Beginning of school bike follies

So one would think now that school has started that I would have more time on my hands. I do, in fact. However, there is so much pent up energy and need to get out on my bike that I haven't been getting much of anything else done for the last week.

All this pent up bike need stems from only having ridden a scant 300 miles in August. Yes, you should laugh at me -- once again, I've diverged enough from the mainstream to be what Nimue classifies as "Odd Ma". Fortunately, I see this as a good thing :)

This urge to get out and ride in my newfound free time has intersected with the end-of-summer bike ennui that stems from having ridden all the usual hills many, many times this year already. It's clearly time to go out and explore!

So explore I have done. Recently you could have spotted me:

1) on the Dumbarton Bridge. I intended to do just a short ride to Shoreline and Palo Alto Baylands, but got carried away because I could, and it was nice out. After going over the bridge I got distracted exploring some dirt trails in Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, then got a little lost over in the East Bay, got mooed at by what sounded like some very disgruntled cows under a bridge, and eventually found my way back home having added substantially to my mental bike road atlas of the area. It's very fortunate that one can't get all that that lost following the edge of the bay.

2) on Sanborn Road. This is a dead-end stub of a hill off of highway 9 only a few miles from the house that climbs through sun-dappled trees up toward a county park. There's not much up there besides the park, so it was delightfully quiet. Amazingly quiet. Quite a nice little climb including a steepie bit at the beginning. I can't believe I had never bothered to check it out before.

3) going mountain biking from home without having to use the car -- at Fremont Older Open Space Preserve. Between the new Mary Avenue bike bridge and a patch of dirt along the railroad tracks near Bubb, I can get up to the preserve pretty painlessly, even on the mountain bike. Plus, I discovered another nice short road climb on the way up to the back entrance of the park -- Regnart Road is another delightful, deserted, rural-seeming, shady, short climb. Yay for avoiding boredom! Mountain biking at this particular park is fun for me, as it doesn't require much in the way of technical skills but still provides some good climbing. I zoomed out the other back way through Stevens Canyon County Park and rode straight to Nim's school to pick her up, dirty and hungry. The other moms probably think I'm nuts. Probably a good thing.

4) exploring dead end streets off of Montebello Road. I found a weird neighborhood of multi-million dollar homes with stunning views... of the working gravel pit below. Unfortunately most of the other little side roads I wanted to explore have forbidding "Private Road" signs on them. Grrr. I rode all the way up and took the dirt road to the top of Black Mountain instead, and then followed some relatively mellow singletrack along the Old Ranch and Bella Vista trails on my way down to Page Mill. (yes, it's at least sort of reasonable on a road bike)

plus the usual get Nim to school, ride to work, ride to the library, grocery store, etc. I've been heartened to note that there appear to be many more kids and kids+parents riding to school this year than last, at least so far. There seems to be an especially large number of dads with kindergarteners on trail-a-bikes, which is good to see. I've even seen (gasp) a private school student riding her bike to the Challenger school down the street from our house. This school was a bastion of car-infested woe all year last year. What is the world coming to? Something good, it seems!

Last Day of Sunmmer Vacation

For the last day before school started, Nimue wanted to ride to school to make sure that we could make it there by 8:00 (well, maybe this was my idea, but I had her complete buy-in). Upon arriving, she proceeded to ride around the blacktop like a mad thing, as it will be the last day for a while that this is allowed. She racked up two and a half miles just by frenetically circling around the play structures, tetherball poles, and teachers preparing for tomorrow morning's onslaught of crazo kids. Plus, she got to ride over Texas. (see picture)

In other school-related news, we rode back over at 4pm to see the class lists, and her new teacher was friendly enough to poke his head out of the classroom to say "Hi". Mr. Hauser seems like a very calm, friendly guy; his bio on the school website indicates that he's been teaching for 25 years; word from other parents is unequivocably positive; and when Nim was acting nervous on meeting him, he reassured her that his daughter, who is in first grade in another school, was nervous too until starting earlier in the week, and now thinks it's fun. Nim responded well. Already a better start than last year!

A hilly ride, and an unexpected celebrity encounter

Rode some hills with Randy and Mike on Saturday. Not too fast, it was a nice day out and we enjoyed the climbing at a more-reasonable-than-usual pace, probably because Mike had just done the Leadville 100, and both Randy and Mike are getting tuned up for their upcoming giganto-ride to Vegas.

I managed to forget my Garmin GPS/bike computer, which was both a blessing and a curse. I've gotten so used to having my heart rate displayed, and I really gauge my effort by that -- I know exactly how hard I can go before switching from aerobic (e.g. sustainable almost indefinitely, as long as food and water keep going in) to anerobic (e.g. really not a sustainable effort for very long.) Without the computer, ignorance is either bliss or incipient doom, depending on how accurately I can judge my effort.

