Catching Up (The blog, not the bike!)

What inspires me to write this blog?  Maybe an epic ride?  Maybe some related story?  Or some cool cycling pictures to share?  Since my big “life change” back in late April, I guess I’ve had my share of rides!  And pictures.  But now I can say with confidence that one gets lazy upon retirement.  Yep, I’m proof since I haven't written a thing in quite awhile!  So, what’s been happening?  Quite a bit, but I’ll stick to the rides.  Mostly.   ;-)

I’ve obviously been spending more time riding than writing. It’s been almost 6 months with no entries.  Much has happened in this short time.  Some good, some not.  I have had many great rides.  I got a new bike.  If we stray a bit from the premise of this blog, we can talk about how we’re fucked as a country…. but don’t blame me.  What's wrong with half this country?  Ok, I got that off my chest.  Onto cycling issues…here we go with a little about each of the ride highlights!

MDR.  The 26^th annual Memorial Day Ride went off without much of a hitch….4 great days riding south to Santa Barbara.  Except it was without our usual leader!  Poor Janine had some family issues to deal with that couldn’t wait, but the ride still proceeded.  A few of us stepped in and tried to fill her shoes.  I say tried, since it took 3 guys to do her job.  Things went well, but the ride was smaller and mellower than normal.  That was ok.  The 40 or so of us were not of normal hammerhead inclinations.  We steadily and slower than normally rode the coastal route down through Big Sur and got through without any incidents.  While the mellowness was welcome, I hope our leader returns next year!

Trips.  Following the MDR, I had three trips back east, including one more back to Florida (for my Dad’s surprise 80^th birthday!) and two to New England to visit friends and family.  Riding in both places was pretty good, on my “Florida Orange” Trek in Florida and on borrowed bikes in New England.  Including on a borrowed Moots cyclocross bike!  I was lucky enough to have my friend Eric hook me up with his friend Chuck who lent me his CX bike.  I had a great time on it and was pretty impressed, to the point of making an offer and buying it!  It’s something I’ve been thinking of for some time and even alluded to in a post.  You’ve heard about gravel bikes and/or adventure bikes?  I wanted to get off the road a bit and with this new (for me) bike, I can do that!  Cyclocross bikes are pretty adaptive.  And with retirement, maybe, just maybe I deserved a little sumpin’ special!  So after a bit of delay, I bought the bike, a Moots PsychloX!  It’s a beautiful frame and fit me pretty well.  Cantilever brakes, wider tires (32mm and 38mm) and a 13-30 cassette.  It even has S&S couplers for breaking down for travel and fitting into a special small box.  Not necessary, but a nice bonus!  It’s early December now and I’ve already put over 1,000 miles on it!

Time!  So, this retirement thing is certainly agreeable with my ride schedule!  I’ve been able to get many 200+ miles per week weeks….check out the weekly records on strava for the year.

I’m happy with this little "development" and if the weather cooperates, may hit an all time record miles (~8300) by the end of the calendar year.  I think I mentioned this before….I just hope lots of riding doesn’t become a “job”; that would get boring.  Let’s just keep it fun!  That’s one of the reasons for the Moots purchase….it opens up the door for some “mixed” riding (paved/dirt) so it all stays somewhat fresh.  I know…it’s a “first-world problem” (too much riding), but I’m just trying to keep it fun!

Santa Cruz.  One of the more epic rides was with friends Howie, Vlad and Matt one-way to Santa Cruz.  We took BART to Millbrae and headed over the hills and down Skyline Drive before dropping down to the beach. 77 miles and about 7000 feet of climbing and we all made it ok.  It was a beautiful day of empty roads until about 10 miles out of Santa Cruz. The tiring effects seemed to be delayed a bit, but I had some unusual knee pain for a couple of subsequent days.  It got better in a few days, but I’m getting old.  One never expects or needs these reminders!

