Bigger-er June Ride

I couldn't decide on a route (so many excellent possibilities!) so I wimped out and stole Anna's ride from earlier in the week. I made a few minor variations, but the biggest differences between are two rides were (a) Anna got stuck with a vicious headwind on the coastal portion, and I didn't; and (b) where Anna had a pleasantly warm and pretty day, I got a furnace.

All was well and enjoyable as far as Davenport, where I stopped for some of the best pastries to be found anywhere and a re-fill of the bottles. It was already a warm day, but the coastal fog had kept it reasonable up 'till then. South of Davenport, heading up the Bonny Doon climb, the heat turned oppressive. By the time I got to the top, my speed had dropped considerably, and I was starting to work out the water logistics in earnest! I simply couldn't carry enough water to keep myself hydrated.

I dropped down Jamison, and climbed 236 to Big Basin state park -- Anna took the shortcut up (very steep) China Grade on her ride, but I opted for the longer route through the park so I could fill bottles. Once I got to the park, I just had to sit for a while in the shade and try to rehydrate, but the damage had been done and I was not moving very quickly.

Climbing out of the park was tough -- there are some very sun-exposed parts of the road, before it eventually tops out and descends through the trees again. Once I got on to Hwy 9 for the last climb, I could feel the water I drank in the park starting to get into me, but it sure was a long, slow, hot climb to the top.

The guy with the hot-dog cart was, thankfully, set up at Hwy 9 - Skyline junction, so I could buy a can of soda. After zooming down the other side of 9 (there were unusually few motorcycles out -- too hot for leathers!) into Saratoga and Cupertino, I really entered the furnace; it was well into the 90's (95 on the computer) but all the absorbed heat was radiating from the pavement and right into my parched body. Stopping at traffic lights was painful, with no airflow I could just feel myself cooking.

As soon as I got home, Anna helped me get cooled off with several glasses of ice water -- rivers of sweat were pouring off me as the water got into my system. I chalked this ride up as one of my top-two sufferfests ever... it was a real doozy.

110 miles, ~10,000 feet of climbing, way too much heat.

Gilroy Gardens

When I was in Camp Quest last week, we had a field trip to Gilroy Gardens.
It was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fun!!!!!!!!!
I went on a ride called Strawberry Sundae.
There was a ride called Banana Split.
I went on a faris wheel!

Bigger June Ride

This week, Nimue has a 9am-5pm recreation camp through the city of Sunnyvale recreation department every day, so needless to say, I had to take the opportunity one of the long free days to take a long adventure ride, despite the big ride near Downieville less than a week ago.

Cyclists take note: this one inspires jealousy!

Anna's 101.6 mile 10200 ft Climbing Loop of Coastal Excellence from Home



5:15 am Can't sleep; get up and pack Nim's lunch and my bike bag, eat breakfast.

5:45 am Chad graciously stumbles out and makes coffee.

6:00 am Pump up tires and start rolling.

6:15 am Note delightful lack of traffic at this hour.

6:45 am Chase little brown birdie running up Moody Road.

7:00 am Note warm sunny weather even at this hour -- no jacket needed.

7:15 am Note large number of cyclists who must be riding Page Mill before work.

7:30 am Sure this is the earliest I've ever made it up to Skyline. Mmmm cherries.

7:45 am Enjoy roll down Alpine Road.

8:15 am Shiver a bit among the chilly patch of big Redwoods near Pescadero Road; start climbing again to warm up.

9:30 am Accidentally eat all of tuna sandwich at junction with Cloverdale Road instead of saving some for later.

10:00 am Note vulture picking flesh off of deer ribcage on side of road.

10:15 am Glad all of sandwich was consumed earlier, as calories help battle with unexpected headwind along the coast.

10:30 am Hate wind; at least it's not rainy. Enjoy coastal views.

10:45 am Big Snake.

11:30 am Bakery in Davenport. Mmmm chocolate muffin. Top up water bottles.

11:45 am Ahhh, no more headwind. Climb Bonny Doon Road.

12:30 pm Mmmm.... yogurt and strawberries.

1:00 pm Gorgeous maze of skinny sunny rural roads with no traffic.

1:15 pm Tricky steep descent down Jamison Creek Rd. Pass road crew "fixing" potholes by filling them up with so much goo as to create lumps as tall as the original potholes were deep.

