Friday Ride! Lagunitas and back

So today we rode from the NW parking lot of the Golden Gate Bridge out to Lagunitas and back. It was a chilly foggy start with 18 of us in nice layers to keep the fog out. After stretching, route review, & safety speech we took a group photo to mark the occasion.

Sandra and Donald swept, John & I rode mid pack. We traveled down thru Sausalito and on to the bike path where we did a quick restroom stop. It was here that we heard about Carmen's flat tire and the heroic efforts by Mark and Donald to change it quickly...

Soon we were off and up and over Camino Alto, thru the little towns in Marin and finally to Fairfax Coffee Roasters where we stopped to fuel up before our next "significant climb", White's Hill. Some of our riders were short on time so decided to turn around at Fairfax. My good friend and rider Bill Lehrke was turning around to go home (to San Anselmo) and offered to take my jacket back to my house-- it was warming up quite nicely by then. I took Bill up on his offer.

(Did you know the Bridge on White's Hill is called "Brown Bridge"? Really! take a look at the plaque on the far end... just think of it as "Julie Brown Bridge" and you'll never forget it!)

After a quick descent we floated on down Sir Francis Drake Blvd for about 5 miles till we hit the Lagunitas Market for lunch. Newbie Mark Wise decided he wanted to buy me lunch- what a pleasant surprise! Thanks for that again Mark!

Soon we were on our way again, with Sandra and John sweeping up and over White's Hill. They gave Barbara lots of room to descend since she is a little skittish on the downhills. She did fine.
I met them all in Fairfax and decided to sweep along with them. As we headed thru San Anselmo I saw a familiar face standing on the corner and watching us ride by-- my husband mike! I stopped said hello, kissed him and ate a coconut macaroon and was quickly on my way. I had to ride a little fast to catch up with the others but made it back on their sweep tail by Ross Commons.

Once at the bottom of Camino Alto, John slowed down to take the sweep position again. Barbara wanted a shot of Gu so I went ahead and joined Sandra up Camino Alto. We all met up at Mike's for one more shot of Gu for Barbara... we were all complaining that our legs were tired and we didn't know why (duh!) The wind was picking up so we made our way back thru Sausalito , up the grade and down thru Ft. Baker. At that point I waited for John and we headed back up the last climb of the day. The fog was coming in again, so it was good timing on our part!

John posted his photos of today's ride here for you to enjoy

The Windy Hills of Hollister

Friday night I drove down to the South Bay and stayed with my mother since she lives in San Jose which is only about a 45 minute drive to Hollister. David planned an official ALC training ride of 55 miles from Off the Chain Bikes, so I volunteered to help co-lead.

The sky was looking ominous, but the forecast said the wind and rain wouldn't hit until the afternoon so we decided we'd go ahead and ride, cutting off a 10 mile loop and hopefully getting us back in before the storm hit.

David, Rick and I were TRLs, Kumar, Natan and Kim were our newbie riders who braved the windy hills with us. And it was wiiiiiiiinndy! Like "blow you over" windy! Our first major climb up Cienega Road was not so bad until we hit the winds near the top of the hill. After that it was sort of cross windy until we took a right onto Old Airline Hwy and hit the headwind DEAD ON. Talk about stopping you in your tracks. All I could do was put it in granny (on a majorly FLAT road) and spin until I got to the end of the road where I made a left and that major headwind became an AWESOME tailwind!!LOL! I'm talking pushing me along the road at 37 miles an hour--- without me even pedaling a stroke!

Soon we were blown to our lunch destination, the Paicines Market in Paicines. They have the best burritos-- good nourishment when you've been fighting headwinds all day. Normally I can only finish a half a burrito there. Today I was in the middle of a conversation with David and Kim, looked down at my burrito and there was just a teeny piece of tortilla in my hand (I had inhaled the whole thing without looking at it!)

After lunch we headed up the biggest hill of all, a road called "Quien Sabe", which in spanish means "who knows". Well indeed who really knew what we were in for? The first part of the hill had a cross wind, the second part, a tail wind and the final climb was a cross wind so fierce I had to keep my head down and just look at the white line on the shoulder of the road while I pedaled.

At one point I looked up ahead and saw that Kumar was walking up the hill with his bike. Kumar walking up a hill??? Unheard of! I slowly road up to him and asked him if he was ok and he said that the wind had blown him off of his bike! I turned to him and asked, "REALLY?", and as I did that the wind blew on my front wheel catching the bladed spokes, causing the handlebars to turn right and effectively turning me off the road and into the soft grassy (luckily) shoulder. I looked up at Kumar and said, "... you mean like that?!". We both started laughing hilariously! Needless to say I got off of my bike and started walking up that hill too, only to have the crosswind gusts blow so hard (I swear they had to be 60mph winds!) that my bike was trying to fly up in the air sideways. The same thing happened to Kumar a couple of times, so with a hilarious bout of laughter we pushed down on our handlebars and top tubes to keep the bikes from flying away, while walking up the rest of the hill.

Once at the top we met up with Rick and Natan who both had the same experience. The wind gusts were crazy but we waited there until we saw Kim and David nearing the top, both also walking their bikes.

Once descending, the wind was at our backs for most of the rest of the route. We stopped before the next turn that would take us into town, Rick and I waited for Natan and then for Kumar. The four of us looked at the sky and determined that we were going to get rained on for the next 5 miles, but that was ok-- we were close to town. We looked back and saw no sign of David or Kim but we figured they were together (and David of course, knew his way back) so we rode on.

The rest of the ride was a little trafficky- I won't tell you about the part where I blanked out and got the "horse to the barn" syndrome-- forgetting to come to a complete stop while I was with Kumar. (He can tell you the story). Other than that it was a pretty uneventful ride back in the rain....

But the wind I will never forget, nor watching Kumar's bike fly in the air!!

YES I RODE TODAY!

Ha Ha Ha! I told you we'd meet and decide if we should ride... but noooo you all thought it was going to rain! Cami met me at the NW parking lot of the GG bridge at 9am. We stayed in our cars chatting while we waited to see if anyone else would show, and then officially canceled (since I had no co-lead) the ride. We still went out and rode "unofficially".

Not knowing for sure how rainy it would end up being, we decided on a modified version of the Tib Loop which would not take us over Camino Alto, but would still give us some good climbing. We decided after Mike's Bike's that we would loop around the back side of Richardson Bay and do what I call the "reverse Tib Loop" path. It was absolutely gorgeous and not a speck of rain fell on us! We made good time into Tiburon and had brunch at the Sweden House. The sky was full of clouds but we did not get rained on until the sprinkles that hit us when were back on the bike path heading back through Sausalito.

Just goes to show that you really can't predict what a day will bring until you get to the meet point and decide at ride out time!

WOOHOO! We got 28 miles in today!

Friday Ride- Reverse Tib Loop

Me, talking about the long down hill which becomes the long up hill...

Peter came out for his first "official ride".

This week's Friday group.

If you have Fridays off (or can play hooky every once in awhile), come out and ride with us on Fridays! Take a look at the Ride Calendar and see where we meet and where we go.