Took a few times to get the quality reasonable; the default upload quality was horrible, so I rendered it as a high-quality AVI file, about 1.2 gigs, and uploaded that. Now it’s watchable! You can even select 1080 HQ resolution.
2 hours 47 minutes edited down to 10 minutes that gives you an idea of what this ride is like (“this ride” being Woodside, Old LaHonda, San Gregorio, Tunitas Creek, Kings Mtn, Woodside). –Mike–
OK, actually not winter yet, and it wasn’t all that dark. But it was a bit wet, a bit cold, and that hot shower at the end felt pretty darned good.
I suggested to Kevin that we take it relatively-easy heading up Old LaHonda, thinking something around 25 minutes would be fine today. Uh-uh. Kevin wasn’t at the top of his game, but it was still 22:37, about a minute off the best I could reasonably be expected to do right now. If Kevin hadn’t missed a few rides due to his kidney stone issue, I’m sure it would have been faster.
Kevin’s wishing he was at Stanford instead of Canada as we pass 4 Stanford women cyclists on West Old LaHonda.
Tunitas? Nothing spectacular there. This was one of those rare days where I had better legs, but chose to not take advantage of that. The most-challenging part of the ride was the Kings Mtn Descent. Cold & wet!
Maybe the last really perfect weekend day to ride, so you’d think a long hard ride to the coast would be in order. Nope. Kevin got another kidney stone (a painful by-product of his epilepsy meds) so it was almost 2pm by the time I got out on the bike. Instead of a quick run to Skyline I opted for a full-speed run through the foothills, with a detour (decided on the fly) up the infamous “Walking” Joaquin in Portola Valley.
Thankfully I did get a few Strava “accomplishments” for this ride. If I was only going to ride 35 miles, I was determined it was going to be a hard 35 miles. I was actually getting a bit tired by the time I got to the turn-off for Alpine Road (which Joaquin turns off of, just before Alpine becomes a washed-out dirt road), but came across another guy who’s got two years on me and was pushing pretty hard on the Alpine Road section (he didn’t go up Joaquin but instead turned around at the gate).
Water spraying off Kevin’s rear wheel
The planned ride was a simple concept, really. Head out in the worst storm to hit in a year or so and slog it out to the coast and then back via Tunitas. It sounded like a dumb idea, thus it sounded like something we’d do. Only it took a while getting going this morning (no big surprise there!) and by the time we finally got out, at noon, or was it 1pm?, the sun came out! The roads were soaked, but the skies were gradually clearing up and rain didn’t seem to be in the mix. Nevertheless we were prepared for whatever might come our way, with booties, thermal tights, plastic rain jackets, appropriate gloves and our rain bikes.
Highway 84 closed by downed powerlines
Heading up over Jefferson we came across Michael from our Redwood City store; pure happenstance that he would be riding over Jefferson at exactly the same time we were! He wasn’t up for a 3-4 hour ride though (other commitments) so he rode with us as far as Skyline & 84 before turning back (“us” being myself and Kevin).
A Sheriff blocked us from heading west on 84; there were power lines down just west of Skyline, and mudslides below that. Kevin thinks OK, let’s head north on Skyline then and head home on Kings. What???!!! That would only be about 25 miles and not all that much climbing, and descending Kings when wet? No fun. So I talk him into heading south on Skyline and riding west on Old LaHonda, hoping that would put us below the power line issue (it did) and maybe the mudslide(s) were something we could get around (they weren’t).
Waiting for section of 84 to be cleared of mud
We hit another Sheriff (not literally) about 2 miles east of LaHonda, where a good chunk of the hillside had come down. A grader and skip loader were going to be on the scene for another 40 minutes according to the Sheriff, but it looked like they were going to be done quite a bit sooner than that so we gambled and waited… and won. 12 minutes later and we were on our way, riding gingerly across some pretty slick muck, but thinking back on it, there were a lot of opportunities to lose traction but our bikes didn’t let us down. Well, not Kevin’s bike anyway. Mine? I had to stop several times heading up West Alpine to clear debris out from between my front tire and brake. Kevin wasn’t having such issues; possibly my slightly-wider tire, combined with less clearance on the fork, was causing the trouble. Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to stop on a steep grade.
Cutting up and hauling away a large tree that had closed West Alpine
Oh, right, the ride was supposed to go up Tunitas and now we’re on West Alpine. It sounded like there were too many opportunities for road closures heading to the coast, and who knows what Tunitas might have been like (although truthfully, I was really looking forward to the climb up Tunitas under less-than-ideal conditions). Our timing was good; had we been on West Alpine much earlier, we would have been held up by a large tree that had fallen across the road (which was in the process of being cut up and hauled away as we came through).
