Renegade Ride, Napa

Saturday we did our "sort of monthly" Renegade ride in Napa, up the Silverado Trail through Calistoga and St. Helena to Taylors Refresher, then back to the Silverado Trail and south to Napa. About 20 people showed up to ride at 9. I think I had my best time yet up the Silverado Trail (28 miles) in about an hour and fifteen minutes. My computer said I averaged 17mph, which felt about right because I was starving by the time we hit Taylors!

What's nice about Renegade rides is that although we all start out at the same time, its everyone's "own" ride. By that I mean no one has expectation about others waiting for them, (or waiting on them!) and its a time for everyone to focus on their own training. Since most of the riders out Saturday were TRL's, it was a good feeling for all of them to have no one to worry about except themselves, it was our own training day... there's the normal concern about your friends, but its different than when you are officially leading and can't leave until the last person is accounted for.

The weather was beyoootiful, definitely shorts and short sleeve jerseys. We had one newbie with us, and one roadie and several "non ALC" riders in our group of 20, all out to enjoy the day. It was Super Duper!

89 Degrees to 49 Degrees

Brrrrr.... only 6 days ago I was in 89 degree weather. Today it did not warm up past 49.

I had a Tiburon Loop ride scheduled as an official ride this morning. The sky looked fine at 8am so I drove out to the Sports Basement in the Presidio to meet up with 8 other folks. When I got there, it was cold but no rain in sight. Makoto, Jennifer, Bruce, Joe, Jodi, John Y, Donald, John F. and I rode out from the SB parking lot at 9:05 and headed for the bridge. Once in Sausalito, the rain started to sprinkle and by the time we were on Bridgeway it was coming down lightly, but steadily. Looking ahead to the north, you could tell it was not going to get any nicer, so we stopped and officially canceled the ride. Luckily, we stopped at Cafe Trieste- yum- for coffee and a croissant and to wait out the rain. Makoto and Jen decided they'd ride back to the SB (and go to work, I guess) so the rest of us warmed up and ate.

John Y. decided since he had actually parked in Larkspur he'd ride over to his car, so he left us. Jodi, Donald, John, Joe, Bruce and I braved the cold cold raindrops and headed back to the bridge where we decided if the ride was gonna be cut short, at least we could get some climbing in. So, once at the top of bridgeway, we took a right turn and followed the signs toward Ft. Baker. The climb from the waterfront back up to the bridge is a doozy, but without traffic so it was worth the workout.

Once at the north end of the bridge, we did a cyclocross move and carried our bikes down the stairs, rode across the path and carried our bikes back up stairs on the other side. From there it was smooth sailing across the bridge and back to SB. A whopping 12 mile ride for the day but some good hill climbing in for good measure.

Every February I say this..." when will it stop raining so I can get some training in???"....

Tour de Palm Springs

This past Saturday, I rode my first century of 2006, the Tour de Palm Springs. This annual ride is a fundraiser for about 50 different charities in Palm Springs and one of the biggest cycling events in California. I ride it each year because it is usually in early February, right about the time I'm getting really sick of riding in the cold damp weather of Northern California. This year the temperature in Palm Springs during the day was in the mid eighties, topping out at about 90 degrees right around 3pm. This was the first year I actually got in before dark, with my actual riding time about 6 hours and 40 minutes. Not bad, considering I even stopped to help two people with flats. Oh yeah, and I got my biker tan back.

Organized Rides/Centuries I'm shooting to do this year:

Solvang, 3/11
Cinderella Century (metric century, girls only!) 3/25
Tierra Bella 4/8
Go Greenbelt 4/23 thru 4/29
Wine Country Century 5/6
AIDS Lifecycle June 4-10
The Deathride: Tour of the California Alps July 8

can't think much past July for any more....

Renegade Rides

Often enough I lead "official" training rides for AIDS Lifecycle on the weekends. Every once in awhile I decide that I just wanna ride.... no stretching, no safety speech, no rules.... well pretty much anyway. This past Saturday was one of those days.

Nine of us met up at 10am (after the rain had passed), and rode out to the Cheese Factory, climbed Wilson Hill, rode through Chileno Valley to the town of Petaluma where we ate lunch at the Apple Box Cafe. We then headed back up 'D' streeet (aka Red Hill) back to the Cheese Factory, through Nicasio back to my house. 58 miles, all hills in February. Not bad considering we we've been riding pretty average 40 mile routes for the past month. It was a great day- a bit windy but that made it more of a workout of course.

