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Caltrain commute

2009-11-06T15:49:12Z

Test post from the bike car.

West Old La Honda

2009-06-17T22:39:13Z

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.

Eastern Sierra Double 2009 (DNF)

2009-06-09T13:53:54Z

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.

Happiness is a (mostly) clean bike

2009-06-04T03:46:20Z

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 hate my new Castelli bike shorts

2009-05-28T05:19:36Z

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.

Santa Cruz Gonzo Hammerfest (2009)

2009-05-25T05:32:43Z

143 miles for this edition of the Santa Cruz Gonzo Hammerfest. The normal route is about 120 miles, but I added a few more by starting and finishing at home. I met my cycling companions Patrick, Kristy, Stacey and Devan at Shoup Park in Mountain View. From there we rolled northwest to Old La Honda, the first big climb of the day. The top of the ridge was socked in with fog, and the redwoods were shedding their excess condensation. We descended route 84 into La Honda where we stopped at a restaurant to drink warm beverages and try to keep from going hypothermic. Not long after the conditions improved, but we didn't see the sun until lunchtime in Santa Cruz.

When Patrick and I ride together we inevitably embroil ourselves in one or more pissing contests. Now that I have a powertap installed on my bike (it measures power output), I can visualize my side of the argument. Our first round for the day happened on Stage Road just before reaching Pescadero. I was pleased to discover that I could hold 900+ watts for about six seconds (Taylor Phinney, a world-class professional cyclist, can hit 900 watts rolling over in bed). I won this round:

Switched from WordPress

2009-05-25T05:15:54Z

For no good reason other than a desire to try something different, I switched from WordPress to squarespace. It may make building and maintaining a personal website easier without the limitations of a more generic blogging platform.

For anyone looking for Team Capybara's Furnace Creek 508 video (2008 edition), you can find it by clicking the FC508 (2008) link in the navigation section. Or, click here.