Until today I had never climbed Old La Honda to Skyline from the west.  I usually descend it on my way to Pescadero after climbing to the ridge from the other side, but today the marine layer was pushing in and I wasn't dressed for damp and cold.  I turned around at the bottom and climbed back up in the big ring (it's not steep- the average grade is only 4.3%).  It's a comfortable climb and the view is great.  The last time I descended this side of OLH it was with friends on our Santa Cruz Gonzo Hammerfest ride. In addition to nearly freezing to death in the rain and wind, we had to negotiate our way around an obviously lost moving van, something you wouldn't ever expect to see on this road.

One stinking picture from the whole ride.  The view is looking west towards the Sierra Mountains from near the summit of Death Valley Road and it does nothing to belie the horrible conditions we went through to get this far.  Imagine you're turned around and going the other way on this road.  You've climbed 8 miles from the valley floor.  Queue the rain.  Drop the temperature to about 33 degrees.  Five miles to go to reach the summit.  Rain not bad enough?  How about some hail?  How about some snow?  Here you go.  At the summit the snow turns to back to pouring rain.  Now you've got a 14 mile descent to Eureka Valley.  The road is crap.  Brakes barely work.  Legs are shaking so bad you can scarcely control the bike.  Rain stops at the bottom.  Drink some water and eat some food.  Now turn around and climb back out.  The rain stops.  One long grinding suffer-fest later you get back to the summit and the view you see below.  

The double century route looped back past the start line, at which point we had 104 miles in our legs.  We decided we'd had enough for one day.

I spent a couple of hours today getting the bike ready for Saturday's Eastern Sierra Double Century which, if the weather forecast holds true (rain, thunderstorms, cold temperatures), could turn into quite an adventure.

I bought a pair of Castelli Ergo Due bike shorts at Sports Basement last week and gave them a test run on a 55 mile ride on a fairly warm day. They are simply awful. The shamy is positioned a bit more aft than I'd expect, but that's not a huge problem. The huge problem is the rest of the fabric. I don't know exactly what it is (some derivative of spandex), but it breathes about as well as a neoprene scuba suit. If you want to spend your ride feeling like you're sitting in a plastic kiddie pool filled to the brim with ass sweat, or if you want to wear something that feels like a shamWow-stuffed party balloon, run out and buy these shorts.