement quickly turns from bad to horrible and I was on the brakes the whole way down. The road eventually bottomed out at a stream crossing and then climbed back up a couple hundred feet.

The next new road was N. Rodeo Gulch. This was kind of boring at first but the northern half was really nice. It passes through a hidden little valley with a few farms/ranches before climbing out and up to the top of a ridge and then dropping back down again.

Then Branciforte Rd, past the Mystery Spot, and Glen Canyon Rd to Scotts Valley where I stopped at a gas station for chips and a cold drink. Up until this point I had been drinking a concentrated bottle of Hammer perpetuem and following that up with plain water. I do believe that Perpetuem is good stuff but I just can't handle the concentrated "multi-hour" bottles when it's 80 degrees outside. Completely unpalatable so I'll have to figure out another solution for the future.

Next I headed over to Felton and tried in vain to take a shortcut up to Empire Grade. My plan was to do a loop of Smith Grade, Bonny Doon, and Ice Cream Grade roads but my shortcut didn't pan out. It seems that Felton Quarry Rd is private complete with gate and scary signs.

So with that plan shot down I had to come up with an alternate and I decided to visit Loch Lomond. So I headed the short distance to the base of E. Zayante and started heading up it. Since this was a "shake everything up" ride I got super daring and even crossed over the creek to West Zayante for a couple miles before making the left turn on Lompico Rd.

Lompico Rd is in a deep canyon yet relatively flat. Today it was very cool which was nice and relaxing. As you go deeper into the canyon there become more and more rustic houses built into the hillsides. It's pretty but I can't imagine wanting to live there since it seems so far out in the boonies. I went all the way to the end of Lompico Rd and turned around before taking the cutoff road to Loch Lomond.

In order to get to the lake you have to climb about 500' up out of the canyon, cross a saddle point, and then drop 400' down the other side. The initial climb was super steep but luckily the road on the lake side seemed to have been graded more conservatively.

I got another cold drink and some almonds at the store at the lake. Then I did a big no-no. I walked down to the lake surface and TOUCHED THE WATER! I splashed some on my face and arms which felt superb. But then I heard some rangers talking to each other and it took my tired brain a few seconds to realize they were talking about me.

Ranger 1: What's he doing (aghast sounding voice)
Ranger 2: He just rode his bike here, he doesn't know

Well ranger 1 walked very quickly in my direction and explained that touching the water was Strictly Forbidden as it is part of the drinking water supply. I found it a bit odd that they rent pedal boats there and people were taking those out on top of the water. Just no touching of the water is allowed.

So I apologized and went on my way. I had just climbed E. Zayante fairly recently so I didn't want to repeat that just on general principle and decided to take Bear Creek instead. I got to the base of Bear Creek via Quail Hollow and Glen Arbor roads, both new to me. On Glen Arbor a pack of thugs on motorcycles passed me and one of them blipped the throttle in my ear. How mature. I saw them just dismounting their bikes at a bar a couple miles up the road and glared.

The Bear Creek climb was a slog because I was pretty tired. Once I got near the top the views of Monterey Bay were amazing though. Screaming descent down the other side of Bear Creek and then the dirt trail home.

Stats were around 92 miles, 8000' and about 6:25 moving time and 7:00 total time. This was a Terrible Two prep ride and I learned some valuable stuff. First, I need one more long hard ride like this. Second, no more "multi-hour" bottles of Perpetuem. I will bring pre-measured baggies in the future and use those to create normal strength bottles (hopefully with cold water!)

toytech

Rode Chabot loop including 10hills Saturday. Unfortunately I crashed on a turn due to my Panaracer Razers not being grippy enough. (they were fine a couple days ago) turns are starting to get blown out from all the riders and loose.
Aside from a very sore shoulder I had a ball.

UmneyDurak

Pacific Grove Butterfly critirum, a gentler version of UCB crit. ha ha. Still a fun course. Good thing they had mechanical support tent and BIG thanks to a couple who gave me a ride to a start after my rear tire got slashed during warm up 5 miles from the race course.

Red Rider

My bike's in the shop so cgallagh and I rode the tandem about 40 fast miles Saturday morning and 27 miles Sunday afternoon at recovery pace. Neither of us has been riding much, and we've both recently had the flu, so we're happy for any kind of rides we get.

Bostic

Saturday I did the three summit Mt. Diablo ride that Ygduf posted about. I brought my steel commuter bike with downtube shifters, the Red Allez that is 22lbs. I spent the majority of the time in the low gear of 38x28. By the third trip (2nd North gate) the heat was getting up there. I stopped at the Ranger station and drenched my head under the fountain for a few minutes and to rest my feet for the last 4 miles up. The bike has spd mountain pedals and my pinky toes were getting numb at that point. The Polar cyclometer showed 69 miles and just under 4000 calories. I wanted to see how much I could suffer. The heavy bike is very comfortable to ride but it can't be thrown about (or up) the road like my other two.

Sunday I brought the 16.5lb carbon bike and did the standard Mt. Tam loop from Sports Basement at Chrissy Fields. 50 miles, 4000' climbing and 1/2 hour faster than the same loop the previous week on the steel bike.