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Day After Turkey Day



 
 
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Old November 29th 14, 05:41 PM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
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Default Day After Turkey Day

I've been wanting to get in 6,000 miles this year but it doesn't look like I'll make it. I lost a couple of weeks on jury duty and then another couple of weeks here and there from being sick or having dental work etc. And I'm called for jury duty and this time in the Superior Court so if chosen for a jury I'll probably be tied up for at least another couple of weeks.

But Friday the day after Turkey Day I decided a hard ride was better than a long ride. So I took off on my cross bike for the local Chabot reservoir/park. It's about three miles from my house.

I hit the initial paved road at the start of the trail and it goes up at 18%. I started thinking that perhaps I had bitten off more than I could chew just as the day before. It's about a quarter mile up, though thankfully it isn't all that steep the entire way.

I hit a relatively flat spot and the dirt began. I was riding along and I caught up to a couple of people that were on front suspension MTB's.

As we came around a turn there was this 100 yard climb, somewhere around 16%. The thing about these sharp climbs is that these are shorter but since the steep sections are over their entire length it is actually harder than that initial entry to the trail.

One of the other riders exclaimed after seeing that rise and I realized it was a woman. The other said, "It isn't as hard as it looks". As I rode around them to hit that hill before them, since my cross bike is much higher geared than an MTB, I said, "Yeah but that doesn't mean it's easy."

I broke over the rise and continued on the relative flat until the next jump and the next. They were catching up between rises since the suspension was allowing them a faster speed on the rutted trail than an unsuspended cross bike can make.

Finally I got off a little ahead of them and hit OH MOTHER!. This is a 150 yards of over 20% and I've never been able to make it up more than half way before having to dismount and push. It is loose rocks and ruts so you have a hard time finding traction even pushing.

Again I made it about half way and pushed to the top trying to get up before the girls caught up and spied me pushing like some sort of sissy.

I was at the top trying to catch my breath and one of the girls rode all the way up and stopped to wait for her riding companion. I looked down to see what gear she was packing: IT WAS A SINGLE SPEED 30-25! Maybe I could do with a little sissy in me.

The other cleared the climb as well but she had real MTB gearing so I didn't feel quite so bad.

While they were catching their breath I took off figuring that I'd try and use the low gear speed of a cross bike to get some distance before they caught up. From that point it is a continuous climb for another couple of miles though only a meager 7 or 8%. I was riding within myself so that when they went by I wouldn't be breathing like a steam engine. Though I could hear them a little way back talking easily they never caught me.

I broke over the top of 600 ft area near another entrance gate. With all of the ups and downs I'd put in about 1,000 feet already at 3 miles out from where I started. But the climbs are so steep that your legs are losing a bit of strength. But next came a mile or so of mild downhill on Skyline Trail.. Since this is an area where you may meet other bikers or hikers you can't go fast. Not to mention the ground is still a bit damp from the previous week's rain. Often when I'm riding up young people on full suspension bikes will come down so fast that they cannot change line so I make it a point to always stay on the inside line going up. Nothing like a fool hitting you at 30 mph to spoil your day.

But going down does allow you legs to come back before you cross the Stone Bridge onto Brandon Trail and start up the climb to another 1100 foot mark. Again this is a series of ups and downs though the ups usually aren't more than about 12%. It's just that there's so many of them. When you have a downhill all you can think is, "I'm losing all that altitude of gain!"

There is a gun range in a box canyon near the trail. Although it points the opposite way into a solid rock wall with sandbags it still makes you nervous riding by and hearing the high powered stuff. You tend to keep down on the bike so that someone making a really stupid error would still clear you by 40 feet or more. But the range was closed today so there wasn't that banging. And because it's in a box canyon you can only hear it when it's open over a distance of about half mile.

There is a sharp climb at that point and at the top were a couple of guys standing there with the bikes laying on the ground. I asked them if anything was wrong but they said that they were only trying to catch their breaths. I'd do that too but I knew that a mile away was a downhill.

After you clear that area the trail parallels the road going into the shooting range and about 200 yards or more away from it. But the climbing is still roller coaster until you finally go through another gate and hit a paved road.

At this point there's four possible routes. If you continue across the road and through a small parking lot you can continue on Brandon Trail which drops 1,000 feet in about 3 miles and exits behind a golf course from which you have a paved road into town. If you start on Brandon you can turn almost immediately off of it onto Live Oak which consists of several sharp drops. They have "leveled" this trail with a dozer which means that they have pushed up several large rocks. This, in turn, means you have to be careful even though the drops can exceed 20% so you're riding the brakes the entire way.

Or you can turn left and go out the main gate onto the paved road with downhills that don't exceed 8% or so.

Finally you could turn right and go on the paved road down into the camping area. Riding through that area there's a gate guarding another trail so that campers don't accidentally drive out on the cliff. Honker Bay Trail winds through there with a few very rutted and sharp drops on the mainly hiking trail. You have to normally be careful here because of the number of hikers to and from the reservoir from the camp grounds. But the day after Thanksgiving they were probably shopping. So riding the brakes almost full on until I could see from the bouncing across ruts I would let off long enough to be able to see and clamp the brakes on again. Finally I got down to lake level and a very nice walking path. This goes along the reservoir all the way back to where Live Oak connects in it's own drop.

You turn right on Live Oak and if you were walking you'd cross an old wood and rope suspension bridge over the main tributary to the reservoir. Over the two years of drought this tributary has dried up since it is overflow from a much larger San Leandro reservoir further up in the hills.

But you can take a bike path to the west of the bridge. It cuts through the brush and then does a sharp 15 foot drop through the stream bed. This is soft sand but because of the recent rains it was rather firm and so I didn't have a violent slowing as I went across the bed. The other side is higher and would also be stream bed in a wet year as both reservoirs fill completely and the water is then shunted From San Leandro Reservoir to Chabot Reservoir then through San Leandro Creek into San Francisco Bay.

You then pop up onto West Shore Trail. If you were to follow that it turns into a paved walking path and would end up going the couple of miles back onto the where I started. Even though it's paved it has some really sharp climbs and it isn't comfortable trying to grind over those while avoiding walkers.

So I usually take the almost immediate left which again starts a climb up a couple of hundred feet in about a mile. So the climb is relatively mild though by that time you'd be looking askance at a curb. It rises a way and then there is an odd thing. A small stream that runs the year around even in droughts. I don't know if it starts from a spring at the top of the hill or is pumped up there in order to maintain a stream for the lake trout to reproduce in.

There are a couple of 90 degree turns that are pretty badly rutted out. Someone called my name and it was a woman I know from our road bike group. She was taking a walk with her sister. We talked for a minute and then I took off again thankful for a legitimate reason to have rested a bit.

At the top there is a paved road that starts back down to the main road. Turning left I started down.

Because I'd been slipping and sliding a bit since I'd hit the trail I wasn't in any mood to go downhill fast on narrow knobbies. So I kept my speed to about 20 mph. This was still five mph over the speed limit on that narrow park road. A car had pulled out of a parking lot at the top and came right up and rode on my rear wheel. There are several U-turns around which 15 mph is really pushing it in a car. I held 20 but that didn't phase the jackass.. He stayed on my wheel clear to the bottom where the park road went out onto the public road. As I made a left turn onto the road so did he and sped off with an MTB on his roof.

I took off across town and went into Hayward for a coffee and crepe at EKO.

From there I went back home. 26 miles of which 12 were on the dirt and some 2400 feet of climbing where 1000 feet was the highest point.

And I had taken off the two lbs I had gained on Thanksgiving day.
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