Our next "Renegade" Ride is Saturday Feb 25th in Napa Valley.... I was gonna post this as an official ride, but didn't hear back from a co-lead (Dave Kim... where are you?) so we're renegading it with a stop at Taylors Refresher for lunch! Let me know if you wanna join in.

Go Greenbelt Bike Ride

So call me crazy. In addition to riding AIDS Lifecycle 5 this year, I am also riding another week long ride April 23-29th. Its called the Go Greenbelt Bike Tour. Go Greenbelt supports the Greenbelt Alliance in it's mission to protect the region's Greenbelt in an effort to prevent "Urban Sprawl".

Greenbelt Alliance is the Bay Area's leading land conservation and urban planning non-profit. Think of the out of the way local country places you have been cycling-- These are all of the types of places that the Greenbelt Alliance is working to set aside to protect, while still helping to revitalize the regions downtowns by directing new growth within existing cities instead of out in the Greenbelt. As a native of the Bay Area (I grew up in East San Jose), seeing all of the changes to our landscape in the last 30 years or so, I felt it an important cause to support, and hey if it involves a bike ride- you know I'm all over it!

Here's the info: http://www.greenbelt.org/get involved/events/go_overview.html

Feel free to sponsor me today! (Nothing like being a little direct, eh?)

A New Year already?

Photo of my sisters and I on Christmas Day...


It's already New Year's Eve. I've spent the last 2 days cleaning out the excess "stuff" we have around the house that has not been touched since we moved in - December of 2000!! yikes! Do you know how many candles you can collect in that time period? And towels? And chach-kie junk? man, the folks at Goodwill just looked at us like, "how could you get rid of all this great stuff?"

Well, we had to get rid of the old chach-kies to make room for the new....

Happy New Year!

The Season starts again...

That's me modeling the oh so beautiful Training Rider Leader BUHC. (That would be a nice term for Butt Ugly Helmet Cover).


The official kick off to the ALC5 Training Ride Season was yesterday, October 30th. I led a 20 mile ride from SF to Mill Valley and back along with 5 other TRL's : Michael, Rowdy, Debra, Shelly and Jon.

It was a beeyootiful day, and we had about 35 to 40 riders with us. Most folks on the ride chose this route wisely, as most had not been on their bikes for longer than this mileage. We had NO mechanical issues, no super duper slow riders, although we did have to remind people that you indeed CAN get a ticket for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign or stop light!

Once we stopped to regroup at the Coffee Depot in Mill Valley, a few people asked me about clipless pedals, so I got to talk about pedal systems, cleats, why they help, etc...as well as cold weather "accessories" to keep you warm.

I love when folks ask questions because training is what I think I do best.

All in all it was a terrific day, and I really actually am looking forward to the new season, but man I gotta get better at remembering names again!

AIDS Lifecycle 5 poster child...

So I hear that this photo is all over SF and also in the Southbay. My ex-husband even said he saw it in a jamba juice in Los Altos, and I've gotten emails from friends all over town saying they see me in the Muni station every morning on the way to work....(yes that's me front and center!) I guess this sort of "15 minutes of fame" is a good thing. Maybe it will convince average people to come ride the ride this year er, well next year really. But you should start training now, because riding 7 days and a total of almost 600 miles is no easy feat (on the feet or on the butt!)

Bike Against the Odds 2005

A whole bunch of us rode the Breast Cancer Fund's "Bike Against the Odds" ride this past weekend. We rode with my cycling club, the Bay Area Velo Girls, along with a bunch of Velo Boys as well. The route I rode this year was 47 miles with about 4,000 feet of climbing (or so someone said... I don't pay much attention to those details). It was a blast and a chance to raise money for a good cause...

The Big Sur Ride

This past weekend I rode the new bike on the Big Sur Ride. It is a two day ride, leaving from Carmel Valley, traveling down past Big Sur on hwy 1 and over Nacimiento grade into King City. We camped at Fort Hunter Liggett then Sunday headed back to Carmel through the Salinas Valley and the Santa Lucia mountains.

