Head like an ice cube

Sunday, January 1st

Happy New Year

#134

What is the windchill at 44 degrees and 40mph? Hm. Let's look that up.
About 30 degrees. Which would be below freezing.

Which would explain why, while bombing down hill at 39.2 mph (my personal best so far) on a chilly calm morning, my whole skull felt like your hand does when you stick it in a tub of icewater.

What. You don't go around randomly sticking your hands in icewater? Why not?!
I would also like to note that it is difficult to keep one's eyes open at that speed/temp combo.

Today was the Hammerin' Wheels' 2nd annual Beatty Hill Climbing Smackdown Challenge something-or-other. Hill repeats for 2 hours.

I did not do that hill. Not even once. I volunteered again, this year helping with registration and with the refreshment stop at the bottom of the hill. We had, as far as I know, a little over 50 participants. Last year (cold and rainy and windy) had 20-some.

I handed out bananas, oranges, gatoraid and water, and collected jerseys, arm and leg warmers from the rapidly warming participants.

The volunteer organizers of this event made nifty laminated bibs for early registrants. I got one, even though I was just volunteering.

This time I rode the 8 or so miles from my house, hung around volunteering, and then turned around and rode back.

I had another 'standing flat' (I park my bike somewhere and return later to find one tire flat). I'm just glad it did not go flat on a downhill. I have become quite nonchalant about flats: I can now hold a conversation while changing one.

I wore a lightweight short sleeved merino wool Ibex top and a midweight long sleeved Ibex top and some Danskin exercise tights. I had originally had my merino wool Buff deployed in earband mode, but after the first ice-cube head incident, I switched to balaclava mode, pulling it off my face when not going downhill. My head was still cold, but not icy.

I also had wool gloves on the whole ride.

After I got up the first hill (right out of my driveway as I'm sure you've heard me whining about before) I took off the longsleeved wool shirt and put on my bright windbreaker. I was a little cold downhill, but I really did not want to get too sweaty on the ride in and then stand around getting hypothermia or something dire like that while volunteering.
On the way back I had just my Danskin tights and the short sleeved top and I sweated plenty.

All told, it took me 2 hours and 20 minutes to go the 17 miles round trip. I averaged 10 mph on the way out and my overall average was 7.1. Just under 2000 feet of climbing today.

This year my goal is to get better at climbing hills. Which means I must push myself a little bit.

The red is elevation and the wiggly lines are the grade. Lots of down followed by lots of up.

Flapping Nostrils

Rides # 121 and 122

November 2nd and 3rd
26 miles in three counties: El Dorado, Sacramento, and Placer

My overnight hammock/recumbent trike expedition.

Why did I do this little trip? I've always wanted to tour by bicycle and my splendid machine is made for touring.

Beals Point campground (Folsom Lake SRA) is about 13 miles from my house, quite useful for my first human powered vehicle overnight.

It took me an hour and a half of actual rolling time to get to the campground and two and a half to get back. My average on the way out was 9 mph, and back was just over 5 mph. Yes, you saw that right. 5.2 mph. Oy.

Take a look at this little diagram for the reason:

At noon I rolled out of the garage, down the driveway, shifted to my most grannyiest gear, and slogged up the STUPID hill in front of the house. Every from-the-door-tour will start this way so I ought to get used to it.

Then I got to fly down the first hill on the main road and attained 37.3 mph! That's the fastest yet I've coasted on this bike. Or any bike. Ever.
My nostrils flapped in the wind. Weird feeling.

I traveled primarily on roads (usually no bike lane but with a shoulder of varying quality) but used a bikepath over Folsom Crossing (the road/bridge replacing the old dam road across the American River just below Folsom Lake).

There are multiple construction projects all around Folsom Lake.

Look for the guy to the right of the middle two machines.

My own personal lane! (closed to divert traffic from Folsom Crossing)

Sometimes Folsom Crossing is closed around noon for blasting or other exciting things. I timed it just right to have a nice break in the shade of the construction company's office parking lot. No blasting was audible.

OK, so this is a boring pic. The construction folks were cool. So there.

After Folsom Crossing, although I could have continued on the bike path to the campground, I chose instead to take Folsom Auburn Road, since I needed to pay my camping fee at the kiosk. $25 for the off season, no biker discount.

I chose Site #1 since I was tired and wanted to set up camp and there were two trees Right There for my hammock and I'd have plenty of 'campground TV' to watch since I was right off the main drag.


I loafed around and read and people-watched. Had some tea.

I critter-watched.

Loafed some more and ate dinner (sandwich from the deli I'd stopped at on my way through Folsom).

Gathered some HUGE pinecones (sorry, forgot a pic of those) which helped my twig and small branch fire look Much Bigger than it was.

Finally crawled into my hammock (this is what I use for backpacking - it has insulated quilts above and below: toasty) and read or listened to some podcasts until about midnight.

Got up multiple times in the night (why did I have two cups of tea with dinner? I KNOW better!)

Woke up for good at 6:30am and wandered around the lake shore for a while, then packed up and headed back.

Back over Folsom Crossing, then up all the hills I'd gleefully sailed down less than 24 hours before.

I whined a lot climbing up the hills, but I also had a chance to stop and admire the landscape.

