Husband of the Year

My wife sent me this photo in an email entitied "Husband of the Year", and it pretty much sums up how she thinks I think about her vs. my bikes sometimes. All I can say is that it isn't true honey -- I would let you both into the tent.

Deja vu

I take an indoor cycling class twice at week at Endurance PTC in San Francisco. Today when I clicked into my pedals to begin class, I saw they had up on the overhead screen a replay of an old Tour de France stage. You could tell it was "relatively" old because only a handful of riders in the peloton were wearing helmets. As the ride went on, the French countryside started to look very familiar. Almost as if I had been there before. It turns out I had -- this was Stage 12 of the 2001 Tour, from Perpignan to Ax Les Thermes. En route, the stage went over the cols on the Plateau du Sault (Cols du Coudons, Sept Freres and Chioula), the same road our group had ridden on in the reverse direction this summer. Very cool.

Where's the storm?

The weather guys have been predicting mayhem for 10 days now -- a storm that was supposed to hit Friday, then Friday night, then Saturday, etc. High winds were (and still are!) forecast, and some driving rain. I'm pretty fired up because when I'm not on my bike I like to go skiing. And of course this year our entire family has season passes to Squaw Valley and there's zero snow as of mid-December.

The problem is that the storm seems to be a myth. Friday it clouded up pretty good in the afternoon and looked ominous. I rode home over the bridge thinking it would be a wet one. Nope. The clouds bugged out and Saturday morning dawned clear and beautiful. WTF?

So yesterday I thought I would sneak in one last ride before what the weather guys promise will be 10 days of unsettled wintry weather. I rode out to Fairfax, Alpine Dam and up to the 7 Sisters. Coming down, the weather was still nice at around noon, so I hung a right and dropped down to Stinson Beach. By the way, they've repaved the upper portion of the descent on Panoramic Hwy and let me tell you it is MONEY! Wow, those Caltrans guys deserve their bonuses for that one.

The ride to Muir Beach was gorgeous as always, but right when I hit the climb back to Mill Valley it happened -- the rain started. It came quickly (literally "out of the blue" as they say) and I thought for sure I was going to pay for getting greedy to sneak in an extra 15 miles on the ride. I put the hammer down climbing up from Muir Beach while the rain steadily increased. Of course the minute I got down to Mill Valley the rain stopped and the clouds parted again. Crap. Today looks a little more ominous, but there's still lots of blue sky and we're all praying for snow.

Stats for today:
Distance: 44.94mi
Ascent: 4,950'
Time: 2:55:42

Riding on Shoreline Highway, Muir Beach, CA. Storm clouds coming???

Short Days...

The shortest day of the year is only a couple of weeks away, so riding to and from work is becoming colder and a bit less fun every day. That said, it sure as hell beats sitting in a car. Especially when you not only transport yourself from A to B, but you also get in a great workout and see the amazing sunset off the Golden Gate Bridge. People pay big bucks to visit this city and do what I get to do every day. That isn't lost on me. The sunset was especially nice tonight so I did something stupid and took a couple of random camera phone pics while cruising along.