Feb 17th Rides

[mimitabby]

today i didn't ride much, went to the store twice. 4 miles total. What a gorgeous day!

[jobob]

BikerZ, aka_kim, LeeBob and I rode from our house in Union City across the Dumbarton Bridge and thru lovely East Palo to Palo Alto to watch the ToC prologue.

We parked our bikes at the secure parking area and moseyed around a bit, checking out the vans & busses of the various teams and occasionally spotting a cycling star.

Then we stationed ourselves behind the start ramp where we got to see the racers up close & personal. BikerZ took some amazing pics - alas she has a social engagement tonight so we won't get to see them until sometime tomorrow.

It was unbelievably cool to see Mario Cippolini. He was very tanned and very fit.

We'll tell you more once we get the photos.

We had a fabulous day but it nearly ended very badly for us. As the four of us were riding on University Ave in Palo Alto heading for home, an older woman in a Jaguar made a left hand turn and very nearly mowed into us. It seems as though she never saw us coming and she turned left immediately in front of us. I was leading and had enough time to yell "Hey!" as I hit my brakes as she passed right in front of me. Kim likewise narrowly avoided running into her. But the most spectacular avoidance maneuver was accomplished by BikerZ, who made a 90 degree right turn and wound up parallel to and within inches of the side of the car, and remained upright & in control throughout. Pretty amazing instinctual move on her part! Lee was able to avoid the fracas. It all happened so fast I didn't have time to be terrified and it was soon clear we were all OK - and meanwhile the @#$% jerk in the Jag just continued down the road. It's just as well that we needed to be on our way, otherwise I think we all might have been more inclined to chase her down and give her a good talking to - and it might not have been pretty. Instead we took a few minutes to collect our wits, and continued on the rest of the way without incident. Major kudos to Z for her quick thinking!

[kelownagirl]

Easy spin on the trainer tonight. Spin ups, high cadence spinning, and one leg drills. Only 30 minutes though.

[Xrayted]

We had a beautiful day in Portland. The temps hit around 68F so I finally headed out for a short, leasurely ride. I haven't ridden outside all year so this was a treat. I have been heading down the road to depression for a few weeks, with the unending rain here. (my first winter in PNW, I'm not used to this much rain) I snapped right out of it today and couldn't get the smile off of my face the entire time. My bike computer needs a new battery but I'm thinking I did around 6 miles or so. It's not much but it was enough for today. I had to go much slower than I wanted to because of all the people and pets on the trail, but I believe in sharing and being safe, so all is good.

Happy trails to y'all and be safe.

[bikerz]

What Jo said! That was my closest call ever.

Other than that it was a really fun day - I'd never been to a real bike race before, and I'd never been over the Dunbarton on a bike - it's pretty cool (and windy!).

I'll post a link to the photos on the Tour de CA thread (after Jo and Kim complete/correct the captioning - it's too embarrassing to show them with their current labels ("some CSC guy1", "some CSC guy 2", etc. )