ride this Sunday the 30th in Union City / Fremont

This is the second in a sporadic series of unofficial training rides in preparation for the events which seem to all be crammed into the month of April in Northern California, starting with the Cinderella and ending with the Top Hat Classic.

For those of you who live in the South Bay (or who wouldn't mind schlepping over here), how about a ride this Sunday the 30th, starting from my home in Union City (next to Fremont, northeast of San Jose).

We'll shoot for a 10 am start. Rain cancels, threat of rain I'll play it by ear. If I do cancel, I'll post it here by 8:30 am.

I live close to I-880 & 84 near the Dumbarton Bridge. Parking should not be a problem - I live on a quiet side street.

Please PM me for my address.

Here’s the plan:

We'll first head out to Coyote Hills park along the paved trail that runs along Alameda Creek, and circle Coyote Hills which is alongside the bay. It's really pretty out there right now with the green grass and the various birds & other creatures cavorting about. There are some short rolling hills here, nothing significant. Those of us feeling spunky can attempt my Nemesis Hill, which, I'm happy to report, seems somewhat less steep than at this time last year - must be continental drift or something - but since it's just an up and back, those less inclined can take a raincheck. You'd miss out on a nice view at the top though. After Nemesis we can head back along the Alameda Creek Trail, pass near my home (~10 miles elapsed at this point, for those who want to bail), and continue on the AC trail heading away from the bay, towards the Niles district of Fremont.

We'll get off the trail before that, and get onto Paseo Padre Blvd, which has nice wide shoulders and for the most part is very bike friendly, altho we will have a couple of moderately busy intersections to cross when we pass thru a commercial area, but that doesn't last for very long. We'll pass by Lake Elizabeth and continue on Paseo Padre. There's a shallow uphill incline here that goes on for a couple of miles – look a the bright side, we’ll go down it on our way back. We'll turn onto Washington Blvd, which is also wide and bike-friendly. Near the end of Washington Blvd (also a shallow uphill, oh well) at the intersection of Mission Blvd., is Mission Coffee.

Those who have had enough hills for the day can hang out at Mission Coffee, while the rest of us hang a right onto Mission Blvd. We'll be rewarded with a not terror-inducing-steep but nevertheless fun downhill run on a nice wide road, with a right turn near the bottom onto Durham and another gradual downhill on a good road where you can see just how fast you can crank it, yee hah ! But, as always, what goes down must go up, and in this case we make another right back onto Paseo Padre, and encounter a moderatley steep but not-toooo-long uphill. Once we get to the top (and give Jo a chance to catch her breath!) we meander through a quiet neighborhood which hooks us back onto Washington Blvd., where we rejoin whoever might be waiting for us at Mission Coffee.

After a well-deserved coffee/snack break (good oatmeal cookies!) we re-trace our route back to my place. This part of the ride is really fun because you're now going down that gradual uphill so the ride feels almost effortless. It's essentially flat from then on, except we might run into a headwind when we get closer to my place – less likely this time of year, though.

Total mileage: ~10 miles for the Coyote Hills loop, ~25 miles out to Mission Coffee and back, plus ~5 miles for the optional Mission/Durham/Paseo Padre hill loop, so we’re talking either 10 or 35 miles w. minimal hillage, or 40 miles w. one challenging hill. All these are *very* approximate - I may have overestimated the Mission Coffee & back part, I can't remember if it was 25 miles itself or 25 miles with the hill loop added on.

My average pace is around 13 mph - (much) slower uphill, faster down.

PM me if you'd like to join in so I can give you directions.

- Jo.

You're almost a 100 miles away from me! I looked. I pondered. :( We'll have to wait until Veronica posts another Diablo ride. I'm sure yawl will give me reports about how wonderfully sunny it was.

OK, this was a no-go (as in, no one wanted to go! :D ). Maybe some other time. Lee and I are off to Mt. Hamilton.

- Jo.

I wish I had seen this earlier. Did you do Hamiliton from the San Jose side or from Livermore? Riding from the Livermore side was in our thoughts, but we did Morgan Territory from our house instead. Always nice when you can just wheel out your door and ride,

V.

