Cold, Rain and Annual Milage

Many things have happened this year. First we had this huge amount of forest fires in California that were mostly caused by the extremely poor forestry practices of the California government.

The droughts that are a common California weather condition kills trees that have been damaged by Bark Beetles and various root diseases. The forestry service would not themselves cull these dead trees from the forest nor allow commercial loggers to do so who would have done it purely for the profits of the wood. It was too much trouble for the forestry service to marks the trees that would be acceptable to remove.

The forestry service also would NOT clean the undergrowth out from where previous fires had thinned the forests to very open terrain where the more rapidly growing undergrowth would take over.

Now add to this the fact that PG&E high tension lines were made of aluminum and mounted HIGH above the forests and clearings, the local governments would not allow PG&E to shut off power in dangerous high wind conditions. The claim would be that people depend on their electricity in these areas for lighting and heating and powering medical devices of various sorts and they shouldn't be forced to purchase backup power supplies to protect their homes.

So the high wind conditions COULD but didn't necessarily cause these power lines to start forest fires. It appears that in fact the latest law suits that drove PG$E into bankruptcy were not caused by PG&E but another local power producer who drew power from PG&E and who had a power substation transformer explode and start the worst fire in the area called the North Bay.

PG&E also got sued for the southern California fires that were started by lightning with the excuse that PG&E didn't clear enough growth in areas they had control of. ??? The area that the fires started weren't PG&E leased property.

In any case these fires poisoned the air for many weeks with smoke sometime as thick as fog. This was followed by rain - thankfully a lot of light rain to start so that the waterways were cleared of all the normal summertime rubbish so that when the heavier rains hit there was minimal flooding.

Then the very cold that occurred during a lot of the winter in which the rain got progressively heavier until this point in which the rain levels are slightly above normal for the year and the snow pack is above normal.

So because of the rain it has been unusual for there to be three days in a row of sunny weather. And so we have one day for things to dry out and two days to be able to squeeze in a ride.

At this point I only have 300 miles in for the year. I would probably normally have 700 or so. I also only have some 7200 feet of climbing rather than three times that much.

This kills off my conditioning so that one short ride trying to hold a higher average kills me for the next day and then I have to do also a short ride and at an easy pace.

I suppose this is the sort of conditions that Jay puts up with all the time but I would rather have a little of that fake man-made global warming and better conditioning.

I suppose I could put in the first day at a slower pace and do the harder ride on the second day but it is in general too cold to ride easy. I am wearing thermal tights, a long sleeve thermal jersey and a heavy winter jacket from Pearl Izumi. RockBros gloves which seem to be the best for cold conditions and two pairs of wool socks. I wear a wool watch cap under my helmet. And this still leaves me coming home and sitting far too long under a hot shower to warm up so that I can sit in my 62 degree home which I can only heat to comfortable temperatures for a total of 8 hours a day with the present prices of energy.


It would appear that my annual mileage this year is again going to be lower than normal. My conditioning will be lower than normal and here I am already registered for the Tierra Bella, the Prima Vera and the Grizzly peak metrics.

I was going to do these with a retired Cop friend, but he has since sustained and injury and won't be in any physical condition to do the early centuries and would have had a hard time with the Grizzly Peak in any case since he isn't much of a climber.

None of the groups I ride with intend to ride these for the reasons above so I will be riding them solo. The problem with that is that these early centuries are always poorly marked such as a left turn marking in the left turn lane instead of earlier in the bike lane so that you know to get over. So that means I will have to keep up with the almost entirely younger riders who are faster than I would like to ride. These are people that still have memories of these rides and know the course more or less by heart.

But what this conversation needs is Zen/Newsie who don't ride telling us how someone else doesn't know what they are doing of an over 80 year old Slowcomb telling how riding conditions are in the USA from Thailand.