The sun makes a strong appearance on West Alpine
The sun reallycame out about halfway up West Alpine, with the clean air providing some of the nicest views of the coastal hills ever. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my “real” camera with me (didn’t want to risk it getting soaked), plus we were chasing the sun and couldn’t spend much more time stopped than we already had. Plus, it was looking not-so-nice up on Skyline, with a heavy fog rapidly moving in. Thankfully, the fog & low clouds lasted only for a short time as we headed north on Skyline. A good thing; even with a pretty good set of flashing tail lights, being up there in the fog isn’t exactly the safest place for a bike to be. I’d even toyed with the idea of heading down Page Mill instead, but that would have added a fair amount of time getting home.
In the end it wasn’t a very long ride (44 miles) or a particularly hilly ride by our standards (4500 ft of climbing). But it definitely felt like a hard ride regardless. Sure wish my rain bike rode as well as my Madone!
Sure sounds good when I type that… and it’s true, my wheels were spinning, as I climbed Redwood Gulch towards highway 9. Of course, the road was slick from the steady drip coming down from the trees, a result of this-morning’s fog, certainly not from my awesome strength, shown by my barely sub-13-minute time for a climb that should take me just over 10.
It was time to do something other than the usual Sunday ride to the coast, time to do something different and in some ways more challenging. Maybe something in the “ugly” category. And what could be uglier than heading south through the foothills before turning west on Stevens Creek, then up up up Redwood Gulch & Highway 9 and then return via Skyline? What I didn’t plan on was doing it alone (Kevin wasn’t feeling well), nor leaving pretty late to avoid the heavy morning fog.
By the time I finally got out it was just past 1pm, making this yet another “chasing the sun” event. Can’t tell you how many times, as I headed south, I considered truncating the ride, maybe head up Page Mill (but didn’t), maybe stop by the Los Altos store to work on the computers for a bit and then head back the same way I came (but didn’t) and finally two other options. One, ride up Stevens Creek to where it dead-ends and then retrace the route back home (but didn’t) and then finally, after climbing Redwood Gulch, descending 9 from that point and again heading back along the foothills. But didn’t.
It wasn’t a fast or pretty ride, but it was purposeful. No stops for food, just to change batteries in the video camera and to put on warm gloves once up on Skyline.
Skyline, by the way, has been destroyed by Caltrans. Their idea of repairing the road has been to ignore the potholes and just pour a little bit of oil and a lot of gravel onto it, not enough oil for the gravel to actually sink into the pavement, but rather adhere to the top. It’s nuts! A road that used to be remarkably smooth is now like riding on glued-down gravel, eliminating the feeling of your bike gliding along, every turn of the cranks feeling like it has to be forced. You’ve got to wonder how much efficiency is lost, not just to bikes but motorists as well.
If this is the new method for road repair, we’re going to be selling a lot of Trek Domane road bikes in the future (they’ve got a design that really eats up the bumps).
Due to a complete lack of publicity on my part, along with the Mt Hamilton low-key hill climb event taking place, let’s say this was an “intimate” version of the annual TurkeyTrot ride. Just myself, Kevin, Mark and, for part of the ride, Michael from our Redwood City store. It was a gorgeous morning for a bike ride! That’s really an understatement; clear skies and virtually zero cars on the road.
I finally wandered over to see what it is that hangs from the fence opposite the San Gregorio General Store. A fish skeleton???!!!
Last night Kevin was making noises like he didn’t want to ride today, and even this morning wasn’t looking forward to it. That’s not unusual for him; he typically takes an hour or so to work into a ride and start enjoying it. But today? He continued to withhold “approval” until after the ride was finished, after loading it into Strava. 15 “accomplishments” for him. Yes, seeing that, he was glad he rode.
How often do we take for granted that we can easily ride to the end of the earth, where the Pacific Ocean meets land? Bike+legs+desire and you’re there. That’s pretty amazing if you think about it.
This was one of those days where you were very thankful the weather folk screwed up! No rain, light breeze, moderate temperatures. Sure, if we’d left a 9am it would have been wet out there from last night’s rain, but that’s not our style. Not Kevin’s anyway; we got out around 10:45 this morning, which, for my family, is early.
Today was a mild variant of the “Coastal Classic”- the usual up Old LaHonda, over Haskins, but then, instead of Stage Road north to Tunitas, we rode the coast the entire way. Kevin doesn’t like Stage Road, probably because it’s one of those rare climbs that he can’t ride me into the ground. The Old LaHonda section became a bit more stressful than normal when Kevin had a seizure about 3/4 of the way up and wanted to turn back; he wasn’t very happy with my insistence that we continue on. Experience has shown that he’s pretty much back to normal within 20 minutes, and today was no exception. It’s not fun debating the merits of continuing with him, and I’m obviously sympathetic to what he goes through, but epilepsy can’t run his life.