I need to be remain appreciative of all the great places to ride around here.  Including Sonoma, Pt. Reyes, Diablo, Mt. Hamilton, and Davis, where I did a number of rides in the past few months.  And friends who can join for rides too.  We live in a great place for riding!

France!  Of course, some of my most memorable rides of the year were in France with Caryn, Jeff and Shelley.  Riding on quiet rural roads with incredible beauty and history was unparalleled.  And once again, like two years ago, we got lucky with warm late October weather down there in Southwest France (St. Cyprien).  We had a week of sunny days to ride, but also do touristy things like tour the castles, taste great food and drink wonderful wines!

Oh, when back in Paris, let’s not forget taking Aunt Annik on a rented tandem ride through the beautiful grounds at the Palace at Versailles.  That’ll be hard to match!

Here is some posted video of the tandem ride with Annik!!

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Suggested Reading!  I dragged a book along with me to France, but didn't get far.  When back, I finished the humorous and eye-opening cycling book from Brit Tim Moore titled: “Gironimo: Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy”.  The book was about the unbelievable difficulty and inhumane conditions of the Giro that year.  Think self-support, bad food, bad roads, inclement weather, and very heavy bikes.  Out of 81 starters, only 8 men completed the 8 stage race around Italy.  Each stage was close 400K long with little or no support.  And the author's goal was to ride as much of the same course as the riders that year and on the same type of vintage bike.  Phew.  He wasn't nearly as fast as the original racers, but he did finish!  Forgetting the "race" past of the race, here is a quote the writer included (from Alfredo Oriani, 1897), under which I think I can live by.

The true pleasure of the bicycle is freedom.  You may go where you wish and when, stop wherever takes your fancy, as carefree as a horse ride, not confused and constrained by railway carriages and timetables.  The bicycle now allow us to conquer space and time…..

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Here are some final words.  With my newly available time, I’ve been developing a list of bucket list rides……Old Route 66, RAID Pyrennean, riding across the old USA.  More fodder for future blog entries.  Keep an eye out. That’s probably enough boring bike stories for one entry.

And now excuse me if I stray a bit.  It’s been about a month since the election debacle of 2016.  Phew.  That was unexpected.  And unwanted.  And the shit continues with our lunatic tweeting wackjob PEOTUS.  In my view, one potentially desirable impact of this new president might to spawn a whole new generation of protest songs.  Or to resurrect punk rock and make it relevant again.  From the campaign rhetoric, this seems to be the only redeeming impact.  I wrote a letter to the SF Chronicle editor the week after (11-11-16).  It was never published, but since I’ve got your attention, this is what I said:

Wow.  What a week.  The surprise election results and now Leonard Cohen’s death.  It would seem that for at least half of us, his melancholy lyrics and tone would feed the despair (and for some, thoughts of Canada).  But as Leonard’s songs sometime recover with more hopeful endings, so must we.  Democracy can sometimes be painful and oh, this week was just that for many here in the Bay Area.  But we have no option but to carry on.  Despair can exists in song lyrics, but should not in life.  This is not the time to give up or become violent.

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And just when we thought 2016 was enough of a shitshow with the election and many musicians passing away from old age, KALX lost four of its station volunteers in the Oakland “Ghost Ship” nightclub fire on Dec 2^nd.  At this point, the tragedy has claimed 36 young lives.  A sad statistic seems to be that KALX has more than 10% of this number.  I had only met one of these 4 folks, DJ Cherushii (Chelsea Faith Dolan) and didn't know her well at all.  But she was a very integral part of the station, as well as her EDM community.  It's hitting the station hard and shows that KALX is a tight community in the face of this sad event.