1:45 pm Eschew easy route up 236 and go up China Grade instead. Revel in the fact that legs still feel strong on the steep curves. Admire big trees. Sweat.

2:15 pm Rejoin 236. Enjoy more big trees. Oops, unexpected descent. Guess route is five lumps instead of four. Big trees.

2:30 pm Slurp a caffeinated Gu. Climb climb climb up 9. Seems almost flat after earlier steeper slopes.

3:15 pm Zoom down 9.

4:00 pm Home. Eat. Shower. Eat. Pick up Nim and go shopping to replace old bathing suit as promised. Eat.



I'm eagerly waiting to see what comprises Chad's retaliation ride this weekend... (any ride of this magnitude inspires an appropriate response!)

Big June Ride

Since we couldn't make our usual June big ride in the Sierras (the Summer Solstice Century, in Quincy) this year, we decided to take a do-it-ourselves approach. We had planned to go up to Downieville for the weekend anyway, so we headed up Thursday night to leave Friday for riding, in advance of the weekend tourists on the roads.

I came up with a nice route - up hwy 49 from Downieville, through Sierra City to Bassett's, then over Gold Lake road, down to Hwy 89. Right on 89, left into Clio, then over the hill to Portola. There's a little side road from Portola that avoids an unpleasant stretch of Hwy 70 for a couple miles, then a brief stint on 70 before turning onto A-23 road and crossing the Sierra Valley. Right turn onto Calpine road, which intersects 89... Left on 89 for a few miles, then right onto Hwy 49 for the climb up and over Yuba Pass. Then zooooom, downhill all the way back to Downieville! Round trip: 95 miles, about 7,000 feet of climbing. Here's the route map and elevation profile:

Anna also found this cool website where you can map out your intended route, and it will tell you the mileage, which we used in advance to make sure we weren't biting off more than we could chew!

I took a turn too early going into Clio, which sent us on a slightly different road than intended -- so we came out onto Hwy 70 a bit west of Portola, rather than coming into town from the south and avoiding one more stretch of 70... but it was a scenic detour, and left us something to explore on a future ride. Anyone contemplating this route should note, that most of the Clio-to-Portola route is on dirt; the roads were in great condition, no problem at all on a road bike with skinny tires, but don't be thinkin' it's all perfect pavement if you choose to ride it.

Speaking of which -- the pavement on the Sierra County portion of A-23 is atrocious!  The cold winters and hot summers of the high Sierra valley conspire to tear the road apart, and (like in most of California) the maintenance has bee "deferred" for many years. The result: cracks running completely across the road, every 20-40 feet, 2-4 inches wide. At car-speed, they give an annoying but rhythmic thump; at bike-speed, your wrists and posterior take quite a beating for about 15 miles. It happened to also be blowing a pretty good headwind on that stretch, as the usual afternoon cumulus build-up brought cooler air but also some considerable wind.

The pavement going over Yuba Pass, and down the other side all the way to Sierra City, isn't much better. Climbing, you can avoid the worst, and roll through the holes you can't avoid... but descending, it's painful at times, and sometimes borders on dangerous. Neglected infrastructure, it seems, is most evident when experienced on a bike.  There *was* a patching crew at work on the west side of Yuba Pass, so perhaps some of the worst spots will be fixed soon.

Nimue and Grandma Linda got to have a fun day of quilting, playgrounds, and trips to the store for treats... Saturday was Downieville's annual Gold Rush Days, with stagecoach rides, wild west shootouts on main street, and other fun in town. We cooked burgers with Dorr and Ethan, then went to see "Paint Your Wagon" (Clint Eastwood singing...) in Downieville's little theater.

Sunday we finished up a few chores, and headed on home. We had thought to go watch Lance and Levi and Chris Horner mix it up at the Nevada City Classic race, but realized that (a) the crowds would be huge, and (b) we wouldn't be able to watch the race and still get home at a reasonable hour for small children... we bought strawberries at our favorite organic roadside stand instead.

The Famous Last Annual Abalone Camp-Out

Yet another belated post... this trip was May 29-31.

Last year we were invited, but couldn't attend, the famous last annual abalone camp-out. This year, we made a point of being available in case last year's event wasn't actually the last. And, for something like the third year in a row, it wasn't!

