East Bay ride: Calaveras-Palomares Sat. Feb 2

[jobob]

East Bay ride, Saturday Feb. 2, 10 am start from Sunol

You're cordially invited to come out to the East Bay and join me on one of my favorite rides, starting in Sunol and heading over Calaveras Road, then back into Fremont and up to to Mission San Jose for lunch, then up Palomares Rd, into Pleasanton and down Foothill Rd back to Sunol.

Those so inclined can then join me at Bosco's Bones & Brew (http://www.boscosbonesandbrew.com/) in beautiful downtown Sunol for a snack and maybe a nice recovery beverage.

We'll be starting in Sunol at 10 am, at the parking lot of the Sunol Glen School at the corner of Bond & Main Sts.

Then we'll head over Calaveras Road (average grade ~4-5%), down into Milpitas, back into Fremont and up Mission Blvd. to Mission San Jose.

We'll have a lunch break at Mission Coffee (http://www.fremontcoffee.com/) on Washington Blvd. which is at about the mile 26 point.

Then we'll have a nice long shallow descent down Mission Blvd (zoom!) and hang a right onto Niles Canyon Rd., then climb up Palomares Road (average grade ~ 6%, a couple of bits ~10-12% but happily they are short). Then a really nice descent down the other side of Palomares (a reasonably smooth, wide road with minimal turns and good sightlines - zoom zoom!), then up Dublin Canyon Rd. to Pleasanton and south on Foothill Rd back into Sunol.

As mapped out here, it'll be roughly 57 miles and around 4000 ft of climbing:
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/BikeForums-Calaveras-Palomares-ride

If you're not up for the entire ride, you can cut out the second half of the ride and bypass Palomares road: Once we reach Niles Canyon Rd. you can continue straight on Niles Canyon to Sunol rather than heading up Palomares. That would be about 38 miles total, and roughly 1700 ft of climbing.

There are also many options for the studly ones :p : up and back on Welch Creek Road; a loop up Sierra Rd and down Felter to re-join the route; or, at the north end of Palomares, instead of heading east on Dublin Canyon you can head west on Castro Valley Blvd, then north/east on Crow Canyon to Norris Canyon, then south on San Ramon Blvd which becomes Foothill. I can map those out as well.

I created a ride listing on bikejournal here:
SF East Bay ride, Calaveras/Palomares (http://www.bikejournal.com/ride.asp?rideID={7575CBDD-A8AE-4C16-8788-C613301D91E6})

Hope you can make it !

[DrBadger]

:( I wanna come.
Have a great time!

[Bike Goddess]

Do you think it might stop raining by then???? Oh and snowing????:(:(

[jobob]

I'll go check my magic 8-ball & get back to you. :cool:

[BikeMomma]

Sounds like a nice ride, Jobob. Wish I could make it. :)
~Kim

[five one]

Methinks DH and I, and possibly a friend of ours, are a definite maybe for this ride. Will know later in the week and will post again. Fingers are crossed for no rain:). It will be nice to finally ride with you. It's been a few years since I've ridden Palomares and Calaveras. Now that things are greening up, it should be beautiful up there. Do you have any other takers?

[aka_kim]

I'm in. I thought I would have to work, but hey, who cares about work anyway? :rolleyes:

[Bike Goddess]

I'm planning to come as well. Might bring along a few friends from the Benicia Bike Club- have posted the ride on our yahoo mailing list. We'll see.

Let's get that rain out of the forecast!:(:(:(

[melissam]

Jo,

Are you planning to do this ride rain, shine, or drizzle?

-- Melissa

[jobob]

Yes indeedy!!!

The weather report of the moment says that it might rain a bit later in the afternoon, so one possibility is to just do Calveras and then head straight up Niles Canyon & skip Palomares.

C'mon down! (Or in your case, up!). LeeBob will be there.

[snapdragen]

C'mon down! (Or in your case, up!). LeeBob will be there.

There you go, now she's gonna be stalkin' LeeBob all day long.....:D

[melissam]

There you go, now she's gonna be stalkin' LeeBob all day long.....:D

Yup, guilty as charged. :o

[Bike Goddess]

I'm thinking that Calveras might be it for me as well. I certainly don't want to be out in this cold stuff!

