45 posts tagged “bikes”

As soon as things at work were cleared up, I loaded up my gear and zipped up the Peninsula to San Mateo -- there's a shockingly light amount of traffic on 101 at 6:05 on a Saturday morning -- and found that I need not have worried. I passed familiar faces in Bikeforums kit on my way to the registration desk, quickly signed in, and we hung out until 6:45 when everyone who was "on the bus" showed up.  Out the gate, feeling pretty good, and the nice rollers on Alameda de las Pulgas and Crystal Springs Road served to wake up the legs and prepare for the day ahead. 

On Cañada Road I hooked up with Henry and Ramon and we had a nice pace set until Marco and Ruth zipped by on their tandem with Pete on their wheel.  Henry made the jump and latched on too, but I held back for fear of using the energy up too soon. Again, I shouldn't have worried: they passed us only a few hundred yards away from the rest stop and there would have been ample time to catch my breath. We regrouped and headed out for the first climb of the day, Hwy 84 to Skyline. I think this is the third or fourth time I've done this climb so I knew what to expect and really kept the pace moderate, kept heartrate within limits and just enjoyed the nice foggy (and not too smoky!) morning among the redwoods.  Ben caught up to me, which was not a surprise, but his comment was: "You seem to be faster on the hills than last year!" Nevertheless he quickly pulled out of sight and I contented myself with marking, catching and passing a guy I'd noticed in the parking lot in FULL white T-Mobile kit (shoe covers too!).  Before too long I was up at the top. We made a partial regroup and headed over the ridgeline down 84 towards the ocean.  

I tried to keep a few new descending tips I'd read in mind:  tilt the bike around the curves, while keeping the body upright. Pick as smooth (and short) a line as possible and use pressure on the outside leg and the inner handlebar to stay on it.  Point through the curve with the chin. Pedal through most of it to keep legs from stiffening up on the long way down. I followed Ramon down and really appreciated how nice and smooth he descended; I remarked as much to him when we hit one of the flatter portions around San Gregorio Creek.  Which, by the way, was simply beautiful. Enough of the fog had burned off to let the sunlight filter through the trees. The warm earthy smell of horses and deep redwood needles provided an olfactory backdrop to the peaceful view of the river as it went past several campgrounds. Less visually appealing were the rural ramshackle homesteads with 8 to 12 partially-torn-down cars scattered about the property, but hey, this is the reality of life in La Honda.  

As the road flattened out toward the end of the descent, a very fast paceline of "plus 3" (I think that was the kit, though I can't find them now on google) riders came up behind us. I spun up and caught on and went hard with them for a few minutes. A tactical error put me off the front of the group though, and when I looked down my HRM was reading 171 (106% of LT!). They blitzed past me as I struggled to keep up and the exhilaration gave way to the harsh facts of my own limits as a rider.  Ah well, easy come easy go - and I had managed to get dropped right near Henry and Pete, so we formed a little, less insane, paceline of our own and worked our way out to the Stage Road rest stop.

Just like last year, this was the most social of the stops, and I met up with several non-BF folks I knew, along with Adam aka Powpow who'd started out separately but caught up to us here.  After food, hydration, chit-chat and more than a couple of locals blasting by in giant pickups screaming for people to get out of their way, we headed up Stage Road on our way to the lovely Tunitas Creek.  Adam and I shot the breeze as we climbed and then the breeze shot us as we dropped down towards the cliffs on the Pacific Coast Highway! I got a little rattled by the crosswind and fell off Marco and Ruth's tandem train, but we all met up again going across the valley towards the Tunitas Creek climb.

Henry was my climb buddy, and man, did that make things go easier. We just settled into a nice mellow pace and pushed our way up through the redwoods. The only things that marred the stately serenity of the redwoods were a few descenders who were going at unsafe -- make that "ludicrous" -- speeds down the road.  Why O Why would you descend Tunitas at more than a gentle glide? The road is in such disrepair that it's highly likely you'll be thrown, break something on a wheel, or at the least have your teeth jarred loose from your head. Most of the crew (ACTC from what one sane descender said) were very well behaved and calls of 'rider up!' echoed through the sequoias. But a few folks were coming down very quickly and one even smacked into Ben's rear wheel somehow and then kept riding cursing him for not hewing to the right half of the road -- a road which is a single lane in the best of spots. Sorry, but blasting down when there's clearly an event ride going on with dozens of folks on the upslope... that's just ignorant.

