…with a new ride, sore back and expecting unpleasantly toasty temperatures.

The bike is awesome, more about that in later posts, below another teaser pic. I’m taking a bit of a risk doing such a long ride with it immediately - nothing like an imperial century on dirt to break in a new bike! But last weekend I took it to far more technical terrain than what we can expect in the Tahoe Sierra 100 and it held up perfectly (after tightening up things here and there). And it feels so damn fast - maybe I should call it the ‘Red Rocket’ (now if only I could ride it real fast, but that’s another topic).

Tylenol should take care of the sore back (a bruised vertebra? old age? my entire lower right side and leg are acting up these days). I’m kinda dreading the heat though, my frail Northern European constitution is more set up for cold. Anyhow, my goal is just to finish it, preferably way before darkness falls… it should be good masochistic fun!

…with my summer garage project. More to come soon.

As soon as the snow melts, the high country awakens and goes into full bloom – elevation dictates when things take off. Ride Tahoe early in the season, and it feels like the clock has been set back a few months. It’s spring and wildflower time all over again: seas of sunflowers, lupine fields, the occasional Indian paintbrush, snowplants and dozens of other species are all over the place.

And the riding is pretty fantastic too, of course. (Stanford Rock!, TRT!)

The big lake is stunning in its beauty as always.

More…

This weekend: to Downieville or not to Downieville?

In favor: fantastic trails, lotsa climbing and technical descents. Rugged and tough riding, serious dirt.  Entertainment in town. Chance to check out Lopes, Weir and co.

Against: probably will be hotter than hell on that exposed fireroad climb. Four hour drive one way.

Conclusion: We’ll See. Meanwhile, I keep myself busy armchair racing by checking out the updates and reports on these amazing Great Divide races. Or, daydream about riding Kodiak Island… after seeing this thread on mtbr, I so want to go there.

First, it was the great Lick Fire. Then came the California budget crisis. And now, behold the third coming of the Monster that Wants to Eat Coe: Assembly Bill 2923.

This is a bill that intends to turn a number of state lands in California into designated wilderness area. We have nothing against creating new wilderness areas, au contraire, but it is ludicrous to apply this to places such as Henry Coe, Cache Creek and the likes, where it is merely a thinly veiled euphemism for a ‘let’s kick bike riders out’ policy change.

I can’t even start to stress how braindead it is to include a place like Coe in this bill, where mountain bikers live in near-perfect harmony with hikers, equestrians and rangers and where, given the size of the park and the range of mountain bikes, riders are the ideal stewards of the land. A place so big you can ride all day and all night, that fosters a crowd of die-hard fans, trailworkers and regular visitors; yet so close to a major urban area. I can’t imagine a better example of proper and responsible use of state lands.

IMBA recommends to take action and write/fax/bug our state representatives. We’re doing so and urge you to do the same. Write some lines expressing ‘you’re out of your mind to even consider this and I will never ever vote again for you if you allow this to get through’, but much, much more politely; here’s a sample letter from Passion Trail Bikes (warning: .doc file link).

Remember last week’s thunderstorms? Well, the lightning accompanying those mostly dry storms has set off a thousand wildfires in the state. Fire season isn’t even supposed to really take off until late summer, so we may be in store for something this year. Check out the satellite pic:this time of the year, you’d only expect to see the bright white stuff near the coast, our charming California coastal fog.

Now, it feels like we’re hanging out in one giant smoky bar. Air quality not quite approaching the Great London Smog ‘52 levels but going in that direction. The Western States 100 even got cancelled. I’m still going for a ride; hanging out in a smoky bar once and a while shouldn’t kill you, should it?

Sunday’s ride was an eco-friendly peak bagging trip. Eco-friendly because (almost) no gas was burnt for this trip, as we took off from the Ayatola’s house. And peak bagging because we intended to reach and follow the ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains, and summit Borel Hill in Russian Ridge as well as the Black Mountain in Monte Bello preserve.

This implied though climbing Table Mountain followed by Charcoal road, aka the Highway from Hell. Once on the ridge the knowledge that we had a looong descent waiting for us at the very end was rather comforting.

Mileage turned out to be 39.9… we didn’t feel the need to round it off this time; 5600 feet of climbing or so. I’m now wondering now whether a 10K variation of this route is possible, at least with a minimum of added road miles – we’d need to hit all trails up there, and also include the Fremont Older stuff, that could do the job…

It’s been scorching hot here the past few days (and no, nobody has airco in their homes). But saturday mornings beg for a ride, so we took the road bikes out, for a rolling-but-gentle ride down Uvas road and reservoir, after which we’d cut over Willow Springs and head back along Santa Teresa Blvd. On a road bike, with faster speeds and more cooling, the heat bothers us less, such was the thinking. But this thinking proved to be rather erroneous. South San Jose was blistering; we were cooking; the aero bars on my handlebar became too hot to touch.

The screenshot from the Merc above can attest: if it’s even 97F in Half Moon Bay, it is truly hot in the Bay Area.

Now what are the odds to run into a substantial downpour on one of the first days of summer in the South Bay? Close to nada. But while we were trotting along on Santa Teresa, we got a great gift from the sky. A heat thunderstorm, rarer here than cheap gas, had developed and it started pouring down. I never suspected ten minutes of cold rain could feel so great.

aka, the “We’ll Sleep When We’re Dead 10K”.

A warm and very short night, the impending summer solstice, a 3/4 full moon: the stars where aligned to call this ride – it was time for an epic Coe night ride.

