Cross Training

You know how everyone says "You should cross train, it strengthens you". Bullshit. I hiked halfway up San Gorgonio and back and I've been crippled for two days since.

My daughter, her husband, and two friends planned on hiking San Gorgonio last Sunday. She's pregnant so she decided to only hike up halfway - I agreed to hike with her so she wouldn't be out there on her own. The two friends cancelled at the last minute so her husband, Edgar, summitted alone.

We started at Vivian Creek near Forest Falls which got nailed by some recent monsoon rains. There were massive mudslides and we could see where 'dozers had pushed the mud and rocks to the side of the road. It was quite traumatic to imagine what they had been through recently.

The first mile after crossing the dry creek bed is very steep and rocky but after that the trail got very pleasant. I can only imagine how that creek looked a week ago.

We got half way up and Amber wanted to keep going but I was feeling a little stumbly so we turned around and waved goodbye to Edgar. I'm glad we turned around when we did because I was tripping on rocks which is always a sign of fatigue. There were a lot of other hikers on the trail - I would guess 20-30 so we weren't worried about Edgar being injured and alone. Some of them asked if we had been to the top already. I said it was very cold up there which was probably true, but implied we'd summitted 😁.

On the way down, we saw a small herd of deer that were unafraid of us. I expect they're used to hikers.

It's now been two days since the hike and I'm still so sore that I can hardly walk. I have to get up and walk around every hour or so or my legs really lock up. Cross-training my arse!

Back to the Beach

Our latest heatwave is over which means it's possible to ride along the beach in the evening without suffering from heat stroke. I've been missing my quesadilla at the Bolsa Chica Café so I drove down to Anaheim after work on Friday and rode the Brompton. I decided to take some photographs to post on Cyclechat.com to try to make the Brits jealous. Then I looked at their photos and I'm the one that got jealous. 

Here are my pictures, take from Bolsa Chica beach.

Here are some of their photographs, taken from various places in the UK last week.

I love it when everyone is a winner!

GoPro 9 at Big Bear Lake in the dark

You know that wonderful feeling when you discover a new bike path? I came close to that last night. Tropical Storm Kay has broken our ten day heatwave. Yes, this is the first day this September that hasn't been well over 100F at work. It was "only" 85F with 100% humidity and light rain.

I headed over to Big Bear Lake which is at 7,000' and tolerably cool once the sun has set. I have a new GoPro Hero 9 and I wanted to see how it performs in low light. But more about that later.

I started at the Cougar Crest trail head because there's a parking lot without gates so the forest service can't lock me in. I followed the pedal path to the end of the recent extension in Big Bear city, then kept on riding and stumbled upon a signed scenic bike route. It's on super quiet roads and rolls past million dollar "log cabins".

Nice bike route

The temperature dropped to the high 50s but my super reflective jack was still a little too warm which surprised me. I had a about 30 minutes of very light rain, more like mist really, and 20 mph winds when I came out from behind the trees. It was a seriously wonderful ride.

I took the opportunity to test the GoPro Hero 9 in low light situations and it didn't perform as well as I had hoped. I've Googled the problem and I think I can improve it with some different settings. Let's hope so because I plan on using it to create a video of the PCH Randos Winter Solstice 200k in late December. The entire ride takes place in the dark.

Here's two videos I shot. They were both recorded in Max Lens Mode (whatever that is). The first is shortly after sunset and is a lot darker than it appeared to my eyes at the time.

Here's a video shot under almost complete darkness. The camera picked up more than the rear screen showed, but much less than I could see with my eyes.

I'm going to try reducing the fps and some other tweaks and try again later.

Everything to Cycling Rain Jacket review

While I was waiting to leave England at Heathrow airport, I wandered into a small cycling store called Runway Cycling near my hotel at the very edge of the airport. I was trying to burn off some left over pound notes so I bought a highly reflective, medium weight rain jacket made by a company I was unfamiliar with - Everything to Cycling (ETC).

As it was the middle of summer in SoCal there was no opportunity to wear it until recently when we had a slight cooling trend and it was going to be about 60F at night in Big Bear at 7,000'. I drove over from my house as the sun was setting to explore a new section of bike trail and try this jacket.

The pedal path, on the north shore of Big Bear lake is a lovely trail and has recently been extended into Big Bear City. It's only about 10 miles out-and-back so it was an ideal ride for the Brompton. I also wanted to test a new rack bag for the Brompton, but that's another post.