We'll see who else I can persuade to come as well. We have another ride scheduled for Marin but I think the rain is even more likely sooner there than down Sunol way.

[five one]

Still on the fence here. The weather gods are predicting rain by 9 am. If that's the case, we'll probably stick to riding a route down here (Morgan Hill) so we can bail out and get home sooner if need be.

If we don't see you all this time, I hope you will schedule this ride again when the weather is more predictable - as in dry :rolleyes:.

five one aka wet weather weenie

[Trek420]

Then we'll have a nice long shallow descent down Mission Blvd (zoom!) and hang a right onto Niles Canyon Rd.

Maybe not, on the news this morning there is a rock slide on Niles Canyon, it's closed right now. :(

[jobob]

I haven't found anything yet about a rockslide or closure on Niles Canyon Rd, where did you see this, Trek?

But I wouldn't be surprised, we had a really heavy downpour last night.

[Trek420]

I haven't found anything yet about a rockslide or closure on Niles Canyon Rd, where did you see this, Trek?

But I wouldn't be surprised, we had a really heavy downpour last night.

I heard it, on the KFOG morning traffic report.

[jobob]

Could well be.

LeeBob has today off, and it looks like it's actually going to be nice out, so he said he's going to ride out that way & do a recon mission. Whadda guy :cool:

[Bike Goddess]

Weather not looking good for tomorrow AM. NOAA saying showers/rain in AM up here. So I'm ditching out. :(

Would love to do this ride when it's a bit more predictable on the rain side.
Maybe next weekend????

It is GORGEOUS outside! I'm planning a Diablo ride this AM. Even if we just get to the junction it will be lovely! (30 degrees at summit as I write this)

Have fun tomorrow- be careful and have a beer on me!:D:D

[jobob]

No worries. Show up if you want, and if you're concerned about the weather, Calaveras and Palomares will probably be around for another century or two.

I have plans for the next several weekends, but if anyone wants to do this ride some other weekend, have fun.

Here's the link to the route on Bikely:

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/BikeForums-Calaveras-Palomares-ride

For a cue sheet, click on Show in the upper left hand corner, which will drop down a menu, then click on Cue Sheet.

I'll be leaving from the Sunol Glen School at 10 am sharp tomorrow, if anyone still wants to go. :cool:

[Veronica]

Thom and I will be there, we may be a little late. Kitties have their shots tomorrow morning. We're doing a slightly different ride than Jo's but I think we 'll finish at about the same time.

V.

[aka_kim]

I'm probably still in, unless the weather is really miserable at about 9 am tomorrow, then I will most likely bail.

[jobob]

LeeBob returned from his Niles Canyon recon ride.

He said it looks as though there was a rockslide earlier today but it was cleared away by the time he rode through. The road condition is fine. :cool:

[jobob]

Well, the weather report doesn't look promising at all! :p

So those of you on the fence, you're hereby excused and will be given a raincheck. :)

I'll still be there - I'm going to ride out to Sunol from home, and Lee is going to drive out. So we'll have our car there. (A gray Honda Element if anyone shows up).

Lee & I will still head out at 10 from the Sunol Glen School, and those of you still so inclined are welcome to join us. But if the weather funks out early it might be a short ride, maybe to the top of Calaveras or to Ed Levin Park, turn around & head back. Or if it's bad by then we might say the heck with it and go to a coffee shop. :D

Those of you traveling vast distances may want to consider saving the gas money for another time.

[aka_kim]

I'm out.

You could get lucky with the weather - WeatherUnderground shows a 50% chance of rain until this afternoon. But then again, they were totally wrong about last weekend.

[jobob]

Weather.com is showing showers in the am becoming full-fleged rain by 3. Gahhh.

See you some other time, Kim.

Mel, if you still want to come, we could always head out to a coffee shop after a brief ride. Or skip the ride thing altogether :D

[Bike Goddess]

Jobob- When you have a free weekend day, I'd really like to do this ride. The reason I wanted to come down was to see you, Lee and the rest of the crew! Without you all, what's in a ride!:D:D:D

Hope the weather holds out, it sure is cold up here and not looking good!:(

[jobob]

Well, it turned out to be a pretty nice ride after all !

