12 posts tagged “tina”
On Friday night, Tina and I went to go see the new Pirates of Caribbean movie.
Saturday, woke up at 6 am to go climbing at Castle Rock with Chris and a crew of people from the Bay Area Outdoor Adventure Club. Dinner & drinks at Suppenkuche, then fell dead asleep. Sue hooked me up with a sweet T-shirt, too.
On Sunday, Tina and I went to Kara’s Cupcakes in the Marina, then to Marin to go hunting for bicycles, jerseys and planters. Went to the Ducati dealership too. Dealt with a parking douchebag in Mill Valley and took Pista to the dogrun. Watched a documentary on Fred Phelps, and slept well (again).
On Monday, woke up ad took Pista to the dogpark. Rode my fixie to Mill Valley for the Memorial Day parade & pancake breakfast. Went to a barbecue at Chris’ house, drank divine wasabi bloody marys, and ate awesome cookies and burgers. Then went sofa shopping with the crew and returned home for some dinner & watched the Lost season finale.
(continued from my previous post)
Confusion reigned at Rest Stop 1. We heard varying reports of a fire, running the course backwards, and other rumors. After the misstep after leaving the rest stop we took off into the road we’d spend most of the day on: Route 16.
Route 16 is a mix of good and bad. Parts of it are terrifyingly narrow, with traffic zooming buy on the way to the casino, and parts are wonderful pavement alongside a creek with whitewater rapids. The owners of the casino must’ve been fallling all over themselves to name it Cache Creek.
Around mile 60 the climbing began in earnest, and wouldn’t stop until we were back in the same place. At rest stop 3 or so we found out half the course had been closed and we’d be doing the back half twice. This turned what should have been a mildly difficult ride into a real climbing-intensive event. All the hard climbs (including the high point on Cobb Mountain) were in the back 100 miles.
By mile 80 at the lunch stop, we were tired. We’d already done some serious climbs in the heat. We asked various riders whether they were heading out or coming back, and those who were heading back told us of the treat that lay ahead: a climb with a 1-mile section with a very steep (10% or so) grade. Groan.
Heading up that hill was both extra hard and rewarding because we were being passed by riders zipping down the hill after having already completed it. Every one was smiling. By the time we descended the hill an hour later, we were smiling too. We saw the pain on the faces of the riders behind us struggling up that hill.
At mile 99.7 we hit the halfway point rest stop, just below the crest of Cobb Mountain. We did circles in the parking lot until we hit 100 miles and sat down for a well-needed break.
I looked at the route sheet’s elevation map and determined we had only 4 hard climbs ahead of us in the next 100 miles. That was true, to an extent. There was plenty of headwind, traffic, bugs, darkness and bad pavement between us and Davis.
By mile 140, we were coming down out of the hills again and back into the Cache Creek area. The sun was lower in the sky, and the temp was a reasonable mid-sixties. We’d eaten tons of food, consumed gallons of water, and done stupid amounts of leg stretching while riding.
By mile 175 we reached the first rest stop again. We were toasted. Tina swapped out her tinted lenses for clear lenses, and I geared up to be eating bugs. I have no clear riding glasses.
The last 20 miles or so were in twilight and darkness, eating gnats and alternating passing and being passed by a woman in her late forties who looked like she’d done a few of these before. Her technique was good, she was a strong rider.
By the end, I was ready to just lie down on the pavement and go to sleep. We ate a few scraps of food at the post-ride dinner and had our photo taken by a friendly rider. By the time we made it back to the hotel (by way of the grocery store), we were dead. I slept like a brick.
The Davis Double was the most enjoyable ride I’ve done this year. The Davis Bike Club and their volunteers made the experience completely worth it. One of my favorite moments was at the second to last rest stop when a kid, maybe 8 or 9 offered to valet park my bike and fill my water bottles!
We were driving back from Davis on Sunday, discussing how we could possibly characterize the stress of the previous day to non-cyclists, particularly endurance cyclists. Anecdotes were mentioned about telling coworkers and friends about the miles ridden this weekend, met with basic incomprehension.
On Saturday, Tina and I qualified for the 2007 California Triple Crown. Every one of those three days was hard. Really hard. Anyone who tells you different is soft pedaling (hah) or has a bad memory. Maybe that’s why the average age of folks who do these things is somewhere north of 50. :)
Saturday was also one of the most enjoyable rides I’ve ever done, thanks to the support of the Davis Bike Club and their volunteers. However, it was not the “fast, fun and flat” ride for beginners it was supposed to be. A fire near lake Baryessa closed half the route, turning the otherwise reasonable loop into an out-and-back with all the hard climbs, twice.
