Mountain biking is hard...

[Veronica]

We had rain again last weekend, so we didn't ride. We did do some bike maintenance and Thom patched and painted the exercise room. We had taken all my equipment out of it when Thom's parents were visiting and decided since it was nearly emptied and needed some love that it was a good time. It looks great and I'm happy yo be back in it. I found riding my bike in the garage just a bit depressing.

Yesterday's ride was back out at Black Diamond. Part of our maintenance was to switch my stem for a shorter one. I've had to do that all my bikes, so it's not really surprising that the Ibis needed it too. It just took me awhile to decide that it was fit, not a lack of strength on my part. My lower back likes the shorter reach, but the bike was noticeably more squirrelly climbing. I'll get use to it, just like I did with the others. You can't ride at Black Diamond with out doing crazy amounts of climbing and descending - just 7.3 miles with 1230 feet of elevation change, in both directions. The trails are still just a mess from the cows. Early on in the ride Thom made me crack up with his comment as we passed a nasty, recent cow flop, "Cows need to eat more fiber!" If we hadn't been climbing and me already gasping, I would have busted out laughing. Every flop after that made me want to giggle.

Veronica

[Veronica]

Finally got back on the bikes today, a super hard ride on Mt Diablo. We climbed 1400 feet in 2.2 miles - average grade of 13%, with some sections much steeper. It was also our first warm ride of the season with temps around 80 degrees. We've had rain this last week so the water crossings at the bottom of the trail were fun and wet.







The poppies are just amazing, huge swaths of orange on the hillside.



I would guess this shows about the last 1.5 miles of the climb. The photo is taken from the ridge on the other side which we climbed up and then went down. The descent was pretty technical, with lots of changing surfaces, some hard packed, some loose, very ripply with some steps.

A good day, but boy am I tired! I can't believe we've been off the bikes for almost a month. It's not like I haven't been doing anything, but there is no real substitute for hard riding.

Total mileage for the day was 13.28 with 1,950 feet of climbing.

Veronica

[Veronica]

We rode at Black Diamond yesterday, just 8 miles, but with 1250 feet of climbing. The trails are still really beat up from the cows. I got a new camera, so I played around with it a bit. I saw some white lupine but it wasn't clustered close enough to make a good picture. We've got lots of the purple variety, but not so much of the white.



That's the Sacramento/San Jouquin Delta in the far distance and windmills on the opposite shore. It's always windy here; the winds blow up the the river from San Francisco to Sacramento.




If you took the trail up behind Thom, you'd be at the ridge top. That section of trail is freakishly, stupid steep, instead of just stupid steep like everything else in the park.

It was a good day.

Veronica

[missjean]

That last photo looking down into the valley is so pretty. It looks so green and so warm - it's still cool & brown here in the NE.

[Veronica]

It was pretty warm - about 80 degrees. We should have gone out earlier, but we needed to do some yard work.


We were in Maine last weekend for my mom's 80th birthday. I do like the weather here better; it's a lot more predictable. I think it was 70 degrees last Saturday at my my sister's house and then they got snow a few days later. Crazy! Of course our summer days will go up into the 90s and sometimes even hotter, but we low humidity.


Veronica

[SheFly]

Yup - 70 in Maine, then snow, and then flooding! And it is mud season now . I've ridden my MTB a total of 3 times this year (if you don't count the fat bike, which doesn't really count). Need to get back out there, but it looks so much nicer out in Cali than here.

SheFly