The computer also gives a nice post-ride summary of the distance and elevation gained; without it, I'm forced to turn to the various on-line widgets, like gmap-pedometer which lets you draw out your route on a map, and then gives you an estimate of the distance *but* doesn't give you the elevation change in a useful way... you must then export the data (using the gmaptogpx bookmarklet) but that only gives you latitude and longitude, so you then add altitudes to the data using the very-handy GPS Visualizer. Oy, it should be simpler... next time, remember the computer, dummy!

All that work to get this: 10770 feet of climbing, and the profile below. I think that the climbing estimate is a bit high, but not hugely -- it was a ride with a lot of long climbs!


Coming out of Big Basin park, at the intersection with Highway 9, we caught up to Jobst Brandt. Jobst is a cycling legend, author of the seminal book "The Bicycle Wheel", creator of the slick tire for Avocet, and long-standing de-bunker of myths about bikes and cycling propagated by those who know nothing about physics or engineering. In short, one of my heroes! He's 74 now, and still cranking away on long rides and setting a very respectable pace up the hill -- in what I think of as a crazy-huge gear, and on seriously "old-school" equipment. Style, the man has style... I will never again complain about not having a low enough gear.

That 6-mile climb has never gone by so quickly. Jobst gave us a rolling lesson on the cosine problem of dual-pivot brakes, the history behind each address along the road, honking etiquette (or lack thereof) on the part of car drivers approaching from behind us (less than 1 sec is intended as a polite "coming up behind you"; a blast of more than 1 sec is "get the F*&% off my road!") Great fun.

Nimue's birthday ride

Despite the fact that Nimue got to direct the family activities on her birthday, Ma's insidious influence played a role: I convinced her that since I always do a Mt. Hamilton ride on or around my birthday and Chad also did a birthday hill ride with his friend Dave, she should do a hill ride with us on her own bike to celebrate her day.

We loaded up her bike and our mountain bikes on the car and drove over to the junction of Stevens Canyon Road and Mt. Eden Road, and she proceeded to ride all the way up the canyon to the end of the pavement under her own power. Good job Nimue!

This is a good starter hill -- mostly gentle grades, not too far, about 400 feet of climbing, lots of shade, and very little traffic as this section of the road is a dead end.

Three stops were needed for resupplying the energy tanks with cookies and saltwater tafffy :)

She decided it was a bike race; we gracefully let her win (though Chad did pass her a couple of times for added motivation...).

Didn't we already celebrate this birthday?

Last week, it really was Nimue's 7th birthday. It feels like this was the seventh time we celebrated this particular birthday, as festivities and gifts were spread out over the summer.

June: birthday party with kids from school, before everyone went on vacation
July: birthday presents from Gran and Grandad while they were out for the camping trip
July again: birthday present from the Merz family when they visited Sunnyvale
August: the actual birthday, with cake, Nimue-directed activities all day, yet more presents (from Gramma and Grampa, Gramma Linda, and us), and sushi for dinner
August again: birthday presents from the Halder family when they were visiting

What a lucky kid.

Today, we're working on thank-you notes...

Take that, you evil thieving scum rodents!

 Yesterday, I saw a squirrel running along the top f the fence with a stolen tomato in its mouth, and for once, the tomato was not one of ours, thanks to Chad's most excellent handiwork. Ha.

(And yes, the vegetable cage will make a fine greenhouse come the cold season.)

Bobber Bed

 Nimue made a little boat for herself the other day; the cat had other ideas and commandeered it. Bobber has a new bed.

Belp be...

Boday beverything barts bith be better "B". Bargh!!!!
Bone bore beek buntil bool barts -- bill BI bake bit bithout boing buts?
Bethinks bot.

The perfect bike?

I picked up my new Specialized Roubaix SL2 last Wednesday. I put some long miles on one of these a few months back, and have a couple of good rides in on the new one, and I really think this bike is amazing.

I'm pretty critical of bike design, and over the years I've ridden an awful lot of good bikes. But this thing has completely re-set my standards.

For starters, it just feels fast. It's a cop-out to say that, without quantifying whether it actually is fast, but it's a fair and accurate summary.

The initial impressions I had were eerily similar to the first time I rode a full-suspension mountain bike -- my expectations of what riding should feel like were blown out of the water. Possibilities were expanded.

The most amazing characteristic of this bike is how ridiculously efficient it is, while still being superbly comfortable. The frame around the bottom bracket is huge, and the chainstays are very tall where they join the BB; likewise, the structure around the headtube is large and the junctions with the down tube and top tube are gigantic. All of this super-sizedness makes energy transmission from the rider to the wheels virtually lossless, and gives the front end stability that directly translates to more confident (and faster) descending.

More thoughts on what makes a good bike over at my other blog.