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.

It’s the Governator!

[Previously: the California budget crisis threatened our beloved Henry Coe with closure. We were pissed and wrote our state congressmen, we wrote the Governator.]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about funding for our State Parks system in the 2008-09 Fiscal Year. I appreciate hearing from fellow Californians during this difficult budget year.

California’s natural beauty is renowned throughout the world, and I have made it my priority to protect our environment so future generations of Californians can continue to experience and enjoy what we have all come to love. Our state parks provide a fantastic introduction for each of these generations to the California experience and help to bring our residents and visitors closer to our landscapes.

I heard your concerns when I submitted my first budget proposal in January, and I’m happy to write you today to inform you that the May Revision of my budget restores funding for the California Department of Parks and Recreation - keeping all of our 278 State Parks open and our State Beaches fully staffed with seasonal lifeguards. My revised budget proposal will provide $11.8 million from the General Fund and $1.5 million from increased State Park fees to keep our parks open. The fee increases will range from $1 to $2 at selected parks.

While State Parks funding has been restored, the long-term budget problems that threatened our parks still exist. Due to our dysfunctional budget system, we are still facing a $17.2 billion shortfall, despite the progress my partners in the Legislature and I have made to reduce this deficit.

Our budget problems aren’t new. For too long, people have been on a constant roller coaster ride - never knowing how much funding they’ll receive from one year to the next. We have to put an end to this feast-or-famine budget cycle that threatens funding not just for State Parks but for education, law enforcement, human services and other programs. Because of this, long term budget reform is a central point of my budget proposal. We will stabilize our budget system by establishing a rainy-day fund, so that in good years we put money aside to be used in bad years like this one, and we will also give the Legislature authority to make mid-year cuts more swiftly.

To jump-start budget reform, my revised budget proposal will get more value out of an underperforming state asset - the California Lottery. We will modernize the Lottery to boost performance and returns and gain the capital we need to establish our much-needed rainy-day fund.

As I work to finalize the budget, please know that your thoughts are important to me. By working together, we will be able to turn this temporary problem into a permanent victory for all Californians.

Sincerely,

Arnold Schwarzenegger

This is great news. Though I doubt calling the Lottery to our rescue will do much in the long term (Prop. 13 anyone?), at least Coe and the other parks will remain open. Surely not all is hunky dory, but I’ll take it.

So I finally created this place for all the bike stuff I want to write about. It’s called Canyon Fever.

It’s a place for stuff I didn’t want to bore folks with here anymore, and which isn’t really relevant here.

I like all kinds of bikes and enjoy riding them all, so expect to hear of road bikes, mountain bikes, motorbikes, cyclocross bikes, commuter bikes, cruiser bikes, unicycles (ok maybe not so much about the latter), bike adventures, bike races…

My first task: collect my online cycling reading material and shove it here in one of the sidebars. Meanwhile, keep of course checking out MTBGuru. We have a lot of plans, and little time, but some cool new features are slowly but steadily materializing!