Weekend Double Century

I decided to punish myself for future, unspecified, crimes by riding 116 miles on the trainer on Saturday and then 87 harder ones on the Sam Woo ride on Sunday. I rode the Sunday ride with Amber. It was cold (58F) and foggy to start and we put all our layers on.

Amber did a massive pull down to the beach and it warmed up a bit so that we had to take layer off when we got there. We got to Dana Point in good spirits and noticed they have installed cute elephant statues everywhere. Here's one next to the Brig, where we ate.

By now it had warmed up to 72F and I took my vest off and slimed on some sun block. It's so gross, the way sun block and sweat mix together. Twenty-eight miles later we were at Sam Woo, but the line was long and we elected to buy Korean pastries at the market next door. They had custard tarts - yum.

I had driven to the start of the ride with my GoPro mounted on the bike, through light rain and fog, and the GoPro would not turn on. I must have got water into it somehow. I dried it for 48 hours and got it to turn on, but it wouldn't reformat the SD card. I put a new SD card in but it wouldn't format that one either. 

I started researching a new GoPro and I was maybe a minute away from clicking the buy button when my GoPro suddenly announced it had formatted the SD card. I put the old one back in and it formatted that too. It's like it knew it was going to be replaced, and tried extra hard. My 5 year old Session 4 - what a trooper. I did order a waterproof case for it, though.

One a side note, I bought a Bismuth specimen as a Christmas present for Sherry. It's really pretty.

After the Storm

 Amber, Edgar, and I rode the Back Bay ride today. It's a mainly flat route with some climbing at the end. It was crazy warm for the end of November, but actually quite nice. There was a tremendous amount of debris on the trails because of the storm a few days ago. Here's the first example.

I bet that will be gone next weekend. Parks and Recreation do a great job of maintaining this trail. Amber took a huge pull to the beach, making a point of passing as many eBikes as she could.

Here's a stupid sign - I wonder how members of the committee who came up with this could even ride a bike that slowly? By the way, this is on a downhill.

When you have rules this stupid, people won't even try

We ate at Ha Long as usual and headed home. The Vietnamese iced coffee kicked in at the top of Pioneer and we all headed to the park to use the restrooms. It was about 83F when we got back to the cars - a perfect day of cycling.

Wrong time, wrong ride

Last week I decided I needed to do a long ride on the Brompton with a medium bag attached, a semi-touring test. I thought it would be a good idea to make it a night ride after work to make it more challenging. So I decided to ride a century after work on the night before Thanksgiving.

I checked the weather forecasts and it looked like it would be cold with light winds in Anaheim on Wednesday night so I put fleece tights and a windbreaker in my bag and drove down to the Artic arriving about 5pm. It was already dark and about 70F with a light breeze. My wife texted me that it was very windy at home and would I be OK. I told her it was fine where I was. I noticed my aerobar bag rubbed on the medium Brompton bag so I had to slide it forward on the aerobars. I suspect it will not work at all with the large Bromton bag. I will have to try it out.

Everything went well as I headed to Huntington Beach but I realized my new Ergon GP4 bar ends were too high so I adjusted them at Huntington Beach. Then up the beach trail to Seal Beach with almost no trail traffic. At that point the temperature was down to 60F and as I headed inland towards South El Monte it dropped further so I had to put my tights and jacket on. By the time I got to the Shell on Peck Road it was down to 50F and I was at the limit of my gear. I prayed it wouldn't get any colder. However, the wind was still calm. Half my Monster went into the water bottle and half went into me along with half the grinder I had brought with me. I was pleased I was able to ride 50 miles on the Brompton without eating.

I quickly headed back to Seal Beach on the San Gabriel bike path because there was no way I was going to ride the Los Angeles river bike path in the dark, and when I was within five miles of the beach I suddenly got hit with a powerful cross/tailwind. It seems I should have checked the weather forecast for 11pm too, because it was much windier than the 5pm forecast. Of course I was about to turn into the wind - that goes without saying.

Once I got back to Seal Beach the temperature was up to 68F but there was a 30 mph cross/head wind all the way to Huntington Beach. The sand blowing across the beach trail was getting into my eyes, ears, mouth, etc. I'm surprised my Brompton has any paint left on it. Of course the Brompton bag did not help. There wasn't really much point going onto the aerobars with that sticking out in the wind. The weather sites say the wind was 27 mph, so we'll split the difference. I was averaging about 9 mph through this 13 mile section.

I started thinking about the other windy rides I've done and I can think of at least five that were windier. The worst was a 300k in San Luis Obispo. At one point we were riding across an exposed ridge with a 50 mph cross wind. It was impossible to ride our bikes. We had to get off, crouch down, and walk a hundred yards until we reached some shelter and could ride again. There were four Elliptigo riders on the event and one of them ended up being the first Elliptigo rider to complete PBP. I'm sure this is the ride where he realized he could do it. So, yes, it was bad but I've dealt with worse.

Of course, the turn inland kept me into the headwind but oddly it died down a bit as I headed inland for a while and then came back twice as strong once I was about 8 miles inland. I ended up with 96 miles (some math error somewhere). I had planned on finishing around 1am but didn't actually finish until 2:30am. If you look at my speed you can see where I hit the headwind at mile 70.

I learned a lot. 