Rant mode off -- really it was a minor thing and the vast majority of the climb was good conversation, great scenery, and a watchful eye on the HRM to keep myself from blowing up.  At the top we regrouped and then zipped down King's Mountain. I was much less confident on this descent than on the earlier drop down 84, probably due to fatigue and the fact that my still-healing right hand was hurting pretty bad.  But down at the bottom I saw a sight that made me forget my pain. Two Harley riders had blocked the turnout from KMR to 84 to let FIVE HUNDRED of their biker brethren pass uninterrupted. Five hundred harleys take a long time to stream past. It was truly an impressive collection of metal and leather. I believe most of the jackets were for the "Noble Creed" MC though there were a fair number of red-n-white in attendance as well.  Finally the train made it past and Ivan set a pounding pace out to catch up to the ones who'd made it across before the river of steel started up.

I did not turn out to Cañada immediately off 84 as I'd planned, instead I got caught up with the group and headed up Portola towards the fire station rest stop.  About a mile in, just after I'd motioned to Adam and Ben and broke out to catch up to the folks in front, some kind of winged insect zipped right down the open neck of my jersey and buzzed around for a few seconds before deciding to sting me right in the stomach. OUCH. I flapped and hooted and got the thing out of my clothes but my momentum was broken, along with my spirit.  Further news at the rest stop of a bad wipeout at Page Mill and Altamont convinced me my original plan was best so after some deliberation and troop-rallying, Ron and I set out back towards Food and Home as the others headed up for an extra 20 mile loop.  

The way home was tough, no question. The afternoon headwind had picked up and we were tired. I kept losing Ron and picking him up again, but we linked up solidly at the Edgewood Road rest stop and (after chatting with a BF'er whose name I didn't catch) we made the final push back towards San Mateo.  I envied the Time Triallers headed south down Cañada, tucked over their aerobars with the wind at their backs. We were much less graceful, trying to keep momentum and pushing as hard as tired muscles would allow.  It wasn't pretty, but we got to the end and rounded the corner at Sawyer Camp Trail for a fun descent down Crystal Springs and then, painfully, the Heartbreak Hills of Alameda de las Pulgas.  Were those hills really so large on the way out? It didn't seem so, but at least I recalled correctly that there were only three. We rolled into Bay Meadows and picked up t-shirts then headed for the infield and LUNCH. 

Ty and Kari were almost done eating but they graciously shared the table as Ron and I queued for pasta, meatballs and salad.  Scarf, scarf. Keep hands, fingers and other body parts away from the mouth or they will get munched too! More friendly conversation and more pasta, please.  Saw this great Bike Friday Triplet -- a dad and two (twin?) sons pedalled off; the mom saw us cheering them on and told us about the bike. It's pretty neat! They can take out the middle seat and make it a two-seater or pack the whole thing into two suitcases and off they go. Her enthusiasm was contagious.  

FInally the inevitable could be delayed no longer: it was time to head home.  I packed up, Ron stayed at the table to wait for the 100-miler crew, and then it was back to reality.  I'm just really pleased with how the ride went. Our crew stayed safe and injury-free (well, except the beesting), I stayed hydrated and fed well enough to avoid a bonk or migraine, and my fitness level let me push it pretty hard when the situation called for it while still leaving enough gas in the tank to get back home.  

Now for some steak...

STATS

79 miles

5h 22m total time, 4hr 21m active

62 mph top speed (??) Really ~42

221 bpm top heart rate (??)  Really 172

(My Polar HRM started flipping out on the way back up Cañada and read these insane values for both speed and heart rate. Weak batteries or something.)

Ah Pook Destroyed
Originally uploaded by flickrawwwr

More at j3n's flickr set: Ahpook Destroyed

Sadly, these are the best-looking photos of the bike I have; aside from the frame-only shots before she was built up, I only ever took a few quick point-n-shoot snaps. 

Very, very minor damage, all things considered. The fork is going to need some attention, but that's about the only non-cosmetic damage. Kinda like my hand is MY only non-cosmetic damage. Hmmm....

As I rolled past Castro Street I noticed a new noise emanating from the front end of the bike whenever I hit a bump. I thought "Hm, thats odd, its almost like the headset is loose" and I started testing how big a thump it took when...WHAM! I was over the handlebars and scraping along the bike lane face first.  "OWWW" I yelled, then a longer string of unprintables as I crawled to the curb. I noticed my face was bleeding pretty badly so I pressed my jersey sleeve up against my cheek to stanch the flow. A Nissan Pathfinder with bike racks on the roof stopped first, then another bike commuter, then maybe two more cars. Everyone called 911, a nice lady kept talking to me, one of the cars contained a pair of nurses who whipped out a first aid kit and applied gauze.