Big Sur is gorgeous country, and it's the scenery that you think of whenever you think of the coast of California. I remember driving down here alot when I used to work for the Nature Company. They had a store in Carmel and I got to come and visit about once a month during the mid 90's. It hasn't changed much, which is a good thing because as you can see it is a spectacular place to visit.

And yes, I actually did ride on the roads you see in the top and middle pictures- the top picture is highway 1 and the second picture is the climb up Nacimiento road from Hwy 1 to Fort Hunter Liggett....

The Synapse

I did it finally! I bought a new bike. It is the Cannondale Synapse, an all carbon bike with a very sweet ride! I took it on its maiden voyage on Sunday- Tour de Tahoe, a 72 mile ride around the Lake. With the exception of my numb toes, which I attributed to the 25 degrees at ride out time, the ride was extremely comfortable! At some point I will take it to Curtis Cramblett for a professional bike fit, but in the meantime it feels really good. And it weighs a whole 17 3/4 lbs, compared to my 23 lb R600 its a whole lot like riding on a feather.

I think I'm over my cycling burnout now...

Solmar Resort, Cabo San Lucas

Mike and I spent a week doing absolutely nothing in Cabo San Lucas. We stayed at the Solmar resort at "Land's End" which is the southernmost tip of Baja. It was great. These pictures are two of the twelve pictures I took all week. It is basically the view from our balcony- the beach and the main building of the resort.

We usually take vacations that are very active- kayaking, hiking, tours, etc. Not this time. This was the first vacation we took where all we did was read books by the pool, and drink two for one happy hour drinks from 3 to 5pm every day, and slept an average of 10 hours a night!

Needless to say it was very relaxing.

Birthdays....

So I've always liked my birthday. It doesn't matter that this was my 43rd, and that I have more wrinkles and age spots than when I was 34- I like my birthday. It's the one time I can coerce 40 people to ride 40 miles up hill and back for a piece of cake!

When I was a kid, my sister Josie would throw these great birthday parties for me. She always had great prizes for pin the tail on the donkey, or twister or whatever. She'd wrap them and attach long strands curling ribbon to them, put them in a box with the ribbon hanging out and if you won one of the games, you got to pull a ribbon and a prize would be attached to the end of it. I always thought that was so cool- its really the only thing I vividly remember about my birthdays. That, and we always got our cake from Aki's bakery in San Jose.

I had my 2nd annual birthday ride on the 27th of August. It was a 38 mile ride to the Cheese Factory and back. This years cake was from Debbie Does Dessert in San Anselmo. Her cakes run a close second to Aki's.

Bike Against the Odds

Each year since they began the ride I have taken part in The Breast Cancer Fund's "Bike Against the Odds" with my cycling club The Velo Girls. There are two fundraising rides I do each year, AIDS Lifecycle and this one. Not only is it a great route (I usually do the 65 mile route, but this year may do less) but it is the one time that I get to actually meet the other members of Velo Girls in person. We are an all women's cycling club based out of the SF Peninsula.

Every year, the Oakland Yellowjackets try to beat us in fundraising and each year they have come in second. Something tells me that this year may be different. I mean their highest fundraiser so far is Ron Marshall, a great guy I met while training for my first AIDS Lifecycle, whose wife is a breast cancer survivor. Since I know a number of Yellowjackets, its fun to tease them in the days up to the ride, to get them to try and raise even more money than VG (if they can)... this year will be no different.

If you want to check us out you can do so by going to The Breast Cancer Fund's "Bike Against the Odds" page and make a donation....the link is:

http://breastcancerfund.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=104407

Imaginary Friends and the magic white chair...

The white chair/imaginary friend magic photo started back in the spring of this year. As a joke, our friend Rowdy took a picture of Shance (the eternal bachelor) in our white chair with his arm around his invisible future partner. Lo and behold, 2 months later Shance really does have a girlfriend, so we made him pose with her for a picture in the white chair. Every one of our single cycling friends now believes that chair has magic powers so a few of them decided to pose in the chair the same way Shance did with his imaginary friend that came to life... heck what's not to believe?

So here is Shance with his imaginary friend, who became Michelle.
Then Donald, Yoichi and Patrick who hope that magic rubs off on them too!

Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be many more "imaginary friend in the white chair" pictures to come.

My Best Friend...

That would be my husband, Mike Brown- but you knew that.