• Do not assume the weather will be the same for the duration of the ride
• The aerobar bag and large Brompton bag don't work together
• I will need better cold weather gear for Ireland
• I'm still a badass

Loch Leven Hike

There is a 14 mile hike on our mountain that goes from a conference center at Loch Leven up to Angelus Oaks and back. It has a total of about 2600' of climbing and it's all on old highway 38 which was abandoned in 1933. There's quite a bit of decayed pavement left, heavily overgrown and with several land slides and fallen trees to negotiate.

My wife and I are fairly experienced hikers but our daughter, Amber, has hiked Mount Whitney twice plus Half Dome and a bunch of others just this year . We were happy she could join us. We started at 7:30am because even though this is October it's still Southern California and we expected it to get to 80F at 4000' later in the day. Fortunately at that point we would be headed downhill. 

The trail only has one short technical section. The rest is simply hiking.

We were all moving well as we climbed from 4000' to 6000', averaging 2.9 mph according to my phone which was running the ridewithgps app. We turned around at the Oaks Restaurant at Angeles Oaks where the food and service are excellent. I've only ever eaten there midway through this hike so I'm probably going to think any food is excellent at that point.

In some ways, heading down is harder because the load is now on your calf muscles instead of the larger quadriceps. I've always found the hikes with long downhill sections are harder to recover from. The temperature had risen to 72F as we started back but we had a light headwind which felt refreshing. The bugs were becoming a bit of a nuisance so we got our bug nets out

We got back to the cars in the early afternoon with an overall average of 3.3 mph. Total distance was 14.3 miles with about 2,600' of climbing. I'm not sure how we picked up another 500' on the way back.

So that's that for the year. We have such a short window for this hike between blazing heat and snow we missed it last year. Let's do it again next year.

New combination Wahoo/GoPro mount

 I currently have my Wahoo mounted near my stem and my GoPro mounted on the bridge of my aerobars. This works OK but I'd rather not have to look so far down to see my Wahoo. I also have to think about how this will work during Lejog when I'm on a rented bike. I wanted to design a mount that would place both the Wahoo and the GoPro on the bridge of the aerobars. All the designs I found on Amazon have the GoPro mounted upside down, below the Wahoo. The problem with this is it makes the GoPro controls and lights less accessible and records video upside-down.

I designed my own mount.

Haven't ridden it yet, keen to see what falls off.

Sherry's first ride in two years

 After years of procrastination I finally got Sherry on a bike ride for the first time since she broke her arm in a fall. I was surprised that her bike tubes held air and all I had to do was wash the dust off her frame and clean and lube the chain.

I didn't chose a good day for the ride because the Pacific Air Show was taking place off Huntington Beach. I've been caught by this event before and it sucks because there's like 20,000 idiots standing on the bike trail looking at the airplanes and completely oblivious to the fact they're blocking a throughway.

Sherry's crowd tolerance and bike handling skills were tested beyond her ability so we headed up to PCH where she was a lot more comfortable.

We got to the Bistro St Germain with no further issues and enjoyed their Croque Monsieur.

On the way back we took Atlanta to avoid the crowds and Sherry started to complain about her backside. Apparently she had not worn undershorts, for some reason, so - lesson learned.

Total ride distance was 27 miles at an average speed of 11 mph. I hope we can do this again soon.

Training for LeJog

I'm planning on riding LeJog again in 2022 with Peak Tours. I remember how hilly the route is, especially the first two days. For a country with a highest elevation of only 3700', it is very hilly. I decided to start focusing on hilly routes to try to get my climbing legs back. So yesterday I rode the Sam Woo ride which has more climbing than I'm used to, but not as much as LeJog. Amber came with me. The weather was perfect, overcast, about 70F, and a light 10mph breeze.

We got to Dana Point without any drama but shortly after eating lunch at the Brig I started feeling decidedly unwell. It was either the egg burrito I had for breakfast or the hot sauce I added to my hash browns at the Brig. We turned inland and my stomach got worse. The Aliso Creek bike trail is closed but you know how we cyclists are when a trail is "closed". We have to push on to see if it really is closed.

We walked and carried our bikes around construction equipment, then rode over some dried mud, then carried our bikes over 100' of boulders. 

We were seriously committed at this point. Then there were gates and fences everywhere. They were serious about cyclists not getting through. I scouted and found a section of fence I could move so I created a gap and we passed through. We were on the wrong side of the creek, but we expected we could find a way over.

As we were looking for a way back onto the route, we came across two other cyclists trying to pass through the closure in the other direction. We gave them directions and explained what they would have to deal with. They were undeterred by the idea of carrying their bikes over the boulders. They were just as stubborn as us. I must admit, if I had known how difficult it would be to get through, I would have simply taken Los Alisos Blvd. Part of the problem is we were half a mile up the trail before there were any closure signs. A sign at the start of the trail might have dissuaded us. Probably not, though.

We got to Sam Woo a bit later than planned (the trail closure probably cost us 30 minutes) and normally I love the dim sum here, but my stomach was still unhappy so I nibbled at a few pieces. Fortunately there were only 20 flat miles left. We had a headwind back to the coast, two unpleasant miles on PCH, then 13 tailwind enhanced miles to the end of the ride. Total of 87 miles with 3,000' of climbing. Average moving speed was 14.2 mph. Not bad considering I had a bad stomach and we had to deal with a major road closure.