Look! More hills!

Remember the 37.3 mph hill? Well, I had to go back up that. Ugh.

Arrived home 23 hours after I'd left, with way too many pics and video to process.

If you have not had enough of this tall tale, here's a link to a Youtube video I did.

8 towns, 3 surfaces, 2 memorable roadkills, and 1 happy 'cyclist

Ride# 87

Tuesday, June 28th

43 miles from Rescue to Elk Grove, CA

I should have taken a picture of the utterly totally completely flattened cat. The poor thing had expired in just the right conditions to tell that it had been a tabby while still admiring the still cat-like shape yet bookmark-thinness. There was also a very large raccoon, also dead but not nearly as flattened. The smallest dead thing I saw was some kind of small grey songbird.

I also saw plenty of live things as well: kill-deers, an egret, and lots of little finch-like birds. No rattlers.

There were also innumerable shards of glass (clear, brown, green), bicycle parts (a brake lever and a bell), car parts (license frame, tire shreds, trim), construction debris (wood, a composition shingle, unidentifed but sharp metal things) and the aforementioned roadkill on the shoulders of the roads I traveled on. I was pleased and amazed to have no flats.

My top speed was 37.6 mph, my average was  9.2, my total time with wheels turning was 4 hours and 39 minutes, the total time elapsed was 5 hours 30 minutes or so.

Although I've ridden farther in one shot on my trike (57 miles), this felt like a much longer ride: probably because of the variety of terrain and number of towns along the way.
Rescue, El Dorado Hills, Folsom, Gold River, Rancho Cordova, Vineyard, Sheldon, Elk Grove. Now, some of these (Gold River, Vineyard) only exist as separate entities when considering the census, but they show up on Google Maps. So there.

I flew down Green Valley Road (the map at the bottom shows only approximate beginning and end points), white knuckled and swearing like a sailor (I even invoked various flavors of Christian profanity, not my usual form. The rest was made up of good old Anglo Saxon four-letter words). My shoulders and neck, despite my best efforts, were tense enough to bounce rocks off of.
.

In addition to all the other things, Green Valley's shoulders are littered with economy size pine cones. These, at least, were out of the way.

The only actual bouncing rocks were the fresh gravel my tires flung when I crossed the recently tended Deer Valley Road intersection. Flinging gravel while white-knuckling along at 30mph is ... interesting. Yeah. Interesting. I could hear the gravel banging through the spokes and just hoped for no gravel strikes on my tender hide.

Green Valley at 6:30am is probably not the best choice, but it is my route to Folsom. There is no bike lane, but a not terrible shoulder. There were also a LOT of cars zipping by in excess of the posted 55mph. Most of them went way around me.

The next terrain was the old familiar bike paths in and around Folsom neighborhoods. What refreshing change! I took my time and tried to relax from the adrenaline-induced hypervigilant state I found myself in.

Those clouds should have told me something.

Tailings from gold dredging. Along the feeder route from Parkshore Dr. to the bike trail along the river.

The next leg was the bike path along the south side of Lake Natoma to the Nimbus dam and then on to the Folsom South Canal path.

Looking upstream to the Hazel Bridge.

There was a strong steady wind from the southwest, so I had it in my face for the almost 2 hours I was on the canal path. Since this trail is very little used (no vehicular traffic and I saw only one cyclist) I went ahead and used my IPod to keep me moving along and un-bored. I'm sure the earbuds meant I did not hear when my brand new Sleipnir flag stopped audibly flapping behind me and took off for parts unknown. Taking the new pole and my little reflective flag went along with it. So very sad.

Weedy canal path.

Killdeer closeup

However, a friend who saw me pedaling down South Sunrise with my remaining flag (a large pink one) said I was plenty visible. And at least I know where the flags went missing.

I exited the canal at Jackson rather then continuing onto Florin Rd. as I had planned, since the already weedy canal-side road got a lot weedier after Jackson. Sunrise was a good alternative, with a nice wide shoulder, marred only by hordes of double-trailer gravel trucks.

OMG. Rain clouds?

Florin Rd. takes you by a materials reclamation site, so once I was past that the traffic dropped way down. Florin's wide shoulder disappears at Eagle's Nest road, but I was passed only a few times in the two miles to Excelsior Rd. Once by a large commercial semi, and once by a pickup. The rest were a handful of sedans and one minivan, who behaved admirably! Thank you, champagne colored van, for staying patiently behind me on the blind hill as I crept up at 10 miles per.

On Excelsoir, I got a friendly beep from a passing truck. I waved, he waved. A warm fuzzy moment.
Tuesday is trash-day in the Elk Grove area, so I dodged some trash cans. Same old same old. I have a genius for trash-day excursions.

Calvine, at least where I rode, has a splendid bicycle lane. Yay!

I used the loop behind the school at Bradshaw and Bond to avoid yet another non-bicycle-aware traffic signal (at least, I suppose it was not bicycle triggerable.) The son of the friend I was visiting was most impressed that I had bicycled right past his elementary school.

I finished my ride on quiet neighborhood streets, the white-knuckle flight down Green Valley already forgotten.

This is my last ride for a while, I'm scheduled for rotator cuff repair surgery in a few days. But I'll be back posting as soon as I am back on the bike!