heckuva ride

55mi, 4:00:00, 4440 feet of climb. the route: crystal springs to polhemus to ralston trail to canada to woodside to king's mountain road to skyline to woodside to portola to alpine to arastradero to foothill to santa cruz to flea street to home.

i passed three people on my ascent of KMR, though technically two of them were on the same bike. heh. i dunno if i went any faster than my first ride on KMR, but I went more "assertively", if you know what i mean. at least, until the last mile. still, i rolled onto skyline at 11mph, so i finished strong.

just as i got to the climby part at the bottom, i shifted into my granny gear, and... dropped the chain. fack! the chain was off the chainring. that confirmed my weeklong suspicion that there was something wrong with the front derailler (probably related to the lumps i've taken in the OC and that awful pavement segment up on polhemus+92), and shattered my faith in the little plastic dingus that is designed to prevent exactly what happened to me.

now, the nice thing about this kind of bike failure is that a monkey with a concussion could figure out how to fix it in under a minute. it's not the sort of repair that requires extensive research or experience. even a republican candidate for the white house could probably figure out on the spot how to fix it. still, it takes a special kind of finesse, the kind i don't have, to fix it without getting your hands, and thus, your brand spankin new handlebar tape all gunked up. alas, poor handlebar tape, we hardly knew ye.

fully 100% of the people that passed me during those two minutes of concussed-monkey-level repairs offered assistance, even the pair on the tandem. have i mentioned i love cycling in the bay area?

i sugared myself wisely this time and did not bonk. as i reached the top of KMR, i realized that a clever cyclist, instead of sallying forth with 2 full bottles of water and 2 full bottles of sports drink, would sally forth with 1 full bottle of sports drink, 1 full bottle of water, one empty bottle, and one bottle with a dose of sports drink powder but no water. then, upon reaching skyline and woodside, the clever cyclist would fill the empty bottles. this point was reinforced as i passed the cushy rest stop on arastradero. my route has two known public fountains and here i was hauling 10 lbs of water the whole way. whelp, call it a training ride with extra overload.

speaking of overload, as of thursday, flea street from ralston to crystal springs is no longer an unknown quantity. i decided to end my ride with it, instead of say, ralston + the OC. skipping the OC is quite attractive to me, but it came at the cost of a 13% hill followed by a longer 10%, a zip downhill, and a 9% hill to finish the ride. not necessarily as fun as zipping through the obstacle course (and mangling my components, perhaps), but you know? i think i like riding, and though i hate the phrase, it really is "all good".

bleh.

i finished reading "The Art of Cycling", a great book with some boring bits in the middle. In the final chapter, the author says:

"[People] want to know, "Don't you get tired of it?"

The answer is no. More precisely, the answer is hell no."

I love riding my bike, i enjoy fixing it, and even though my repairs are perhaps substandard (my handlebar tape kinda sucks -- it's not too comfy in the drops now that i have no gel there, and it's already come unwrapped in parts) they are, after all, mine.