I met Mike at the Towson Town Center mall in Towson Maryland in July of 2000. We were both traveling for work that year. I had been separated- mostly divorced- from my ex husband since '97 and had resigned myself to having this great simple, single life, forever. That decision was reversed on Christmas Eve 2001 when Mike Brown became my husband...

I call him McGyver because he can pretty much make do with any common household item. He can fix anything, likes to stay physically active and is a damn good cook. I think my Gay friends are only my friends because they all like Mike so much... that's ok, I'll take the credit anyhow.

It's nice to have a best friend who knows your mood swings (and man, I have many!), will tell you the truth if your clothes don't look good on you (in the nicest way possible), will listen to you no matter how much you ramble on, and on, and on... tells you he misses you even though he just saw you two hours ago, makes you eat healthy and will refuse to fight with you, recognizing that your only being a bitch because you really just need to eat. :-)

Mike is a Sr. Construction Project Manager with a major retailer located in the SF Bay Area. He travels lots- and I only really see him 4 nights a week... but since we met while traveling, we are used to not being around each other which makes our time together incredibly fun.

I couldn't ask for a better best friend.

Tess- my very first ever friend....

Ok I guess I'll start with the first friend I ever met in my life, that would be my mother Tess. The photo attached is of the two of us in the water on the island of Boracay in the Philippines in January 2004. My mother is 84 years old- yes that means I am a menopause baby- she was 41 years old when I was born. She thought she was going through menopause so she went to see the doctor who said- "menopause? no, you are pregnant!".

My mother can be as annoying as any mother should be. But she is still my friend, and even forgives the fact that I am the only daughter she has that has gone through a divorce and then remarried outside of the Catholic Church- in fact not in a church at all... She is extremely active in all sorts of things, Senior Citizen volunteering, church gatherings, and has friends all over the place that she has met since she immigrated here to the US in 1955. I can only hope to be as energetic when I am 84. She still drives, although only to her little corners of the world- Church, the Sr. Citizen Center, and the grocery store.
She has a couple of local neighbors with whom she "hangs" with and together they are like the Golden Girls.
Being 84 now, she is slowly seeing her old friends pass on and sometimes is attending 3 or 4 funerals a month. It's sort of a bummer for her, but it also makes her realize how much vitality she still has in her even at her age.

I live with my mother 3 nights a week. Since I have to commute to my hometown from Marin each week, its a good excuse to see her and not feel guilty when I don't come home for Thanksgiving, Easter, etc... This also allows her to feel a little more secure, and not have to have a "roomate" 24/7.

We laugh ALOT together, over the dumbest things- I guess that is what keeps us both so young. Not to mention the fact that she makes me watch Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and Dr. Phil with her each night that I am there. Oh well, its better than having to visit her in some smelly nursing home somewhere...

My mother Tess. Probably my most annoying friend. :-)

Friends...

I decided that I would write a bit about each of my friends, since alot of my life revolves around them mostly... childhood friends, cycling friends, friends of friends- you get what I mean. Many of my friends I've met while training for AIDS Lifecycle over the past 3 years. I'll do a different post on each of them (don't tell!) :-)

You've already met Greg in my last post, but there are a whole bunch more that I'll tell ya about...

Irish Greg

I was looking at these pics of my friend Greg. He has been cycling seriously for not quite a year now. Isn't it amazing how fit he looks in the lower picture (he's the guy on the far right) compared to his "promo" picture? I told him they really needed to give him a new promo picture because he looks nothing like the old Greg- the one who looks like he was storing nuts for the winter.... (he hates it when I say that!)

Greg is running in the San Francisco Marathon this weekend, then riding the Mt. Tam Double Century next Saturday.
You GO Greg!

Rafting on the South Fork of the American River

Each year on the third weekend of July, we meet up with friends for a weekend of rafting on the South Fork of the American River, and do this with River Runners- one of the oldest rafting companies on the river. (click on the title bar for their website).

We have been doing this since 2001 with our friends Ernie, Christian and Linda, and each year we bring a different group of friends with us. This year it was Carl, John, Donald, Yoichi, Shance, Dennis, Patrick and Michelle. Every year Christian and Hannah get a little older (and taller) and we always have Joe Tassinari as our guide. We started doing this when Hannah was eight and now she is eleven. This year our second guide was John Kosnowski... the boys liked him alot! heh heh! I think this will be come an annual trip for most of this years "guests".