New Year Ride to San Bruno Mt Summit

The 2nd Annual Ride from SSF to the top of San Bruno Mt. happened on January 6th which was a pretty cold but sunny day, unlike the original date of January 3rd which was rainy.
The destination was looming in the distance as I approached South City along the Bay:

The ride is gaining popularity - this year it was five of us reaching the summit, two more than in 2010.

2010 Recap

There were several more (12) beautiful rides in November and December of 2010, including this 
King Ridge Ride

The total tally of GPS-logged activities for 2010 looks like this:

2520 miles (~ 4056 km)
210,471 feet of climbing
196 hours in saddle

No races.... Let's hope 2011 will be at least this good but I hope for better.

Down for maintenance in November 2010

Not the website or my bikes, but my body. Actually just a small but quite important part of me: my nasal sinuses. These little buggers received a thorough cleanup during a 5-hour surgery. I was "down" for nine days but recovery was good and eventually I ended up with a renewed ability to breathe using my nose and not just my mouth, as well as an ability to SMELL (after 15 years of no smell), which is great but made me realize how awful car exhaust smell is - I hope the world will switch to electric cars really soon.

Fall Big-Wheelin'

After considering a road ride, I have decided to take the 29er on a mixed trails and roads ride. Starting at the bottom of Windy Hill preserve means climbing for the first 3 miles with no warm-up, from 600 to 1800 ft. Despite the recent cool down, it was warm (78F) and few of those really steep pitches were quite brutal. Once on the "ridge", I realized how beautiful fall riding is here. Despite the trails being dusty, the views were nice, the tall grasses are all either dry yellow or gone (means no pollen for me allergy sufferer), the poison oak is almost all red and thus easy to recognize, and mainly - no fog.
I felt strong and tried to climb in the middle ring standing up. To my surprise, that's where the big bike really came alive and the rough rocky trail was nice absorbed by the big wheels with 35 psi in the Kenda SB8s. The problem is that I can hammer standing for like 5 minutes at the time, so often I resorted to spinning the granny sitting. Also, the quite worn out rear tire was easily spun out, but not anywhere as easy as on the 26" bike.
Here is a picture from the Ancient Oaks Trail, it is my favorite place to stop for a gel or bar.

The second half of the ride was on a road, getting passed by some roadies, but beating many while doing about 17mph.

Dirt Rag Magazine Article on Mountain Biking in the Czech Republic

http://www.dirtragmag.com/userfiles/58_DirtRag152.pdf

Czech it out!



Mount Tamalpais MTB Ride

Going biking around North Bay always poses a dilemma for me, a Mid-Pen inhabitant: is it worth the trip through San Francisco? What is the weather going to be like north of the GG bridge? And no singletrack to speak of, are the fire roads really that interesting?
But the descriptions of "hot rides" on http://www.marinfattire.com/ sounded good, weather forecast for Fairfax was mid-seventies and a friend was interested in riding together, so we decided for a ride up Mt. Tam from Ross via Eldridge, Hoo-Koo-E-Koo and the Old Railroad trails.
The day began by driving to the meeting point through the 19th Ave fog and drizzle (I knew it, what the hell am I doing at this place, only the Scots and Brits may possibly like it here etc etc...), finding Ross Commons with all the GPS-suggested streets being closed for repairs, and continued by us reaching the trailhead just to learn the trail around Phoenix Lake was closed and the shortest alternative was a 10 mile detour on pavement. The other alternative was to sneak through the gates. Guess which one we chose.
The climb up was actually quite scenic, first through some redwoods with small creeks flowing, and then on exposed hillsides of Mt. Tam with views like this:



After some initial steep climbing, the road grade decreased once we hit the Old Railroad trail, which I guess is the advantage of all old railroad beds.

After a short break at the East Peak, we headed down to take the supposedly more technical way down Eldridge Grade. It was definitely rocky and steeper than the way up, with two lines to pick: one with the "death cookies" and the second one on solid but sharp rocks. Well, the loose small rocks definitely make steering above certain speed interesting, but I guess the author of the term did not ride some of the downhills at the MTB Himachal race. This downhill was over in no time and we backtracked the last portion of the ride the same way we started, for total of 32km (20km up and 12km down). There is no Garmin track for this ride as my Edge 500 was in my Camelbak in a powered down state.
Conclusions: this is a really nice ride, the weather in Ross and Fairfax is probably mostly really nice, all mountain bikers and even hikers said hello, and the views fromthe summitt are fantastic.



Tahoe Classic

On Saturday 9/11, after three years of planning this ride, it finally materialized: The Flume Trail at Lake Tahoe got to feel the touch of my bike's tires. My two Czech friends and me did the classic, one way ride from Spooner Lake to the shuttle pick up on Hwy 28, for the total of 16.8 miles. All I have read about this ride was true, it is not very technical, except the occassional exposure and deep sand in turns, it has fantastic views and after the initial climb to Marlette Lake, it is quite flat.



Lots more pictures are here:

 

And the Garmin track and ride stats (nothing to brag about, this was mainly sightseeing!) here:

 

Tahoe Flume Trail by jan.r.berka at Garmin Connect - Details

 

It was well worth the trip from the Bay Area, I am already planning the Mt. Rose to Kingsbury 45 mile ride, but this may have to wait until the snow thaws in 2011.