The abalone camp-out is a loosely-organized get-together of FoR (Friends of Randy) for a long weekend of bike riding, abalone diving, abalone cleaning, abalone pounding, abalone cooking, and (lest we forget) abalone eating. The location is the gorgeous Ocean Cove campground just north of Fort Ross. There's a big group campsite, everybody sets up a tent, and brings pot-luck food for Saturday night's feast.

I went up very early on Friday morning with Randy, and we rendezvoused with Bruce and Steve for breakfast at Pat's in Guerneville - a tasty and very traditional diner, owned by the same folks since 1945. We then got a great ride in, going down the coast to the rather steep Meyers Grade road, then down Fort Ross road almost to the little town of Cazadero, where we turned on King Ridge road and got in a few more climbs, before descending Hauser Bridge road then climbing some more to get to Seaview road. Here we considered dropping down Kruse Ranch road, but it's unpaved and, at the top, quite steep -- this didn't look so appealing, but Timber Cove road, a few miles further along, looked like a good bet. It proved to be a screaming descent on good pavemement, dropping us from the ridge pretty much straight down onto Hwy 1. We rode north on 1 back to the campground, making a loop of about 50 miles, up and down some very steep hills, and racking up nearly 8,000 ft of climbing for the day. By the time we got back to the campsite in the evening, lots of other campers had set up, and my Mom had arrived, shortly followed by Anna and Nimue. The Schmidts had also arrived, with their girls, so Nimue had some other kids to play with. BBQs and homebrew were quickly deployed, and a fine evening was enjoyed by all.

Steve, Bruce and Chad, smiling because they have no idea of the steepness of the hill hidden in the fog behind them...

Randy smiling (or is it a grimace?) as he tops Meyers Grade: two miles at an average grade of 18%

Saturday morning, my Mom and Nimue went wandering off is search of tidepools with the Schmidts' girls and some others, while Anna and I set out for a ride. I didn't get 20 feet before realizing I had a flat... but a quick tube replacement, and we were on our way. We took a great route, up Hwy 1 for a few miles, then turning inland on Kruse Ranch Road, a quiet dirt road that, as it turns out, climbs gently through rhododendron forests to the tiny hamlet of Plantation. The steep part I saw the day before is short, and only at the very upper end; otherwise, it's a great little road, but more suited to climbing than descending. It then connects to Hauser Bridge road, which descends to a creek and then climbs like crazy back up out of the canyon... emerging into rolling pastureland populated by cows and calves. I remembered going down this hill the day before, and thinking what a tough climb it might be in the other direction, never for a moment considering I might be doing so the very next day! The road continues through terrain much like this -- no cars, a couple of other cyclists, very pretty -- emerging in a miniscule native american town on an only-slightly-larger road. A long and crazy rollercoaster descent eventually dropped us back onto Hwy 1, and we cruised back down to the campsite to make a big loop. We didn't ride all that far (maybe 35 miles) but racked up about 3500 feet of climbing. For me, it was well over 10,000 feet for the weekend!

Anna and Chad, almost back to the campground

After some snacks to recuperate, we joined the dozen or so campers who spent their morning diving for abalone in getting the mollusks cleaned up and ready for eating. This involved an ad-hoc assembly line, getting the abs out of their shell, cleaned, trimmed, scrubbed, trimmed some more, and sliced thinly; then each slice was pounded pounded pounded! before being declared ready. With lots of hands, this went pretty quickly. Meanwhile, margaritas were being blended, other beverages were being liberally applied to the crew, and a variety of drums and other percussion were brought out...

Nimue had a fine time drumming, singing, practicing her mountain-biking skills, and running with the "kid pack."

Nimue zoomed around on her bike a lot!

Soon, a huge variety of pot luck dishes began to appear on the tables set up in the middle of the campground, and then the abalone cooking began. As dusk approached, the assembled campers consumed as much abalone as their bellies could hold, augmented by some spectacular fish stew, an experimental abalone chowder, grilled meats, salads, vegetables, breads, and more in great profusion. It was Good.

Drummers drumming.

Sunday morning, Mom and Anna and Nimue and I walked out to the land's edge near the campground, to play in the sand and watch the ocean for a bit. Nimue (and Anna) found a fun swing to play on! Then we packed up, said our farewells, and headed back home.

Oooooh, sand!

We're sure looking forward to the next last annual abalone camp-out!