I wish I'd gotten the bike rack fixed yesterday instead of doing that today. Sorry everyone snowbound we had the most wonderful weather today.
:p

Mt. Hamilton was a sort of a spur-of-the-moment idea. We ran into Anne (from the Rivendell ride up Diablo) at Bicycle Outfitter's yesterday, and we mentioned to her we'd ridden up Diablo 3 times since then. She asked if we'd tried Hamilton yet, and she told us she felt Hamilton was easier than Diablo in many respects & that it's a great ride & we had to try it.

Since people were bailing out of the Union City ride left & right last night :D we started thinking maybe we'd give Hamilton a go today, since the weather was looking great, and how long can you count on great weather this time of year, I ask?

So, once it started becoming apparent this morning that the last 'maybe' was not going to show up, we packed up the car & headed on out ! Unfortunately we got off to a very late start, but we figured we'd go as far as we were comfortable, and if it started getting too late we'd simply turn back and try again some other time.

We started out from San Jose - we parked at Linda Vista school which is just off of Alum Rock Ave on Kirk Ave. It's about a mile to the start of Mt. Hamilton Road, and we simply followed that. According to a route sheet I dug up on my club's website, it would be about 20 miles from the school to the summit, with ~ 4900 total ft of climing (over the entire 40 mile up & back.) Since it was after 11 am when we started out, we figured we'd turn around at about 2:30-ish so we wouldn't be descending late in the afternoon; we assumed it would get dark very quickly since a good portion of the ride was with the mountain to the west of us. And it's a good excuse if we wanted to wimp out :D

I read someplace that the grade never exceeds 7% on Mt. Hamilton Road because it was built to accomodate the transport of heavy equipment for the Lick Observatory by horse-drawn wagons. Works for me! It certainly was not as steep as most of Diablo. That said, the climbing went on and on and on....but boy was it gorgeous up there!

After about 6 miles of mostly uninterrupted climbing we turned a bend, and there it was, our destination - Lick Observatory. In theory it was only about 14 miles away. Seemed much farther. Soon after that we encountered a nice long downhill grade - yee hah! - and next thing we knew we were at the entrance to Grant Ranch Park at about mile 9. We took a break there and refilled our water bottles. There's a parking lot there; this would be a good place to start if you want a shorter ride to the summit.

Back on the road again, up, up, up. Like I said it's not as steep as much of Diablo, but distance wise it's twice as long to the summit as Diablo (at least where we started), so it's a toss, difficulty-wise. Some may prefer one over the other. I think I prefer this. I was really enjoying this ride, the grade wasn't too tiring for me, but Lee was starting to look less the happy camper as the miles wore on. We encountered another nice long downhill section, which in theory is great but then you realize that you'll have to slog up it on the way back. We reached the bottom and made a sharp left onto a small bridge over Smith Creek, passing a sign that said "Mt. Hamilton 7 miles". It was only 1:30, and in theory we could have made it to the summit by 2:30 or so, but Lee really didn't seem enthused over the concept, so we decided to turn around at that point. So, we made it roughtly two-thirds of the way up.

We had those two uphill sections on the way back down, but the descents themselves were great fun - since the grade was never very steep, there were never those 'white knuckles on the brakes' moments I would get going down a particularly steep section of road. And the road was in remarkably good condition, a little bumpy in parts, a bit of gravel here & there, but not too shabby. There were a lot of tight turns, but it was easy to ease on the brakes and slow down enough to make them managable. And luckily we had hardly any cars coming up behind us. And did I mention the scenery was gorgeous?

All in all, a great ride. To quote the Governator, "we'll be back" *
(*see below)

Probably next Sunday (Feb. 6), weather permitting.

We'll leave from Linda Vista School (directions here) at 9:30. If for some reason we cannot park there, I see people also park at the intersection of Alum Rock Ave. and Mt. Hamilton Road. You miss out on a mile of climbing that way - hmmm, maybe we'll park there instead! :D

If you want to join us, great, be there by 9:30. Or, if you're in decent shape, leave later, you're bound to catch up to us! :cool:

We'll do our "pokey climbing" routine, lots of short stops, a couple of longer ones for snacks & such, hang out a bit at the Observatory, & head on back down.

- Jo.

Thank you for the most excellent write-up Jobob ;). Hamilton is a ride I've wanted to do for quite awhile, so... weather permitting, health permitting, etc., etc., I just might show up at 9:30 next Sunday.

aka_kim