Before too long a MV policeman, fire dept paramedics, and an ambulance were on the scene. I reassured them I was not hit by a car (Praise Allah!) and that the only other thing besides my face which hurt was my right hand. They asked questions to make sure I was lucid, found my wallet and ID, asked who they should call, cut away my jersey and bottom shirt (my beloved Craft 50SPF shirt!), peeled off my gloves, and got me strapped to a board. 

I noticed someone had pulled my bike off to the sidewalk and that the front wheel was separated from the frame. I asked the assembled crowd what was going to happen to the bike. The cop volunteered to take it to the MV station and gave me a receipt to claim it. As of this writing, I have not gotten it back, so I have no idea what kind of shape it's in, nor any clues the frame could provide as to what exactly happened. Perhaps the QR was open and the lack of "lawyer lips" on Roland DS's old-school fork design let it slip right out? Could be, but I didn't bunny-hop the front wheel high enough to clear the dropouts, so I suspect that's not the whole story. Have to wait and see, I guess.

The ambulance ride to Stanford was pretty quick -- I managed to tap out a twitter update and an IM conversation to assure j3n that I was basically OK before I got to the ER. They took chest and hand X-rays and a head CT scan; sure enough my middle and ring metacarpal bones (inside the palm) on my right hand are fractured but other than that it's "just" a really nasty (and highly visible) case of road rash. After a long day of waiting around and asking for more morphine whenever the bones ground together, I ended up with seven stitches in my face and a temporary fiberglass cast on my arm. Jen, who's had more than her share of hospitals already, hung in there like a champ until they finished up and discharged me. 

All in all things could have been much much worse for my first real crash in 3 years and over 12,000 miles of bike commuting -- no broken collarbone, no getting hit by a car -- so I'm counting myself fortunate. Big thank-yous to the good citizens who stopped to help, the emergency personnel, the staff at Stanford Medical, friends at work and on twitter who sent well-wishes, Henry for coming over tonight, and most of all to Jen for sticking it out all day at the hospital and taking care of my invalid self.

Obligatory Meat Shot:

I haven't been bike-blogging a lot lately, but it's not because I'm not biking. I forgot the 11,000 miles odometer post and now I'm at 11,312.  Here's my Jamis rigged for full California winter commuting (HID, fenders, waterproof Delta pannier):

Contents: toolkit w/ 15mm peanut butter wrench for track nuts, metric allen wrench set, tire levers, spare tube, patch kit.  Keys. Native shades for the AM ride. Moleskine, pocket size, grid ruled plus uniball vision elite pen (THE BEST $2 pen out there). Extra PB Superflash blinky, caltrain Go pass+Work badge; headphones; green coffee beans (Costa Rica "Dota" peaberry) that fell out of the bag on the way to the roastin'; towel/cloth; orange-and-white Danger-issue timbuk2 bag.

There's a saying I saw on somebody's forum sig a while back that sticks with me on days like today: "There's no such thing as a tailwind. Either it's blowing in your face or you're having a really good day." With that in mind, I was having an awesome day on the ride back to town! I zipped through Hawaii Kai and was blasting back along Kalanianaole when the day's only bit of mechanical drama manifested: accelerating from a stoplight, I shifted up the to the big chainring and derailed the chain right off! Fortunately I caught it on the right side crank arm and was able to finesse it back onto the gear without having to stop, which I was pretty happy about. The rest of the ride passed without incident and I was unable to reproduce the problem back in the garage, so I must have really cranked the shift lever over. I gave the outside limit screw a quarter turn just for safety's sake, rinsed the bike off and came inside to have a cup of coffee and write this up. 

A guy could get used to this vacation stuff....

I met up with the disembodied elbow known as Sprocket Man (right) from bikeforums and did a great loop up Tantalus this morning. We got a little wet, not unusual for that mountain at this time of year, but it was a gorgeous scenic ride. Here's a snap from the top. I have been riding my dad's Bianchi Eros (middle) and I was grateful for the triple chainring at parts of the climb but overall it was very pleasant - great scenery and great company!   

This is the first year I've done the traditional New Year's Day bike ride up Mount Hamilton, but it won't be the last. What a great day for a ride and a perfect ride for the day.  

Right out of the gate, something neat happened. I unloaded my bike and rolled over to the intersection of Alum Rock and Mt Hamilton Road and a group of five cyclists waved over and gestured to me to take their picture - I watched them for a moment and then their "SV Deaf Cyclists" and animated signing clicked! Awesome. I wish I could say I engaged in a real ASL conversation, but truth be told I was completely nervous, flubbed a few basic signs ("Great Picture! Thanks") and then pedalled off red-faced. 