He probably had his best time yet up Haskins, but his Garmin apparently cut out on him somewhere during that segment so Strava doesn’t show it. And if Strava doesn’t show it, then it didn’t happen. Hate that! Later Kevin made a comment that he was only going to use Strava for another 20 years. An odd remark that I asked for elaboration on. “From 40 on, Strava’s only going to give you bad news.” Ouch.
Kevin gives me “The Look” just before the infamous Bridge of Death on Tunitas Creek
As for Tunitas, what can you say that hasn’t been said? It wasn’t a fast day on the climb, nor a completely-dreadful one either. Kevin was a bit ahead of me on the steepest sections, with me catching up where it leveled out. Got to admit the effort felt a lot faster than the time indicated! And yes, I’m sure it was more difficult because I missed riding Thursday.
Please ignore a few typos and mis-spellings; I’m going to get those fixed shortly. Obviously I shouldn’t be editing videos at 12:30am. –Mike–
Claude asked about the views from West Alpine. Yes, awesome!
No easy ride today, time to stop fooling around and get back to business. That means minimum 100k, with something “special” thrown in. Today, that meant Old LaHonda, Sna Gregorio, south on Stage to Pescadero, over Haskins & up West Alpine (West Alpine being the “something special”). Best thing about a longer ride is that they tend to favor me over Kevin, and today was no exception. I had no chance of holding onto his wheel going up Old LaHonda, but was at least even with him on the rollers on Stage and rode stronger up both Haskins and West Alpine. I like that!
Just barely got back before the sun set; guess we’ll have to leave earlier than noon in the future! Kevin thought I was being a bit extreme insisting on base layers, but by the time we got out of Pescadero and saw 53 degrees, and later 46 up on Skyline, he was glad I made him wear one. The long-fingered gloves helped later in the ride too!
Almost didn’t qualify as a “tough” ride; 67.2 miles with 6734ft of climbing, just 134ft to spare!
There’s no getting around it; cycling is a year-round thing in these parts. November 4th, darn close to winter and the shortest day of the year, and we get temps in the mid-70s to 80! And yes, a lot of us took advantage of the beautiful day; I saw far more people heading into the hills and out to the coast than usual.
Unfair advantage, having two engines on Old LaHonda!
Old LaHonda was the first challenge, but it went better than expected. I was seriously expecting to see 24 minutes yet managed to get just under 22. Easy? No.
The duck pond on the shortcut to Pescdero.
Pescadero Bakery, best food-stop on the Peninsula!
Instead of the usual food & drink stop at Pescadero, I just picked up something to drink, used the bathroom out back and headed back out. Let’s see… that means instead of the usual two pastries and coke I had an 8 ounce Acai-Pomegranate drink, and maybe 12 minutes off the bike instead of half an hour.
No records on Stage Road; too much of a headwind heading north, but again, so what? You just keep plugging away, finding that barely-sustainable level that gets you a respectable Strava score.
November in Northern California! You have to ride to appreciate it.
But it was on Tunitas that I had one of those revelations, epiphanies, whatever you want to call them. How do you go faster when it seems like you’re on the ropes? People tell you to “dig deep.” Look inside yourself and find something you didn’t know was there. Nope. That’s not how it’s done. Don’t overthink it like that. You just tell your legs to go harder. Period. That’s all there is to it. You stand up and try a harder gear and see what happens? No, you stand up, use the higher gear and go faster. It’s really that simple.
Los Lobitos Creek, the nasty part seen just to the right of Kevin
Beautiful day everywhere except the coast itself, which was quite a bit cooler and foggy. As soon as we made the turn inland the fog was gone, maybe just a bit too soon… the part of Los Lobitos shown in the photo, on the opposite side of the valley Kevin’s presently seen riding, is nasty. Steep, barren and just not a whole lot of fun.
Tunitas? Nice thing about doing Tunitas this way is that you don’t have a time to shoot for, since you’re connecting to Tunitas well inland. Still, Tunitas is never easy, and this was no exception. At least not until the upper, flatter section, where we spent a bit of time talking with Robert, an old friend we caught up with.
Statistics? I’d have accurate stats except that my Garmin lost track of the satellites mid-way up Tunitas, so it’s drawn a long, straight line about 10 miles long, and skipped a bunch of elevation. Rare for it to mess up like that. But my trusty Trek Node 2 told me it was 47 miles and 15mph average speed (ok, 14.9 actually).