Ride up Mt. Diablo the day after Thanksgiving

[Adventure Girl]

Woohooooo! I had a GREAT time yesterday. The ride was fun and the company was fantastic! What a great group!

My goal was to just make it up and down safely, and it all worked out well. That last 17% grade section was pretty tough, but thankfully it is a short stretch. Veronica told me to watch my odometer and watch the 2/10ths tick over, but I forgot to switch my computer from grade to miles. So as I looked at it, I saw the grade go from 10% to 15%... I looked away before it showed 17%.

Jobob's husband, Lee was riding ahead of me and I was just staring at his back tire and trying to ignore my heart rate monitor, my screaming lungs and the car coming up behind me. I imagined Phil Liggett saying something like, "Every fibre of her body is telling her to stop, but she soldiers on with all her might!!" And as I got past half-way, I was determined and I just turned the pedals over.... Whew!!! When I got to the top, I felt like doing some pushups!! (inside joke).

I was pretty intimidated about doing this ride, but I'm really glad I went! Thanks to all! Let's do it again!

[Veronica]

Yeah!!!!! I'm so glad you guys enjoyed it. It is a really nice ride. That's funny about your odometer. I think I would freak if I had one that showed grade as I was riding. My HRM will show it after.

Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to get our group pic posted. We went to Cyclocross races today at Sears Point, got a lot of great photos there. You need a lot of coordination to do cyclocross. Not for me in this lifetime I think.

V.

[jobob]

oops, I forgot to post this ...



SF Bay Area Chapter of the TE Forum
(AG, aka_kim, Trek420, V., and jobob)

[CorsairMac]

Thanks for posting pixs jo - as I don't live in your state or anywhere near Mt Diablo I was following along as a specatator and was hoping ya'll would do an "after-ride" post - which you did. The pixs were just the icing on the cake. Looks like a gorgeous, tough, awesome, wonderful ride! Hats off to all! AG- what cyclometer do you use? I would like one that shows incline as I'm always either climbing those darn things or descending them! (PS - snow today and I mean SNOW! in New Mexico - what ARE they thinking?)

[Trek420]

as we stopped at the formation known as Rock City we discussed if the formation was Glacial. I think jobob thought it looked glacial, my theory was either sedimentary or volcanic. For the tie breaking vote I went to a friend of mine, Scott Hassler, a Phd in Geology. Scott writes

Hi Dita,

No worries wrt rock question. No glaciers in this part of California, at least in the past 900 million years. Rock City is composed of sedimentary rocks, specifically layers of sandstone and shale (originally muds) that formed in deep marine environments. Anyway, at this part of Mt. Diablo, the originially horizontal layers have been folded and faulted to near vertical orientations. What you all saw is
1) differential weathering, i.e., the sandstone beds are more resistant that are the shales, so the former erode slower, giving you "fins" of sandstone and valleys of shale,
2) the cavity like in your picture is a
reflection of the same process - it's where, at the bottom or top of a sandstone bed, there's some mud mixed in, and it erodes easier. Then wind/rain/frost/people gradually make it bigger. Technically these are called "cavolli" tho I forget why.

Hope this helps, see you soon I hope.
Cheers, Scott


so folks...now you know...the things you see and learn cycling!!

[Veronica]

We have more pictures of Diablo taken over a couple of days last year if you're interested.

V.

Diablo Pics