Survived the Birthday Party

Just a quick report on Nimue's birthday party over the weekend -- she had seven friends over for a couple of hours of afternoon backyard fun. We started them out making origami cats and decorating goody bags with ribbon, fabric glue and fabric markers until everyone had arrived. This was followed by several old-fashioned party games from my youth: Hot Potato, and egg and spoon relay race, and Pin the Eyes on the Kitty (no, not on the real cat...). Kids still enjoy these, hokey as they may seem. For that matter, it seemed that Chad enjoyed helping -- the picture shows him operating the hot potato music (from a Serbian trumpet festival) but he also was highly involved in the rest of the activities.
After the games, the kids got to whack the pinata, which for all that it was homemade, worked remarkably well. Everyone got one turn blindfolded, and one turn without the blindfold, and the whole thing finally came down on Nim's third turn, raining saltwater taffy everywhere as the first-grade piranhas moved in to gobble it.
The "Three-Layer Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Filling and Strawberry Frosting" that Nimue requested followed, and the kids then finished up by helping Nim open her presents and play with them.

Note to self: Next time one wings strawberry buttercream without a recipe, use slightly more butter than strawberry puree rather than a straight 1:1 ratio (frosting still very gooey when the "Can't bear to add any more sugar" point was reached).

Birthday Pinata Project

No, Nimue won't be seven until August. But, given everyone's vacations and my not having contact information for all of Nim's friends, it's nearly impossible to get a quorum together for a birthday party in the middle of the summer, and once again, we're having her birthday party early. Tomorrow, in fact.

I'm still running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but some things are done, the cake's in the oven, and this tired Ma needs to sit down. I was pretty happy with the way the cat head pinata Nimue requested turned out, so you all get the blow-by-blow description. The pinata was made entirely from things that were squirelled away in the closet :)

1. Start by making a vaguely cat-head-shaped blob using balloons, a plastic bag, and tape. Thank Chad for bike pump nozzle for inflating said balloons, since all that was in the house was a bag of water balloons.

 

Show kid the joy of using static electricity to stick balloons on the wall, and then watch the cat go berserk trying to get them.

2. Put approximately 3 layers of paper mache over the head shape.

 

3. Cut a hole in the back to put the candy in. Pop all the balloons inside and dump them out. Poke a wire in the top for hanging. Panic about structural stability of hanging apparatus and reinforce with duct tape. Reinforce yet again on the inside because duct tape is cool and mom is paranoid.

 

4. Cut tissue paper into little squares and painstakingly glue them all over the head by wrapping them around a pencil, dipping in glue, and pressing to the appropriate spot on the head. Curse the wind in the back yard as it blows myriad tissue paper squares into the plate full of Gooey Glue.

 

Enjoy the exclamation "It's coming out just like I wanted it" when child gets home from school.

5. Keep gluing tissue paper until entire structure is covered. Rejoice that something finally made a significant dent in the growing pile of saved tissue paper in the closet. Fill the pinata with saltwater taffy (yum!), close the door, and try in vain to keep the kid from molesting it.

 

 

I fear that all my dealing-with-kid-stuff energy is used up for the week. Alas, one still has to survive the actual party.

They Looked Like Nice Bricks

 

One sometimes finds oneself doing strange things. In the last month, I have outraced a random third-grader on foot (eliciting the comment "You're the fastest mom EVER!"), cut the last several months' worth of milk jugs into chicken feather shapes (more on that in October), had a "Four Bike Day" (in which I found that I had ridden all four of my bikes in the same day on different trips for different reasons), and had endless discussions with Nimue about her Thinking Heart Rat.

This morning, I saw a pile of bricks with a FREE sign on them on the way to school with Nimue. Not just any bricks, either -- these ones had character. And they were right around the corner from the house. No way to resist, especially since I've used up my current supply of random bricks to hold up pots, weigh down the lid of the compost bin, support a set of drawers, etc.

Given that they were just around the corner, there was no way I was going to use the car, so I headed home, had Chad show me how to attach the bike trailer to my mountain bike, and went to get them.

People think it's weird to carry bricks on a bike. Seemed simple to me: ride bike around corner to free pile, load 15 bricks (the experimentally-determined maximum load before the bike+trailer gets too wobbly), ride back to house, unload. Repeat 5 times. I got a lot of strange looks and laughs, and one guy in a minivan even stopped and asked if I needed a ride. Nope! I live just around the corner. And I know what I'm doing....really....