Good times.
We woke at 4am, dressed and packed our bikes & gear, then drove on one of the many nameless county roads from Woodland to Davis. Upon arrival at 5:30, cyclists were already departing. We finished gearing up and headed out. The sun rose by the time we reached the first rest stop, a ranch around mile 20. That’s where the confusion started.
We found out about the fire (and saw the smoke in the distance) and heard that the course was being altered. At this point our route sheets were essentially void, so we stowed those and took off in a pack of about 30 riders. We rode a couple miles past the rest stop into some rollers when a SAG truck blazed past and headed off the first riders. Apparently we missed a turn. We turned back and rode a half-mile or so back to an unmarked right (now left) and got back on track.
Tina and I got back this afternoon from our second double century, this time in the “Danish” village of Solvang. The town is an odd mix of hotels, windmills, bakeries, and restaurants offering authentic Danish (Swedish? Does anyone here care?) smorgasbord. The movie Sideways was filmed here, and Lance Armstrong and other pro cyclists train in the neighboring hills and valleys.
This is an annual ride organized by Planet Ultra, and reportedly a good ride for novices or first-time double century riders. It has roughly 7000 feet (2114 m) of climbing, roughly half in the first 20 miles, and the only real climb of the day landing at mile 173. The weather held out, and aside from a bitterly cold start at 6 AM, it was a reasonable 60-75 degrees until the sun went down.
Tina’s parents drove up from southern California to see her, and we met them for dinner on Friday night before the ride. Meeting your girlfriend’s parents, regardless of how nice they’ve been described as, can be a little stressful. Luckily I enunciated well & didn’t spill anything on my shirt while eating. I think it went OK. Marion & Brooks are pretty cool. They regaled us of stories of slot canyons and slab cities in the desert, and we gave them the dish on Planet Ultra (along with the usual kid/parent updates). We ate dinner with them after the ride, and again on Sunday morning. When doing endurance cycling, meals tend to be more about fuel than conversation. I’m happy to report it was more of the latter. There wasn’t a dull moment between mouthfuls of carbs (& bacon).
The actual ride was made of two parts: The hard, cold and stressful opening 100 miles, and the quick, warm and fun back 100 miles.
As we were getting ready to leave, we ran into Bernd, who we met on the last 50 miles of the Butterfield double. He’d made some adjustments to his riding setup (including a trick new GPS computer) and a key element we were missing: full-fingered gloves. We all took off together at around 6:15 and were off down rolling California hills.
Masses of cyclists were around, strung out as far ahead and back as we could see. At this point the cold started numbing us down. My fingers went from cold to frozen to numb. At some point after the second turn, the numbness was starting to creep up my wrists. Even in a blizzard at the top of a volcano in Japan, it never got this bad.
Tina spotted a market along the highway, so we pulled off to warm up. My useless fingers could barely tap out my PIN on the debit card machine to buy tea & hot chocolate. We sat under a space header for 40 minutes getting the blood back to our extremities.
At 7:30 or so we got back on the bikes. The sun had come up and it was starting to get warm. We made it to the first summit, and started the long (20-mile) descent into the central valley, where we’d spend the next 50 or so miles. At that point, the 7:30 AM riders started passing us. A couple packs of riders sucking the wheel of tandems blazed past us on the downhill. We made it to the first rest stop at mile 34 and regrouped.
At the second rest stop, we were greeted with what was to become a theme of our ride. A volunteer working the ride announced our arrival with a smirk and commented that the rest stop was about to close and we should “pick up the pace.” He suggested that we must have started at 9AM. I contemplated channeling Whitaker, but bit my tongue. It wasn’t until the second-to-last rest stop did we get an encouraging word from anyone. A woman who’d seen us at the first rest stop observed that we’d made up some time.
At mile 100 we rolled into Morro Bay and got The Sticker (without which we would have been marked as DNF, as threatened multiple times on the website, route sheet, by volunteers and postings). We’d braved a climb up the Pacific Coast Highway with a headwind & brisk traffic to get there, crossing a few exits and dodging cars in the process.
After lunch at mile 114, things started to pick up. We caught a tailwind and started passing other riders. I’ll admit to feeling a little good about passing people after being passed by so many earlier in the day. The climb out of one valley to Guadalupe was immensely satisfying, our Bay Area legs finally doing what they’re good at: crushing hills. From Guadalupe to the final rest stop was a short, 20mph average ride through farmland, passing (and picking up) other riders, taking turns pulling our short paceline.
