Diary of a Great Day

5:30am. Wake, work/check emails from Europe and NY. Coffee.
7am. Make kids breakfast, get out the door for school
8am. Tiburon Ferry to SF


5pm. Riding home along Crissy Field with friends.


5:30pm Quick detour up the Marin Headlands to admire the view and get the blood pumping. Not a bad way to get home!

6pm. Home. Dinner with the family.

Douchery on the Golden Gate

An otherwise great ride home marred today by some self-absorbed prick who insisted on blowing by all four of us at warp speed with millimeters to spare, having dispensed no courtesy warning whatsoever, and the dastardly deed having been consummated just as we were slowly and courteously passing a dad with his little girl on the west side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Ths Shitbox nearly crashed all of us into the family. Unreal behavior. Guys like this are what cause everyone to hate cyclists. [and before you make assumptions, no, we were not dragging ass and taking up the entire path -- this guy was just in some kind of hurry and treating the bridge as his own personal time trial course].

In happier news, it was a glorious day out there and the ride was fantastic but for the douchery described above. It was almost 80 degrees on the sunny side of the bridge and fog free. Could the good fall weather be here at last? Hope so.

Seven Sisters

HOT today. Got in an early ride on the regular loop. Stunning Wx this morning -- 100 mile views and no winds. Farallons and Pt. Reyes were so close you could almost touch them. Incredible. Now off to Outside Lands!

Shop Ride

Did the Sunday shop ride with the folks from Studio Velo Mill Valley. This is a great local shop with some very nice high end bikes and accessories. More importantly, they provide superb service and are fun guys to ride with. An added treat yesterday was the ride start at Cibo, Sausalito's newest cafe and lunch spot. GREAT coffee here. Check it out.

The weather was (and has been for too long!) pretty cold and foggy in the mornings. Sunglasses were not required and in any event were covered in mist almost immediately. We rode from Cibo into downtown Mill Valley, then up to Four Corners where we listened to the SV guys give us some important reminders and tips on descending skills. We put these into practice on the increasingly curvy road down into Muir Woods. From there, a good tempo up the coast to Stinson, and a very fast ride up and over Panoramic Highway. For the first time on this ride, not a single car passed our group from Stinson Beach all the way up to Pantoll Summit. Very nice.

I'm hoping the fog/wind cycle breaks soon, and we start getting that classic "Summer in Fall" weather instead of the dreaded "Winter in Summer" weather.

How do I get one of these kits?

"dznuts. Protect your junk". Classic.

And apparently dznuts comes with video instructions on how to apply it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtZv6Z53lFE

North Shore Three Pass Ride

Tahoe is still delivering perfect weather, although a bit cooler yesterday. We stayed at Squaw in the morning playing tennis and just generally being lazy. For lunch we went up to the village and while sitting there saw a group of four cyclists roll in with full High Road team kits and some very nice bikes. A closer inspection revealed that one of them was Bob Stapleton, owner of the Columbia-HTC team and the man who delivered some impressive stage victories in this year's Tour de France.

One of the guys in his group was riding on Bert Grabsch's old T-Mobile Giant. I guess you get some pretty sweet hand-me-downs when you run a pro tour team.

This morning I had time to go on one last ride. I was meeting the family at Sand Harbor on the Nevada side so I left the house thinking that I would ride around the south end of the lake and up to Sand Harbor. I have actually never ridden around the lake and at first I thought this would be a good opportunity. But then I realized that if I rode to Sand Harbor, that's only riding 3/4 of the lake and I would still have to come back to ride it "for real" in order to say I have done it. So in the end I chose a different route. Turns out that Levi Leipheimer was in town and rode around the lake today, and it would have been awesome to bump into him out there.

I rode to Truckee down the very cold canyon at 6:30am and stopped at Tahoe's best coffee shop -- Wild Cherries. From there I rode what I'll call the "Three Pass Ride" -- up and down Old Donner Pass, over Brockway Summit to Kings Beach, and then up to Mount Rose Summit and down. Then a nice easy spin along the beautiful east shore of the lake to Sand Harbor. A very hilly 65 miles. There's some traffic along this route generally, but this is a fantastic ride with some varied and spectacular scenery. Highly recommended, especially the beach finish for a post-ride swim (and jump off of the huge granite boulders).

Tahoe Rides

The weather has been insane up here this week. Cool misty mornings and clear warm days (not too hot). Been spending a lot of time on the lake and doing a few early morning rides. On Monday I rode the "Triangle" (aka 267 Loop) to Truckee, over Brockway Summit, and then back via Tahoe City. This is a good quick 2hr (38mile) loop from Squaw Valley. It follows some very heavily travelled roads, but done early morning the traffic isn't too bad and most of the route has a good shoulder. The one climb from Truckee up and over to Kings Beach is not particularly long or steep, but it always surprises me how much this little climb challenges me near the top.

Misty morning in the meadows of Squaw Valley. 40F. Brrr....

View from 267 across Martis Valley to Northstar.

