Skinny Love

I'm off to Kauai for a few days of R&R, but I leave you with this fantastic video shot by Derek (aka Trackhead), some of it with a mini-helicopter mounted camera. The heli-footage is insane. He will be out in Cali next week shooting video like this with some local folks.


Skinny Love from piton productions on Vimeo.

EB on the Evening Commute!

Its new years' resolution time, so my buddy EB has decided to dust the cobwebs off the bike and start riding again. Even shaved his legs for motivation (a mental tactic I strongly endorse, along with retail therapy, as in "I sure do need that new Zipp carbon wheelset to motivate me to ride more"). EB met me down at Crissy Field last night on the ride home for a quick jaunt across the bridge and back. Hopefully we'll get to do this more often, especially as the days get longer.

The Bakery Loop

Big group ride today for the 60mi Bovine Bakery loop from Mill Valley. My friend Matt has launched a new fitness counseling venture, Purple Patch, and is organizing Saturday rides around Marin and elsewhere in Northern California. Today's ride was more of a "word of mouth" deal rather than an official PP ride, but quite a few folks still showed up at the Book Depot this morning. We rode at a nice "social pace" through the hamlets, then the tempo picked up a bit over Whites Hill and into Nicasio. We regrouped there and then pedaled around the reservoir for a mandatory coffee stop in Pt. Reyes Station. The group splitered a bit on the climb over Olema Hill and through Samuel P. Taylor park, and a lead group hammered back up to Whites Hill into a very unfriendly headwind.

Funny note: On the way back through Kentfield, some crazy hippie-looking mountain biker guy heading the other direction veered wildly towards our pack. Matt was all ready to scream at the guy and then realized it was just a certain local Marin denizen who invented the mountain bike saying hello in his own way.

Big group at the Depot

Rolling through San Anselmo

Regroup at Rancho Nicasio

Happy after Pain d'Amande at the Bovine

Heading out of Pt. Reyes Station

Climbing Olema hill

Burning off those Popems

The first week back from the Xmas/New Year's break has come to an end. It's always great to have some well-earned down time from the job but I'm glad to be back in the routine. As with most people, the holidays for me generally mean a time of limited exercise, lots of "red light foods" and copious amounts of booze. This year was certainly no exception. The upside is that I skied 15 days in a row, including two outrageous bluebird deep powder days in Tahoe and many more better-than-average days. The downside is that for all the calories burned while skiing, I probably tripled them up afterwards in the form of Nachos, steaks, Pacificos, French Toast, Cabernet Sauvignon and even these luscious little things called Popems (as in, ya just Pop'em in yer mouth).

Behold the Popem, in its glazed, succelent and NON-organic glory. I must've eaten 157 of these.

So needless to say, while fun was had in Tahoe, I needed a good reentry plan to get back to clean livin'. I took a couple of indoor cycling classes at the gym, but the best was being back on the bike for the commute. I rode home from work Monday and Wednesday, and rode both directions today. There's just nothing better to start your engine in the morning, or clear your head in the evening, than a great bicycle commute. Especially on days like today -- tule fog in the morning yielding eerie mists along the Richardson Bay bike path; a huge full moon bringing the bay waters way up in the morning, then running them out past the bare tidal flats on the ride home; crisp clear skies that somehow still cough up a sunset to make Arizona proud. Yep, it was one of those days.

I always see a few other folks doing the SF-Marin homeward ride, and many times there are the same familiar faces seen along the wharf, Crissy Field, the Golden Gate, or Bridgeway in Sausalito. One guy, Tom, is particularly enthusiastic. He and I seem to share the "holy crap can you believe we live here and get to ride this every day while other people actually choose to sit in traffic talking on their cell phones" attitude -- except that he actually does seem to ride it every day. There are many others too. It's a fraternity of like-minded souls, enjoying the free scenery and plentiful endorphins on the homeward train.

Tom and Eric lead out onto the Golden Gate.

The blurry camera phone shot can't do it justice. Looking over the tidal flats of Richardson Bay to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.

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???