To a better 2017 with lots of safe, fun riding.  Carpe diem……because you just never know.  Knowing that even Leonard Cohen can sometimes get upbeat, we'll bounce back.  Thank goodness for cycling.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Forgive me for ch-ch-channeling David Bowie, but he describes my current life pretty accurately!  Yes, I’m retired.  Can I say that?  Yes, I can!  That sounds weird and should come from some old fart.  But it’s me.  (No comments….)  How long have I anticipated saying that?  Phew….it’s already been a few weeks, but it’s still hard to believe.  As of April 29^th, after 38 years of federal employment and other post-college positions, I have been officially retired from the working world.  Wow!  No, this post isn’t so much about cycling.  Or maybe it is.  Maybe more than usual because now I feel like I can do lots more of it!!  But let me also explain that this has been an exceptionally busy time these past couple of months.  My lovely wife put together a great combo party the very next day with well over 100 friends, family and co-workers for my 60^th birthday / retirement.  That took a hell of a lot of prep (and yes, I helped…. some….. but thanks Dear!) and we even had the kids serving and bartending.  It was certainly a great time where even some friends from Boston showed up!  And something like that won’t happen again, so we made sure to enjoy it.  

The next week, we moved her mom and cleaned out the family house of 47 years right after the big retirement date.  How’s that for timing?  Then, May raised its busy head with the usual assortment of important dates….our wedding anniversary (25^th!), my wife’s birthday, Mother’s Day, and finally, helping our son get ready to move from SLO to Chico for next fall’s next start to business school.  Oh….and don’t forget about retirement activities.  Let’s just say there were lots of beer tastings!   ;-)

Retirement - I've giving it a try!

25th Anniversary in Bodega Bay

To be honest, I don’t want to ever bore of riding my bike.  But I’ve never been faced with that potential problem until now.  Back to retirement for a moment….I’ve seen the look on the faces of many friends, acquaintances and others when I tell them this….there are a few pat responses that almost everyone makes.  Disbelief.  Congratulations.  Jealousy.  It was obviously in jest, but also with a hint of truth when one guy (a friend of a friend) said “Fuck you!!” to me.  Are we a bit jealous??  I’d say so.  It’s certainly an enviable place to be….having done my time, getting a pension and still retaining my health.  Wow....what did Curly Joe say?  “Pinch me….see if I’m dreamin’!”  My sentiments exactly!

So, now that I can ride a lot, am I riding a lot?  Well, I’m doing ok, even with all of the above-mentioned interruptions.  I’ve always been able to squeeze in quality riding time, due to my ability to "change gears” quickly (off the bike!) and go from work to riding and be home for dinner with just a few minutes in between each.  But now, there isn’t this big push to squeeze so much activity into so little time.  That’s what I’m having fun getting used to….I don’t need to worry about every second anymore.  So, maybe I’ll waste a little more time compared to before.  But mellowing out is healthy too.  I know I was stressing to fit everything in along with work prior to retiring.  But that’s now changed.  For the better.  The less stress, the better!  With the big ride to Santa Barbara coming at the end of May, I’ve been trying to rack up some miles in preparation.  Since early April, I’ve had one ride from Berkeley to Davis recently (94 miles), one up Diablo (81 miles) and about five 60 milers.  I’m feeling ready for the big ride!  It’ll be weird with our ride leader of 26 years not in attendance due to a family issue and a number of other regulars not able to make it.  But I’m hopeful that we’ll all have a safe and fun ride.

Finally, there are a few other recent rides worth mentioning!  I can say with some pride that rides around Berkeley are typically a cut above most places (right from the door, hills, views, mostly decent drivers, good weather….need I say more?), but we still can get kind of repetitive.  But some did stand out anyway!  I had two rides to Mt. Diablo, one successful and the other truncated.  As a late birthday ride, my buddy Marius gathered up a handful of buddies and we climbed the peak in mid-April for a nice ride.

Birthday ride up Mt. Diablo

Then with good intentions of climbing again the following week to remember friends and family who succumbed to cancer, Chris invited me to join his group.  But the rain got the better of us.  The rain started about 10 miles into the ride out there.  We got to the base of the mountain (Athenian School) fairly soaked, so Chris and I grabbed some food and headed back home to avoid more wetness.  It would have most likely have been a warm climb, but definitely a freezing descent.  We did about 60 miles total, with at least 40 in the rain.  Yechhh.  