On Tuesday I did the Donner Pass ride out to Cisco and back, with a mandatory stop at Wild Cherries for a quick coffee. A touch over 60 miles with one real nice climb (Donner Pass from the east), and one long gradual schlog (Donner Pass from the west). The descent of the east side of Donner Pass is really fantastic. Huge sweeping turns (no brakes required) in a rugged alpine environment with incredible vistas. Pretty incredible.

Today I could only do a quick ride before meeting the family in Kings Beach so I headed to Tahoe City and along the north shore to the Mt. Rose Highway. I climbed up about 2/3rds of the way to the summit before hitting my turnaround time. Great shoulder on this road, although it is a busy highway (it is the main road connecting Reno to north Tahoe). A speedy descent just coasting at 40mph.

View over Lake Tahoe from halfway up the Mt. Rose climb.

By the way, the roads in the north Tahoe area are in crappy shape and although it is beautiful here, the riding is not particularly great (by Marin/Sonoma standards at least) with all the cars and shoddy pavement. There's also some serious stimulus dollars being spent here on road repairs and it seems like the entire north shore is a construction zone. That said, it is still pretty incredible with the weather and the mountain surroudings. Hoping to get in at least one more ride before heading home on Sunday.

Good commuting, but now its Tahoe time...

Man do I need a vacation. Thankfully, mine started yesterday promptly at 5pm when I boarded the ferry and ordered myself a jack daniels for the boat ride home. The day started great too, with a perfect 6:30am bike commute over the bridge. The morning was warm, fog-free and the full moon was still cranking.

Rudy rides the Golden Gate Bridge on the worlds best commute

I drove up to Tahoe late last night with the family to start our week-long break. Despite only getting 6 hours of sleep, I was already jonesing this morning for a bike ride and was not deterred by the 36F reading on the thermometer outside at 5:45am. I wasn't meeting Trevor and Grant until 7:30, so I had a little extra time to warm up the legs. I rode down the West Shore and up to the top of Barker Pass (7,700'). Then back to Sunnyside to meet them, then back up to Barker Pass (2d lap), then up to the backside of Alpine Meadows where I bade my companions farewell and rode back home to Squaw Valley to play tennis with the wife and kids. Almost 70 miles and about 4,000' of moderate climbing. Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures, but no camera today.

Sunrise and migrating birds over Lake Tahoe

Trevor on the Barker Pass climb

Today's route (with 2x on Barker Pass)

The White Princess gone?

I was cleaning my BMC a couple of weeks ago after a ride and noticed a small crack near the bottom bracket / left chain stay junction. One ride later, it had grown alarmingly. At the shop, they also noticed cracking at the bottom of the seat tube where the carbon tube slots into the aluminum bottom bracket box. Photos were taken and sent to BMC and they've now said that it is "90%" likely it is a warranty issue. It has since been stripped and sent back to them for confirmation. I've had some great rides on this bike (including an awesome trip to France last summer) and it would be sad to lose her.

Frame cracks on 2008 BMC SLT01 Team Machine

2009 Death Ride

It's been over a week now since the 2009 Death Ride and everyone keeps asking me how it was. To be honest, it completely sucked.

I did this ride last year and while it was tough, I was never in difficulty and finshed all five passes in fine style. I had no issues other than a horrific hailstorm that struck while navigating the final stretches of Carson Pass. I actually felt pretty good last year, and figured this year would be the same. But it wasn't to be.

We had a great dinner the night before courtesy of Bill and Joey, but I couldn't manage to get to sleep afterwards. I lay awake for hours, dozing intermittently, and before I knew it the alarm was hitting 4:15am. I didn't feel great, and I didn't have the necessary excitement for the ride. It was a bad omen.

As I did last year, we started from Woodfords for easy parking and also to avoid that last small but punishing uphill to Turtle Rock Park at the end of the ride. Ridden first thing in the morning, that hill is a good warmup for what awaits. After the long downhill run through Markleeville and into the canyon, we soon started the initial climb up Monitor Pass west. I felt OK and kept my own pace. We strung out pretty quickly on the climb, with Matt and Steve up ahead, me a bit further back, and the rest of our group behind. Normally I would be in the front group, but I felt the pace was too fast to maintain all day. Another bad omen.

Ryan heading up the west side of Monitor Pass

Matt on the Monitor Pass climb

We summited the pass in good time and began the epic descent of Monitor Pass east to the Nevada state line on the desert floor. What a ride! Great views over the Sinkard Creek valley below, and south to Dunderberg Peak and the Sawtooth Ridge in Yosemite. Definitely one of my favorite rides of all time. I also love the ride back up this side of the pass, because as you climb up the two massive bends in the highway the same views take your mind off the climbing. I was actually enjoying this part of the ride and felt like I should bridge up to Steve who was still setting a pretty good pace ahead. Suddenly I felt it -- the first little cramp on the inside of my right leg. Oh crap, I'm cramping and I'm still on the second pass. Not good.