Jeff, Jim and I found ourselves around 10pm on the Hunting Hollow parking lot. Jeff being Jeff, I knew we would be in for a long, tough one, with some good fortune possibly a 10K, and definitely including lots of screaming singletrack descents.

We headed to Anza-Jackson, started to make our way up and were soon subject to the all-too-familiar pain of the loose upper Anza steeps. Jim took a bit of a spill and unfortunately hit his knee against a rock; after the fun Elderberry – Rock Tower – Cattle Duster intermezzo his knee started to give him real trouble and he decided to head home along Grapevine.

Too bad, as it was a surprisingly warm and beautiful night – the entire night it was genuine short sleeve weather, with no wind and a near full moon that had an amazing bloody red hue to it, its light filtered by the smoke clouds of the recent Martin fire in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Jeff and I continued to Headquarters, dodging big and rather lethargic toads on Mahoney Meadows, descending into China Hole and then climbing back up. I had been screwing around with my Camelback – first I lost a valve (and some water), luckily was able to retrieve it, and then at Manzanita point I managed to lose half of its contents by not properly fixing the cover. So we made a short excursion up to HQ to refill, and managed to scare some campers out there with our headlights while we were fumbling around trying to find our way. Sorry campers!

Now it was time for some serious fun: Flat Frog and Middle Ridge, the crowd’s favorites! Middle Ridge was awesome as always, with a great spooky quality to it doing it in the 3AM darkness – Jeff took a spill in one one of the loose corners, without too much damage, and all too quickly we found ourselves at Poverty Flat.

Up to that point I’d been feeling pretty decent, though being out of shape by not having done real hard rides in a while. But whatever energy I still had in me, Poverty ‘Flat’ was quick to drain all of it. It was particulary loose and difficult this time, and I semi-jokingly suggested to Jeff that I’d take a nap at the intersection with Jackass, and would wait for the trailworkers who’d show up in the morning to help them out a little (and hitch a ride).

We carried on, using a section of the Narrows (or Willow Ridge?) to cut off at least one of those Walls of Terror on Poverty Flat. The climb on Lost Springs trail then finished off Poverty Flat’s job and got me spent. From here on I ended up in crawl-home mode; Jeff was an animal and probably could have handled Cross Canyon without any trouble, but it wasn’t for me tonight so we took the road towards Tule Pond.

The sun was coming out this time and it was a gorgeous morning with red painted fog clouds near the horizon.

This beautiful sight and and the thrill ride down Tule Pond must have somewhat revitalized me as I didn’t blank out entirely during the traditionally grueling climb on Serpentine – I took it real slow though but managed to enjoy watching the fog clouds rolling into the valleys below.

Middle Steer was the shot of adrenaline we needed to wake us up, a fantastic ridge-hugging descent, and Jeff was pondering how amazing life would be when you’d get to do this as your morning commute every day.

At the bottom of Middle Steer we found ourselves within minutes of the parking lot, but we weren’t quite done yet: too early to go home! I had saved my last bit of turkey advocado sandwich for what was to come: the Hike of Horrors known as Jim Donnelly. This 1200ft-of-elevation-in-1 mile affair sucked my soul, as well as my GPS’s battery (had to do some stitching at home with an older track to fix the track). But the mind works wonders, and once it was done and over with, you could only conclude that it wasn’t too bad. In particular, since we knew Spike Jones / Timm trail was next – most likely the best and most exciting way to end a Coe ride.

I washed out in one of the final loose steep switchbacks on Timm, and just managed to avoid landing in a bush of poison oak. Rolling back into the parking lot, I found myself having some muscle coordination issues, nothing that couldn’t be fixed though by Jeff’s awesome Bloody Mary with Muffins breakfast!

Well, it doesn’t seem to rain here anymore in California, but anyway. Here are some cycling related goodies in my bookmarks and/or feed reader:

• the forums on MTBR, always a good source of information and entertainment; use with the appropriate noise filters and you’ll be able to find out about some amazing stuff, such as this mountainbike-rafting adventure in Alaska.
• 2 epic: when I grow up I wanna be like Dave H and Lynda W… or something; riding incredible epics, trailblazing through Utah desertscapes. More endurance/adventure/long ride tales can a.o. be found at Matt’s (I wish I could hop over to Durango once and a while), at the Soiled Chamois and at Scott (Mr. Topofusion)’s site; ideal stuff to read and get all envious about when you’re not able to ride (like, when doing non-cycling work, or when in bed with the flu).
• Mountain bike video footage… often time only watchable if you star in it yourself (and then some), but there are exceptions: Pete Fagerlin’s videos/helmet cam footage and photos are consistently superb, and the material on Steve Wolf’s and MTB Bill’s sites is more than worth checking out as well. Also, good maps and trail info can be found on the latter two. The Ogre has a lot of that too, and is required reading if you want to find remote or obscure but excellent riding spots in California.
• Phil Ingle from Alpine Break and the guys from AlpSun, all Brits in the French Alps, have been posting some gorgeous-looking bike trips in the Alps on MTBGuru; I was lucky enough to do a few last year, and now I just want to go back.
• Now some pavement bike related links (as I like all kinds of bikes): Ken from Spare Cycles shoots great photos (mostly of road races) and posts an abundance of them on his site for everyone to enjoy; being a fellow Bay Area local, mainly of races in the US; we should get him somehow to hang out in Flanders in April (the Classics!) and in France in July (the Tour!). Steephill.tv provides a pretty interesting aggregation of cycling news and links. And I can’t leave out Belgium Knee Warmers of course: good stuff.