We had some members of TE, bikejournal and Nor Cal bikeforums turn up:

From TE, there was Mel and Veronica & honorary members Thom and Leebob

From Bikejournal, we had Roborider, LanceOldStrong and GT (who came down all the way from Sacto for the ride.)

And from Bikeforums/Nor Cal we had spingineer and Bostic.

We saw V & Thom briefly when we all headed out from Sunol, then they opted to go up Welch Creek while the rest of us headed up Calaveras.

We regrouped at the top of the false summit, and Lee decided he was going to kick back a bit and turn around at some point. He ended up turning around at the bald eagle's nest, after watching the eagle leave it's nest and go fishing at the nearby reservoir (must have been fly fishing, har har). Too cool! The most I've ever seen the eagle do was hang out perched on his tower.

The rest of us met up again at Ed Levin park on the far side of Calaveras. All except for Robo and GT, who passed by and yelled out to the front runners (Bostic & spingineer) that they were heading straight for the coffee shop and not stopping & that we'd meet them there.

The weather was looking ominous but so far only a few raindrops splattered down. We were at the halfway point and happily from that point on we had some nice tailwind most of the time.

We made it up to Mission Coffee in Mission San Jose about the time it started sprinkling. We looked in the shop, but no Robo & GT, so we assumed they continued onward. We were eager to get back to Sunol so a bathroom break and we headed onward.

After we were back on the road for a bit I started hearing a weird rhythmic sound coming from one of my wheels. For a while I couldn't figure it out what it was (sort of sounded like brake rub, but noo) and Mel hung back with me while the rest of the gang went on ahead. I eventually found it - a thin piece of wire was stuck in my rear tire. The sound was the free end of the wire rubbing inside my fender. Okay, now I know. :rolleyes: Anyhoo, I pulled out the wire and had the inevitable flat a quarter mile later. :p I'm happy to say it wasn't one of my lengthiest tire changes, and Mel was great help and moral encouragement. :D

We continued on to Niles Canyon Rd, where the rain picked up a little bit but it never got opressive. The light rain and the tailwind made for a pretty pleasant ride back into Sunol. (We had decided at the start of the ride not to do the additional Palomares route on account of the likelyhood of heavy rain in the afternoon)

Lee, LanceOldStrong, Bostic and spingineer were patiently awaiting our arrival and we adjourned to Boscos for lunch and brews. (Well, Mel and I had brews, the guys had sodas & iced tea.)

There was no sign of Robo & GT when we arrived in Sunol but thier cars were still there. I assumed since we never passed them that they had decided to go up Sierra Road. I expected them to walk into Boscos at any moment. When we finished our lunch and were just sitting around chatting, it occured to me that I might have Robo's cell phone number - and I did. Ooops. So I called his number and reached him.

Come to find out they had missed a turn up ahead of us and went a few miles out of their way before they discovered their mistake. Then Robo had a flat. By the time they reached the coffee shop we had long gone but they decided to stop for a while. Then by the time they reached Niles the rain was coming down fairly heavily. When they reached Sunol and saw our cars weren't where we left them, they figured we had all left and headed for home themselves. (In actuality our cars were parked at Boscos and it didn't occur to them to look for us there. )

So for the most part we missed the rain - except Robo & GT near the end - and I think a good time was had by all.

[melissam]

Hey Jobob,

Thanks for organizing a really fun ride! I had a most excellent time during the ride and at Bosco's afterwards.

I recorded the ride on my Garmin Edge and uploaded it to the Motion Based site. You can see re-live the ride at my slow pace by clicking on the following link:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/player/4897222

The two pauses on Mission were when we were trying to find the source of the rubbing sound. However, I turned the timer off while we worked on your flat. If you look at it on the satellite map, you'll notice that the hills around Calaveras were a lot greener today than they were when the satellite photos were taken.

Thanks again for a fun day!

-- Melissa

[jobob]

Oh, that is cool!

I won't tell you what the elevation gain on my cyclosport showed, though ;)

[Bike Goddess]

Glad to hear about your ride! It started raining up here about 9:00 so I figured sooner or later (turned out later) you'd get it! By the time we got going to do some shopping in Pleasant Hill- about 2:00- it was really coming down!

I'll look forward to doing this another time with you all! I had another engagement starting at 3:00 in Castro Valley so it worked out for the best.