The two older ladies in the yard I picked them up from also thought I was nuts, but were glad to see the bricks go. The bricks had apparently been salvaged from a demolition site up in SF 20-30 years ago, and the woman getting rid of them said when they pulled them out of the debris pile, there were postcards and letters from the 1920's mixed in. The bricks had history. Plus, they just looked like _nice_ bricks.

 

Done

Upon cleaning out some of the stuff in the garage so we could assess and consolidate the camping gear, Chad ruefully realized that one pair of his bike shoes was just done.

Chad sez: Well, bear in mind that they were bought circa 1991, and served a long and hard life... failure mode was that the upper de-bonded from the sole, resulting in the gaping hole seen on the left, but the uppers were also worn through in several spots, and the protective plastic around the heels had been sliced through (on both shoes) by chainrings and rocks. These shoes were *more* than done. It was still sad to part with them, (sniff), we had been through so much together!

RollerReindeer

 

I came back from my bike ride on Saturday to find that Nimue had invented RollerReindeer with a stuffie, clear packing tape, and some cars. (Photos compliments of Chad, who watched her in the afternoon while I rode -- I did the same for him in the morning.)

 

Helpful Hints

I'm often dubious of "helpful" hints that one finds from various sources to solve day-to-day problems. Perhaps this stems from watching my mom experiment with tips gleaned from Readers Digest in my youth (Cayenne pepper in one's socks to warm one's toes comes to mind -- when it didn't work immeidately, she added several more spoonfuls and headed off shopping, at which point her feet started to sweat, and then burn. Her toenails were orange for weeks.) Or perhaps I'm just suspicious of unverified data in general.

But, to be fair to my mom and to helpful hints in general, once in a while something actually works. Shaking Polly Pockets's evil tight rubber clothing in a bag with some cornstarch does indeed actually make it possible for a kid to then slip them on the doll without having to ask for help. The hot water/baking soda/aluminum foil dip for silver does really instantly remove tarnish.

At any rate, the occasional success led me to search for a relevant hint after we discovered that the car was covered in pitch from the tree it had been parked under during our Monterey bike trip. Said pitch has splatted all over the windshield and side of the car, my haphazard hurried wipe job did very little good, and the week and a half since the goop deposition has been both busy and warm enough that the substance had turned into a hard crust of seemingly impervious crud. Good old soap and water wasn't going to do it.

A quick web search turned up a variety of suggestions, some involving icky chemicals I didn't want to purchase, others making me worry about the integrity of the car paint after the process was done. One suggestion struck me as both cheap and plausible -- try putting some vegetable oil or shortening on it for a few minutes, then wash the whole mess off. The theory is that organic vegetable goo is likely to dissolve in other organic vegetable goo. Or perhaps the oil just wicks into the interface and loosens it. Quite similar to the old "Use peanut butter to get gum out of one's hair" trick (used many times in my youth, I have to admit).

The result:
On the glass windshield this worked just like a charm. Put shortening on, wait 10 minutes, wipe the whole mess off with a soapy sponge, and rinse. No scrubbing. Amazing.
On the car body, it wasn't quite as easy. The pitch softened up a bit, but still required quite a bit of scrubbing and rubbing to get off. I'm studiously not thinking about differences in interface adhesion of pitch on glass vs. on car paint as it reminds me far too much of organic thin film adhesion problems at Allied Signal....

Cycling trip to the Fish Zoo

Apologies for the delayed post, we've been busy!

For memorial day weekend, we decided to take a bike tour. Monterey seemed like a nice destination, with lots of bike-friendly roads to travel along the way and the most excellent Fish Zoo at the end. Given only three days, and Nimue's current touring range of about 60 miles, we chose to start from the *top* of the ridge, rather than ride from our house and thereby add 20 miles and a couple thousand feet of climbing to the front end of the ride. We parked the car at a friend's house on Summit Road, so we didn't have to worry about it being there when we returned!

Here's the route and elevation profile for the first day's ride:

Based on our attempt at the Delta Century ride to swap riders between the tandem and a solo bike (which worked, but needs fine tuning to be viable for longer distances) we elected to have Anna and Nimue stomp pedals on the tandem, and Chad would carry all the clothes and gear on his bike. This combination proved to match our speeds pretty well.