The "official" start time was 9:30 but at 9:15 there were already people headed up the hill and since I wasn't exactly waiting for the rest of my team to mass start (in fact nobody I knew from Bikeforums, work, or anywhere else had commited to going) I just pointed the Della Santa upwards and started grinding. It was a lovely morning with low hanging fog across the valley but plenty of sunshine up the hill and mild winter temperatures.  I had to laugh at the cluster of "For Sale" signs at the entrance to the last planned development on the way up; I guess the ARM reset and the prospect of a 15 minute drive to get to the nearest grocery store combined to make the as-advertised "VIEW!!!" simply not worth it any more.

After some solo riding I realized that I was pretty much pacing another fellow slightly ahead of me so I caught up to him and said "hello" and we rode along together for a while. Carl was riding with two buddies, all of whom had done this before so it was nice to have some company and get tips about the route. Carl's friend Brian pushed the pace a bit -- he was on a Cervelo Soloist and I think those guys make you sign a "will sprint at any opportunity" contract before they let you ride away on one -- but Carl and I rode together for a good while.  A nice feature about the way up Mt Hamilton is that it's not "up" the entire way. There are a couple of fun descents which break up the grinding a bit; Brian pointed out that the high-voltage power lines are run along the ridgetops and therefore mark the location of the two false summits, so they are some intermediate targets to break up the climbing.

Which, by the way, was really a pleasant suprise. The road was, I learned, a horse route originally so it was made for 6-8% grade pretty much the whole way. I have been worried since I got the new bike that the double chainring would not provide low enough gearing for my crap-tastic climbing style. My Jamis is a touring-style triple and on the climbs during the organized events I've done, I have needed every one of those granny gears. But I think a combination of my riding more, the DS being a different (lighter) bike, and the grade being not quite as savage as, say, Hicks Road, meant that although I spent some time in the lowest gear -- OK, I spent a lot of time in the lowest gear -- I never ran out of RPMS on it and was able to maintain enough momentum to keep moving. So we'll have to see if that remains true on some of the more savage climbs the Bay Area has to offer, but a large part of my trepidation about this bike, namely that I had spec'ed it out wrong and should have bought a triple chainring, can be put to rest now.

Back to the ride - about ten miles in, it was starting to get downright toasty. I stopped, snapped a few cameraphone pictures across the valley, ate some food and peeled off my middle layer. Refreshed and cooled off, I set out again.  A lovely vista across the hills and down into Santa Clara Valley stretched out before me, and  I watched hawks riding the updrafts, circling and diving on their brunch across the fields. At about mile twelve or thirteen, I realized that another rider and I had been leapfrogging each other for a while so I introduced myself and Garrett and I rode together to the top. He's from Morgan Hill and does this ride several times a year so it was great to hear a believable "we're almost there!"

Sure enough, before too much longer, the trees thinned out, the road narrowed and got bumpier, and I suddenly saw the white dome of Lick Observatory towering over us like a strangely spherical medieval castle. We passed a sign saying we were on University of California property and, not conincidentally, the rutted and potholed asphalt gave way to smooth blacktop.  I was feeling fatigued but not beaten and the last push to the top came eaiser than I was expecting. 

After cycling fluids and some socializing, it was time to gear back up for the ride down. I had doffed my long gloves and midweight long sleeve jersey on the sunny ride up but I knew it would get chilly going down.  What a ride! I managed to avoid all but one really bad pothole (and that one nearly threw me) but aside from the short inclines that had been such a relief on the way up it was as close to alpine skiing as you can get without standing in a lift line. I am not a monster descender at the best of times and my muscle fatigue reminded me it would be unwise to push it now, but I kept it at a managable pace for the road conditions and the corners, let 'er fly when it was smooth, and marvelled at how smooth and stable the bike was at speed. 

18 miles and fifty minutes later I rolled back in to the impromptu parking lot on Alum Rock road, packed my gear up and headed home. Unfortunately, despite my caution in this regard I had dehydrated and under-eaten enough to start a migraine onset (this is a problem which plagues me on rides with a lot of sun exposure), but half of a Relpax and some quiet time in a dark room brought me back to the land of the living. 

Mt Hamilton was definitely a do-again event. I might not even wait until next year!

For reference, this was the picture I sent to Terry for the "idea" of the bike. British racing green with silver highlights. I think Joe Bell pretty much nailed it.

Bottom of the BB shell - this was Roland's 15th frame this year apparently.