Climbing the east side of Monitor

Crazy Ellipti-Go Bike we saw on Monitor. This guy would eventually smoke me by about an hour on the ride. Unreal.

I recovered a bit at the top of Monitor and enjoyed the long descent back down the west side. I reconnected with a few others from our group and we headed towards Ebbetts Pass, but very quickly I found myself unable to maintain contact with the group. I told them to go on ahead, and I began the long slow march up the pass. Less than halfway up, the cramps returned, this time with more intensity and frequency. I kept telling myself that I just had to get to the top and then I would go back to the car. Three passes would be a big disappointment, but I knew that it was just the product of a very bad day and woefully inadequate hydration and electolytes. But holy crap does Ebbetts Pass go on forever! It just keeps on winding upwards and ever farther back into the mountains. Then suddenly you come out of some trees and there's the summit. Hallelujah!

Remnants of the crew at the bottom of Monitor west side.

Looking up at all of the people passing me on Ebbetts. This was hard.

I made it to Ebbetts Pass, barely.

I downed a coke and tried to eat a bagel, but it wasn't going down at all. Matt and Steve were still at the top of the pass, so naturally I did the stupid thing and followed them off the west side of the pass instead of heading back down towards the car. In my oxygen-depleted brain's reasoning, the west side of Ebbetts is too easy to skip, and "I finished four passes" sure sounds a lot better than three.

Unfortunately, Ebbetts Pass west was sheer misery. Matt tried to keep me company at the bottom, but I basically shooed him away and, in his words, "crawled into my man cave" to suffer all the way back up to the summit. It fucking sucked. Up to this point, even though I was cramping and feeling like poo, I was still keeping a better pace than 80-90% of the riders. But on Ebbetts Pass west, I met my personal Waterloo. Everyone was passing me -- and I mean everyone. At one point, a guy on a pink mountain bike wearing jean shorts passed me, and he had all four stickers showing that, yes, in fact he had already ridden all of the same passes as I had. This was a low point. It reminded me of the opening credits in the movie Office Space where the guy is stuck in traffic and he looks over to see he is being passed by an 80 year old dude on the sidewalk with a walker.

At the top of the pass, another coke was consumed, but food intake just wasn't happening. The coke, however, gave me some wings and I felt like I was recovering a bit on the descent back towards the lunch stop, where I choked down another coke and some bad salty freeze-dried ramen noodles.

Crazy ladies cheering on the riders at the bottom of Ebbetts

Best matching kit seen all day. The "Angry Bovine"

From the lunch stop all the way to Woodfords, I just sat on Matt's wheel and let him pull me all the way. Matt did an incredible job into a stiff headwind and I could never have done it without him. At one point I turned around and saw that he had attracted about 20 fellow parasites to sit in on his one man paceline.

As we got back to the parking area in Woodfords, my bad day got even worse when I was actually stung by a bee that got trapped in the business area of my bike shorts. Great. So I'm dehydrated, cramping, unable to eat any food, and now I have a huge painful welt on my inner thigh. At this point, I figured it couldn't get any worse, so instead of doing the smart thing and calling it quits, I turned left onto Highway 88 and began the trail of tears up to Carson Pass. I hung with Matt and Steve for a little while, but they soon rode me off their wheel and once again I was alone in the man cave.

Matt and Steve entering Hope Valley. I wouldn't see them again until the top, about an hour of pain later.

The ascent of Carson was a lot like Ebbetts west, except maybe 100 times worse. At one point I rose out of the saddle to stretch my legs and was treated with a double full leg cramp that completely paralyzed me. Somehow I got control back of my legs before my forward momentum died and sent me to the ground with a busted arm or shoulder. So the rest of the ride I just sat in the saddle and ground it out. I even had to stop three or four times on the way up just to catch my breath and massage my legs. When I finally got to the top of the pass, there was a little kid standing on the side of the road high fiving all of the riders. I almost got off my bike to kiss him I was so emotionally and physically drained. Matt was waiting at the top for me. I didn't see Steve and we later learned he had turned back just before the summit -- also with bad leg cramps. So after a failed attempt to eat an ice cream bar, I headed back down to Woodfords. All downhill to the car, except for a few flat sections in Hope Valley. I could barely push 50 watts on these sections, and once again I was being passed by everyone. Pathetic, but by this point I didn't care. I just wanted to get to the car and get the fuck home.

Carson Pass looking down.

And looking up. Summit is just around that corner up ahead. I start to think I'll make it.

Having my celebratory ice cream. The smile is forced, to say the least.

My other friend Matt made it back to the car about 90 minutes later, having also finished all five passes. His first (and he swears his last) Death Ride. Of course I will be back next year because I feel now that I have a score to settle with this ride. So until next year!

Donner Pass ride

Still hurting from my sub-par Death Ride performance (more on that in a later post), but I wanted to spin the legs out a bit today. Rode from the house in Squaw Valley up to old Donner Pass, then back down to the pool at Old Greenwood for lunch. Actually a gorgeous day up here today in Tahoe, so I am managing a smile.