From the ridge, and Summit Road, we dropped down Soquel-San Jose road -- a long, gentle descent of sweeping curves on mostly good pavement and little traffic. From the bottom of the hill, we worked our way though Soquel and Aptos, over towards the coast, along the very roads that Anna and Chad rode on their "tandem getaway" after their wedding. We quickly found ourselves on the rolling hills of the agricultural coast, riding through giant fields of ripe strawberries, lettuce, and artichokes. We wound around the back side of Elkhorn Slough (which we visited a couple of years ago by kayak) and then came into Castroville in time for lunch.

Pretty much the first sight we saw coming into town was the Giant Artichoke restaurant -- for three hungry riders, it looked like the perfect place! We gorged on a big plate of fried artichoke hearts, then burgers and a corn dog for Nimue.


From Castroville, we took a delightful separated bike path pretty much all the way in to Monterey. It took us along more ag fields, then out to the sand dunes along the coast, into town. An afternoon wind made us work a bit, but high clouds, cool temperatures, and great scenery made it enjoyable labor. We soon found ourselves coming into Monterey, and the hotel chosen by Anna was practically adjacent to the trail, was very bike- and kid-friendly, and featured a hot tub that we had been looking forward to all day.

After getting cleaned up and relaxing in the hot tub for a while, we walked a few blocks down the trail to Fisherman's Wharf, and found a charming restaurant specializing in all things calamari. They, too, were very kid-friendly, and surprisingly uncrowded -- the slower pace likely coming from the current economic challenges. After dinner, Nimue made her very first trip to a real, old-fashioned candy shop; her eyes didn't know where to land, but we escaped with only a pound of salt-water taffy to share.

Sunday found us making a casual start to the morning, and after breakfasting at the hotel's attached restaurant, we walked the wonderful multi-use trail from the hotel to the Fish Zoo. Our recently-acquired family membership allowed us to bypass the block-long ticket line, and walk directly in -- no waiting! There was quite a crowd at the aquarium, but we managed to see nearly everything, including the feeding of the tuna, and Nimue got lots of hands-on time in the kid exhibits.




We played on the beach on the walk back to the hotel, then cleaned up and did some more hot-tub relaxing / warming up.

After this, we headed to a local pizza joint for an easy dinner. Anna and Chad made plans for Monday's ride, in particular researching cafes along the route that we could stop at for breakfast, coffee, and sandwiches to go. Chad's iPhone proved invaluable for this task, as we wanted to find a place with good food, in the right direction, and not too far off the bike trail. We found some good candidates, made a plan, and went to bed.

We made a quick departure Monday morning, as we knew we could well have a long day of it, with a big climb at the end of the ride. We quickly located our chosen breakfast stop, only to find it closed -- small, character-filled cafes seem not to update their hours on their websites... A quick consult of the iPhone showed that our #2 cafe wasn't in the desired direction of travel, but it also wasn't really too far away and we were getting hungry and desirous of coffee, so off we went. The Paris Cafe proved to be a good choice, and we were quickly fueled and supplied for the journey ahead.

Our path for the day was pretty much a reverse of Saturday's route, as far as Watsonville. Our map indicated a dedicated bike trail along the northeast edge of town, which proved to be an inaccessible levee maintenance road... this had the unfortunate consequence of routing us onto Freedom Blvd, through the middle of Watsonville, which we really can't recommend for bike travel. Almost any side street would be a better choice! Once through town, though, the traffic thins out and the road resumes its meandering rural character.

Turning off Freedom onto Corralitos Road, we soon pulled off the road at an elementary school (closed for the holiday), and had a yummy lunch sitting at a quiet table as the sun started to come out. From Corralitos, we began to climb Eureka Canyon, which is mostly gentle, narrow, and pretty as it climbs towards the ridge. The higher we climbed, the more the sun came out, and we really enjoyed the change from the gray of the previous two days! Soon, we came out the top of Eureka Canyon and onto Highland Way, which continues the climb and parallels the San Andreas fault line -- the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was just below us a few miles.

Highland eventually changes into Summit Road, and we then passed Soquel-San Jose road, completing the loop we started on Saturday. Just a few more miles returned us to the car, with one more excellent adventure under our belts.

And here is the route and profile for Monday's route!