visit home, part 1

hops and i went to visit my folks and the chef this weekend. we got back home today. i didn't take my computer but we did bring our bikes. i biked each of the 3 days we were there for a total of 120 miles or so over three days. each of these rides was eventful. this is the story of the first one.

i haven't bicycled in my home town since i was in high school, when i biked to school, since i had no car and because i was a smarty pants, i got out early 2 or 3 days a week my senior year and didn't feel like hanging around for the bus. so i biked.

my memories and assumptions of the coachella valley suggested that it was inhospitable to cyclists, with no bike lanes, angry drivers, and poorly maintained streets. it turns out i was wrong on all three counts.

hops and i biked together. the valley is crisscrossed with many long, uninterrupted , straight stretches of very flat road -- with bike lanes. there's a main drag, hwy 111, which has no bike lane, and isn't straight. we stayed off of that. instead, we took the lesser traveled streets out to indio. after about 30 miles we stopped at Shield's for a date shake and some caramel popcorn. I don't usually stop much during my rides, and never for that much food. but stop we did and it was great. after we were refreshed, we polished off another 20 miles, riding down varner on the wrong side of the freeway back to civilization. it was "through the desert" but not as "through the desert" as can be done there, and i outdid that on ride #3. but it was still very nice, and very, very different from bay area cycling.

i really can't emphasize enough how flat the desert is. i plan to have very little trouble with the century there in feb. sure there were a couple inclines, and day 3 showed me a 5 mile stretch of 2% grade, but those are inclines to laugh at at any point in a 100 mile ride (i say without having done more than 70 at a time). the roads in the desert are flat and many of them go miles between stoplights. it is truly a delightful contrast to the hilliness of san mateo county, but in truth, were it not for my time on the hills, i would not have enjoyed the flats -- and were i to live there, i'd get bored of the flats right quick, i'd imagine.

on the flats i encouraged hops to learn a bit about drafting and we (i?) found it easy to maintain an 18-20mph paceline. in the bay, my average speed seems to be around 15. in the desert, it was closer to 20 i think.

the weather was gorgeous: sunny but only about 80F. clear as could be. mountains on all sides, visibility to infinity (or at least, to russia). a wonderful ride.

afterwards, we went out and i ate like a horse. that was a large component of this vacation: eating a whole lot. i ate a whole lot, and then a little more after that. yum.