Look at dem socks.....Dutch riding?

Then, how can one forget the feeling of coming home after officially retiring and heading out for a ride?!  Bye Bye…..I’m going for a ride!!  And finally, on my actual birthday, I did two rides!  What the hell??  It was my big 60^th birthday!  So why not??!!

So, life is good, cycling and otherwise.  WIth more time, rides may increase in length and/or frequency.  Or they may not.  With all of these ch-ch-changes, there will be tons of things to do in this newfound retired life.  Cycling is just one of them.  My only promise I want to make is to keep all things I do, including rides, as fun as possible!  And carpe diem!

Me on the right in the driver's seat....where it all started.

Bike parking on my street....this was not staged!

Keeping it Simple and Missing an Old Friend

Three more months since the last post….yikes, am I slipping on my ride posts?  Yep, looks that way.  Why so long?  Just lazy I guess.  I have been riding, with the highlight being a few off-road adventures and I’m really enjoying those segments!  And yes, they are on the road bike.  It’s really giving me gravel bike fever!  El Niño was supposed to be coming in with a vengeance this winter, but I really haven’t missed much riding at all.  So much for weather forecasts.  (And unfortunately, our water supply.)  If it was raining, I’d run or get on the “erg” machine.  There was one recent week or two where I missed a couple of days, including Saturdays (the big mileage day of the week).  But my mileage is only about 100 or so miles down from last year, which was pretty good (almost 1400 miles so far).  With the realization that soon I’ll have much more time (retirement comes April 30^th!), I’m a little less concerned about keeping up my annual mileage.

So, what were some of the highlights??  Let’s stick with the trail rides!  It turns out that dead ends are pretty fun, if you can put up with potential “no trespassing” signs or loose dogs.  Here are a few.

There are some dead ends off of Bear Creek Road, including Garcia Ranch Rd, Hampton Rd. and Bear Oaks Dr.  The dogs weren’t loose, but they were interested in us!  I really like these roads and the potential to connect with other parts of Bear Creek or Alhambra Valley.  I just did out and back rides that day, but may have to explore more later.  I also rode a nice trail on Old Tunnel Road above the new "Wilder" development in Orinda.  Beautiful, but tough in sections!

The next fun ride was out to Drake’s Beach with some of the Grizzly Peak folks.  On the way back, I took a detour up Mt. Vision (paved) and down into Inverness Park (o a rough trail).  That was truly a test!  I put my foot down a few times, but for most of the 5-10% descent, I just kept the right foot ready and enjoyed the ride!  It was truly a quiet segment with no traffic, with a few hikers with a puzzled look, but also fun.  The common retort was “not on a ride bike”….but I proved 'em wrong!

And then came Florida.  I went to visit my dad and step-mom and had a chance to ride the used Trek bike I purchased last year.  In that part of Florida (Lake Placid), there are many areas “platted” out in the 1960s, but rarely any built homes.  So, that means many, many empty roads, with a combo of pavement, gravel, grass and/or a mixture thereof.  It made for some adventures!  (I rode some of these roads during last year’s visit, but didn’t really hit the dirt.)  In most cases, they were very passable.  But some were sand mixed with gravel and offered the chance for a front wheel washout.   Fortunately, I stayed up on these forays!  There were many more possibilities on dirt roads that were private, but it’s best not to come face-to-face with an angry property owner in these parts.  But google earth sure made them look inviting!  My sister and I hiked in a park that I thought might offer a cool riding experience too, but it turned out to be really soft sand.  The land here is inherently very sandy (the “Highlands Ridge”) and when they build roads intended for vehicle travel, they overlay them with gravel (seashells) if they are not paved.  That makes for a pretty packed down surface.  They even flatten them out with a grader every now and then, which worked well for me on one particularly long stretch (Grand Concourse) of dirt road.