The final rest stop in Los Alamos at a vintage (read: abandoned, overgrown) gas station was the best of the day. The general mood among the riders there was good, and we’d made it to this stop with almost two hours to spare. They had hot soup, so we chowed down and put our cold weather gear back on. The sun was almost gone, and I wanted to get done with the Big Climb ahead before it was completely dark.
We made the turn up to Drum Canyon, and after a flashback of last weekend, we climbed to the top. It was a windy, crappy, one-lane road filled with other cyclists in an otherwise completely desolate wooded canyon. A cattle guard signaled the summit, and we revised our clothing once again and switched on Tina’s new light for the descent.
After a scary 2 mile drop into the next valley, the last hint of twilight left us with nothing but the waxing moon and the sound of crickets. This side of the hill was considerably colder than the previous, so we endeavored to return to Solvang post-haste.
We made it back to the hotel at 8:40 PM, where Marion, Brooks and a few other supporters cheered our arrival. We were dead tired, and happy to be back. We cleaned up and had dinner in the Meadows restaurant next to the hotel. Beer never tastes so good as after a ride like this. After dinner, we took our fading selves back to the room for 10 hours of horizontal time.
Overall, it was a good ride. As for the organization behind it, Planet Ultra, I have some serious reservations. They’ve missed some opportunities to promote the sport to younger or less-experienced endurance cyclists, and in many instances done the opposite, alienating us with their words and actions. They’ve done little to engender feelings of trust or admiration, and in the end our experience with them this time (as with last) left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I can’t say for certain, but this is likely the last event they organize that I will participate in.
Despite our problems with the organizers, the experience as a whole was great; I got to spend time with Tina, met
her parents, saw beautiful country and logged good miles.
It seemed like 130 miles of uphill. Tina and I just got back to the hotel, and plan to do another 60 in the morning. Yes, I think we’re a little crazy too.
200 miles (sandwiched between 1000 miles of driving). Tired. Happy.
- Official results
- Time: 16:16
- Time riding: 13:22
- Time spent in hot tub post-ride: 00:40
Tina has a longer post recapping the weekend’s events.
In a little over an hour, Tina and I will be heading down to SoCal for the Butterfield Double Century. I’m keeping my fingers crossed the Sixaflu that attacked me earlier this week will have been drubbed out of my system by tomorrow morning. I feel well enough to drive, I hope that upward trend continues. Here’s to vitamin C!
On Saturday, Pista got to run in Alamo Square with Stella in a brief window when it stopped raining. Noshed with Jen and Jay at BlueJay Cafe. Bacon, eggs & blueberry pancakes = teh win. Earlier Pista and I went to the Potrero Sports Basement, and after brunch we went to the Presidio store. Pista had snacked on my black shell jacket (the fifth one if you’re counting) and it was time to get more fodder for the Maw. Hoping for a week’s worth of jacket usage this time.
Spent no money at the 2nd SB visit (yes!) but did drop a lot of coin putting together my costume for Misty’s ever-awesome annual Procrastinator’s New Year’s Eve party. I was the Math Avenger, mild-mannered math professor by day, and smacktalking, derivative-calculating, vigilante superhero by night. Will post more about this in a bit…
Before the trip to Clothes by the Pound, I hit Munroe Motors for the Ducati 1098 launch. They had a single 1098S (apparently the S stands for sold), sandwiches and posters to give away. Most people ignored all of that and just lusted after the new bike. It looks better in person than in pictures. Really, drool.
Edit: Realized this post doesn’t contain any mention of cycling or rock-climbing. I went cycling today with Tina (we rocked a modified combined Fairfax + Paradise loop for a solid 68 miles or so. Did it on the fixie because I’m badass like that the road bike’s in the shop. Sunday weather totally made up for the shitty Saturday. Tyson at American insists my bike will be ready by Tuesday for our double next weekend. Excited!
Edit: Rock climbing!
Tina and I rode 160 miles this weekend. 75 on Saturday, taking a modified Mt. Tam, Seven Sisters + Alpine Dam route, out through Fairfax with a Strawberry detour. 85 on Sunday, on this brutal fun Luna Chix training route that took us to the top of every hill in Oakland, some twice.
High point: Riding on near-abandoned east bay roads on Super Bowl Sunday.
Low point: Missing Prince’s halftime show by 5 minutes.
I went to bed at 9. Pista was happy about that…
