Feeling charitable

Ride #64
Saturday, April 16th
25 miles in California's drop-dead-gorgous Napa valley.

Cycle for Sight event benefiting Enchanted Hills Camp (blind and visually impared) and the Pathway Home Project (California Veterans).


I camped overnight at a Solano county park (you can read about it in this thread on hammockforums.net) and then finished driving to Napa first thing Saturday morning.

A long time ago in my distant youth, I did the 50k Ride Through Hell in Michigan. This is my first large organized event since then and my very first ride for charity.

It was great! If you have never ridden/ran/swam/whatever for charity, I encourage you to do so.

The photos from today are on my Fotki page (here), but here is a sample anyway.

Nice directions and a well-organized event

View from the middle of the 25 mile route starting mob

Country Road

I did fine on the ride even though I don't think I drank quite enough water while I was actually rolling along. I ended up drinking a HUGE bottle of water on the way home plus the largest iced tea Popeye's sells.

My trike did great, but I seem to have picked up a vibration today. I did hit a miniature utility access port in the bike lane pretty hard with my rear wheel (there was nowhere to go to avoid it - I could have ridden off the road and flipped or swerved into the guy passing me) and there were two stretches of TERRIBLE gravel-on-asphalt. Like the dread chipseal on steroids. It felt like I was riding a giant circular sander. My suspension could not cope with that many little tiny bumps all together.

I have to figure out how to figure out what's up with the bad vibes, and I think it is time to learn all about disk brakes as well.

I might head out tomorrow for a short ride, but than I'll take a few days off!

And I think this is more or less the route we took. I just trailed along with the crowd.

Chalk it up

Ride # 34
Thursday, January 20th
9.9 miles in Folsom

I'm scheduled to lead a ride on this weekend on the Folsom neighborhood bike paths. They are crowded and confusing on weekends (ok, they can be confusing anytime). So I was out today defacing public property by drawing big blue arrows at key intersections.

My big piece of blue sidewalk chalk is now a little nubbin. I'm not planning on having people slavishly follow the arrows (since I might have missed some spots, and irrigation might wash them away) but I hope it helps. And let me tell you, a trike is the perfect platform for chalking a route: just slow to a crawl, stick a hand down, and draw! After the ride is finished, I'll go around with a waterbottle and a rag and erase them. Maybe I'll follow the route backwards, just for fun! Well, maybe not: since my arrows would all be on the wrong side of the path.

Lots of lovely dogs out today (I got to meet an American Bulldog mix that was OK about the strange orange trike once his owner and I had chatted. I even got a dog-kiss on the chin!) and some couples and families enjoying the lovely sunny weather. Stopped for a while at the pond to check out blackbirds, mallards, geese, and a coot or two. Saw a couple of birders who were more than happy to give me a long list of what they'd seen so far today. mumble warbler, mumble black mumble, mumble mumble, mumble something else. Darned if I can remember anything they said!

Had my ride into the shop to straighten out a slightly bent derailer hanger - shifting better but still some indexing weirdness. Oh well, got me up and down the hills with no problems so I'll worry about that later.

TTFN