As I noticed in the past, drivers were very cautious and sharing when riding on the road.  Not quite the urgency to get places like at home.  Kinda nice for a change.  Counterintuitive to all of the "Trump" signs and the occasional Confederate flag in the yards down there!  The anger doesn't seem to cross over into their driving....that's good for us cyclists!

Outside of these trail rides, there was also the St. Helena ride with Floyd and the gang, including Dan and Lauren.  It was fun to see old friends and ride with new ones who were much better than me, including a number of BBC riders (including the guy who leads the crazy Nifty 10-50 ride on a tandem with his significant other….they were super strong!).  It was a mellow ride for about 55-60 miles until the fast folks dropped the hammer on Silverado Trail!  There weren’t any dirt roads on the course, but it was just a fun ride on new roads that covered some typically bumpy Sonoma roads that require beefy tires!  With retirement looming and time to do it, maybe I’ll have to push for a gravel bike of some type to keep this newfound alternative riding going!

A couple of thoughts to leave with this time.  I read a VeloNews article about racer Taylor Phinney recently and it was refreshing to get his take on riding since a bad crash last year.  Here is what he had to say.  It's all so true.

“Cycling has nothing to do with the Tour de France. Racing a bike is a totally different sport than just being into cycling. Cycling is this therapeutic, beautiful mode of transportation where you attach yourself to this machine and it becomes part of you. Then you can go to all of these new places that you weren’t able to go before, and that has nothing to do with racing. I’m not a bike racer; I’m a bike rider. I love riding my bike, but I also love testing what I can do on my bike. So, in that regard, I am a racer. But if I had been born in Belgium and I had to race in Belgium all the time, I would’ve never gotten to the level that I am now, because the racing over there is so stressful. It just takes everything away from the niceness of being able to ride a bike.”

Finally, I want to mention the loss of our dear kitty, Joey.  Almost 15 years old and riddled with cancer, we had to put him down on February 23rd.  He purred in my arms until the end.  I really miss him.

Where Have I Been? Where Am I Going?

It's been awhile since I posted....three months?  Oops!  Well, that confirms I'm not the social media person I could be.  I guess I'd rather be on my bike!  It's 2016 now.....2015 did turn out to be a great riding year!   More than 7600 miles ridden and over 500K feet climbed this year according to strava (really, the only social media I've been paying attention to).  For these last three months, nothing that out of the ordinary happened.  We rode to Davis again from Berkeley and I got to ride with recently retired local pro Freddie Rodriguez in a 50 mile fundraiser ride in Napa with my friend Amy as my stoker...my first real tandem ride in years!  I guess that counts as cool!  Here are a few good pics I took on Fall rides, including some from Freddie's ride!

New England Fall (Ledyard, CT in October)

New Year's Eve Ride in Sonoma (Nellingham Rd, Kenwood)

Christmas Eve, Richmond Marina (Ok, does this mean the drought is over?)

Mike and Amy finishing up Fast Freddie's Ride in Napa (Yountville)

Amy and Mike, Yountville

Mike taken by stoker Amy on Fast Freddie's Ride in Napa near Conn Dam

Amy, Freddie and Mike after the ride

The big news post-New Year's Day wasn't really cycling related.  But it could affect a whole lot in 2016 related to cycling!  I followed through with my new year's resolution and announced my retirement from work!!  Plenty of years in "gummint" and other milestones conspired to let me move on with my life.  I'll be finishing up at the end of April and that could mean lots of cool, unscripted, longer rides this year.  Keep tuned to this blog and strava!  (https://www.strava.com/athletes/77170) .  And check out this silly little Strava "My Big Adventure".  It has some nice stats, but they need to work on this a bit!  http://2015.strava.com/video/iJ7JrnE

In the meantime, Happy New Year!