The trail had a lot of debris on it from the recent monsoonal rain storms so the Brompton's wide tires were put to the test and passed with flying colors. It was a stunningly beautiful night, riding a dedicated bike trail through lakeside forest. I tried to get some pictures, but I really needed a tripod.

Big Bear City from across the lake

I stopped to take a photo of the jacket. I put it on a sign post and illuminated it with my small helmet lamp to give an idea of how reflective it is. You can't see any of the surrounding trees, just the jacket.

Incredibly reflective

It's a medium weight jacket so even at 60F I was getting warm. It would be better at 50F and below. It has massive pit zips which help cool you down and storm cuffs that let you get it on and off while wearing gloves but also allow you to cinch them down to stop rain getting in.

I'm planning to help support some brevets next year and I think this is what I'll be wearing at night. The riders will see me easily.

A fantastic weekend

I rode my usual 40 mile Friday evening ride from Anaheim to Seal Beach and back on the Brompton this weekend but I started a bit later this time and hit some heavy traffic so I didn't get started until after 6pm. This meant I got to Bolsa Café at 7:45 and found out they close at 7:30. But the cook knows me so he made me a cheese quesadilla anyway. What a nice bunch of people they are. I left them a good tip. 

The sky was heavily overcast and the sun had just gone down behind Rancho Palos Verdes. We got that cool effect where the sun peeps out below the clouds just long enough to light everything up with ruddy shadows, then it went down. 

Sunset behind Rancho Palos Verdes

Caltrans closed three of four lanes on the 215 north and ten miles later they closed all access to the 210 adding about an hour to my drive home. Bastards. I drove the 210 just 24 hours earlier and there were no signs advertising the closure. Did I mention Caltrans are bastards?

On Sunday I rode with Amber and Edgar. It was cooler (high of 84F) so we rode during the day. In fact it turned out even better because there was overcast until the last five miles. We ate at the Bistro St Germain in Seal Beach which was a real treat as we hadn't been there for a month. This was the first time I had ridden during the day for three weeks. Amber's still doing well and Edgar is looking forward to getting his new bike at the end of October. I bet two years ago he never thought he would be spending $4000 on a bicycle.

It's too damn hot

Amber and I have been riding in the evenings to try to avoid the highs in the mid-nineties that Anaheim is experiencing. The problem is the traffic coming down off the mountain is insane on a Sunday mid-afternoon. But this is Southern California, so we expect it.

My friend, Michele Brougher, just rode London-Edinburgh-London, a 1400k - 5 day event. They missed the worst of the European heatwave, but she told me she still had to deal with temperatures in the low 90s in Scotland. It's insane that Scotland has about the same temperature as Southern California. 

Some hotels in the UK claim to have air-conditioning. They don't - not by my standards. Their air-conditioners waft out air that's a few degrees cooler than the room. You have to hold your hand up to the vents to even know they're on. They're going to have to work on that.

If things keep going then Southern Californian RBAs are going to have to cram an entire brevet series into January and February. By March it'll be too hot.

Edgar, my son-in-law just bought a Lynskey GR300 titanium gravel bike. It arrives in October. Hope he likes it. Because it's made in USA it's very competitively priced with Chinese carbon bikes and I think he will like it a lot more. He thought about a Litespeed, but in the end the endurance and touring options offered by a gravel bike won him over.

Friendly horns and idiot riders

I rode my Brompton after work on Friday evening as I like to do in the summer. About a year ago I found myself riding along the beach path behind a cyclist who had a boom box. He was playing some rather good jazz so I was enjoying listening and I noticed that pedestrians were getting out of his way without him yelling or using a bell or horn. The music was getting their attention very effectively, but without being offensive.

I pulled out an old bluetooth player I'd had for a while and charged it up. I found an old SD card and loaded it with a bunch of classical music. As I started my ride I cranked the volume up to max (it's only about 2 Watts) and played it for the entire 3.5 hour ride. I'm impressed that an old, cheap speaker ran that long. It really worked! I only had to yell at two people, and one of those was a reflex as she ran out from behind a car. Now I need to remove some of the quieter tracks and add some Metallica and jazz.

So that was good.

On Sunday I rode Back Bay with Amber, taking a gamble that it wouldn't get too hot. The predicted high was 84F but I think it didn't quite reach that. Shortly after we started we saw this idiot.

He was riding with earphones and no helmet and decided to exit the bike path left without looking or indicating just as another cyclist was passing. They collided, but neither went down.

One thing that makes me angry is cyclists who don't treat their bicycles like they are real vehicles. You wouldn't do that in a car so don't do it on a bicycle.