Ride by Shooting

Third time lining up for the Dirty Kanza. Second time finishing (let’s not talk about last year). Was hot and windy and hard. I wrote something. It’s here. 

Excerpt: 

The Kanza is a shape-shifter of the highest order. You do your best to predict its mood and train, and plan, and plot, and count things out on tables, and be as absolutely prepared for it as you can be. But the Kanza will do what the Kanza wants with you. On the day. You can’t control that. The only thing you can control is how you’re going to handle it. It is a 200-mile ride inside your own mind and sometimes you won’t like what you find. There’ll be questions and answers. Love and hate. You’ll swing wildly from mood to mood and from truth to lies and back to truth again. You’ll walk to the edge of want and maybe you’ll decide that it’s not worth it that year, and that’s OK. And sometimes you won’t even get to decide—the Kanza will say “I am the decider!” and break your bike in an attempt to break your spirit and that’s another test entirely. Does it piss you off? Does it make you cry? Does it make you feel like the tallest person on earth? Who are you? Did you find yourself out here?

Read the whole thing. It’s here.

Just another one of my stupid ideas. I got it in my head to try ride 50 hours (non-consecutive) in eight days. Why 8? No idea. It sounds kind of doable, until remember I do have a full-time job. Anyhoo, I figured commuting every day (my commute is 2.5 hrs each way) and two or three big rides on the weekends bookending the work week would do it. 

Kicked it off with a 140miler on the Saturday (which I conned two other people into doing with me), and that got #ouchoocho rolling. On Monday, I felt the sickness coming on. Laid awake on Monday night debating if I should ride through it in the morning. At 4:30am I made the call. To ride would be a dumb idea. Take the day off. Rest. Hope to be better by Wednesday and pick it up from there. The day off was a good idea, and it helped a bit, but I rolled out on Wednesday with a cold for sure. Not half as bad as the day prior, and it was only a head cold so I felt good to ride it out.

So I did. Technically 9 days, but I’m calling it 8. Extremely satisfying. It’s really kicked my DK training off to a good start. Got a lot of lost fitness back in a hurry and turned a few heads at work, which can be a hard thing to do when you work at a place like this.   

I ate my anger. I shot my jealousy and I Viking funeral-ed my disappointment. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get over DNFing the Dirty kanza 200 due to a mechanical.

I also write a ride report (when it doubt, write it out). You can read “Lay your dirty burden down” right here. (There’s also a bunch more photos of the funeral and jealousy balloon killings) Feel free to leave a comment - maybe even about how you get over training for a long time and having it all fall to pieces come the event? 

I’ll be posting my Dirty Kanza ride report on Monday. Meantime, here’s a few pics of prep and aftermath. 

Somehow I managed to forget to actually post my writeup on the Tour de Tree: Groundhog Day Edition. Finally posted it last night HERE, which also has a link to the full gallery.

Meantime, here are a few of my favorite photos from the event. Adored the stem decal Taco made. 

Ride Two of my road trip to Dirty Kanza training camp. This ride was from Flagstaff toward Sedona on 89A. Personally wouldn’t really recommend it if you’re nervous about roads with no shoulder and a lot of traffic. A lot of that traffic going well above the 45mph that’s posted. But I did it because I wanted to get out to this descent/climb. Super fun descent. Really good climb (not hard, but consistent at about avg 6%). 

Strava

I recently drove all the way to Kansas to do Dirty Kanza training camp. Decided to turn it into a road trip with rides along the way. Here are a few shots from a ride I did in death Valley from Furnace Creek (sea level) to Dante’s View (5,475ft). It’s basically a 23 mile climb, and the last quarter mile is brutal. The view is worth it, and then you get to descend for 23 miles. 

I woke up on a Friday morning and just thought: “I have to go somewhere.“

Been trying to find that balance between working on my book - ah, that book I’ve been neglecting - and having ride adventures. (And riding so much I have time for little else, which is more of an addiction problem and let’s face it, hardly a problem in the true sense of the word. Bit I digress.)

The recent #roguepumpkin adventures are great, but this adventure needed to accomplish something different.

I needed somewhere great to ride, somewhere great to write. 

I scrambled around in the morning, threw a bunch of clothes in a bag, grabbed my laptop, latched Almond Butter on the car and drove to work.

A casual ask around at work: “Any thoughts on a place I can drive to after work - so 3-5 hr drive - that’s also is great place to ride?” After a couple of locations were suggested, I weighed them up and proceeded to ignore them all (though catalogued for later). Why? Because I suddenly remembered a place that was three hours drive away. Three hours away and so easy on the eye that to ride there would be an exercise in ‘stop and take photos’ restraint. 

Yosemite.

My first #RideWriteRetreat was born.

During lunch, I found a hotel online and booked it. Cheap this time of year - well, cheap for Yosemite - and about 8 miles away from park entrance. Best of all, there would be no internet (unless I wanted to pay) and no phone signal (so no cheater internet either).

Complete isolation. Just a perfect #ridewriteretreat location.

I left work at 4 and drove to the Cedar Lodge motel outside of El Portal. It’s one of those hotels that is equal kitch run down and just what you want. There’s a bar. A restaurant. A room. And a large population of carved wooden bears, some holding wooden cameras. 

Day 1, I sat and wrote in 2 places in the morning - my room until it warmed up outside, and a bench in the sun with a great view. I stayed there until noon. 

I then drove up into Yosemite, up to the valley, and parked at the Village, grabbed my bike off the back of my car and noodled around the bike path just in my jeans and sneakers. With that little ride dose - I think it was about 9 miles of riding in the end - I drove back to the hotel, worked a little in my room, then wrote in the bar for the rest of the night.

6,500 words on Day 1. I mean, they weren’t great words, but I was getting them out. Not stopping, not editing. Just writing.

Day 2 was slightly more complex, as I’d have to fit in the addition of having to drive home with writing plus a longer ride. Again I wrote in the morning. Check out time was 11, so I wrote until then, and then drove up into Yosemite and parked about 2 miles inside the entrance. Kitted up, locked the car, and started climbing up into the valley again. (If you’re curious as to why I didn’t ride up to Yosemite from the hotel, the park fee I paid the previous day which was valid for 7 days for the car did not cover entering by bike the next day, and I woulda had to pay $10 to enter by bike. They ranger advised me to drive and park in, so I did.) 

Not a whole lot of shoulder on the climb, but traffic was very minimal and the weather was amazing. In my haste to pack on Friday, I’d forgotten arm warmers and a base layer, so I was just in my jersey, with a vest in my pocket and it was perfect. A little fall-chilly in the shade, but glorious, so glorious everywhere else. 

It was not a long ride - only 20 miles in the end, but I loved it. Just what I needed. Got back in my car and began the drive home. 

Almost 10,000 words written over the course of the weekend, and some great relaxing miles in a gorgeous location. Very productive, well-juiced weekend. There are more photos here 

While I’m happy about the words - I’ve now written 30,000 since the start of November covering about 10 days of the tour toward the end - it’s really making me aware of just how much work I have to do. When the first draft is finished, then the real work can begin.  

Yesterday turned into a death march near the end. Just turning the cranks to get it over with. My knee was being a jerk. Ran out of water on Tunitas and limped into La Honda. Never really recovered from the deficit and ended up with a headache for the last 30 miles or so. 

All the negatives aside, it was a great ride. Rode some different roads to see what they were like, including Bean Creek Road to get into Pescadaro (even though I usually get off Hwy 1 at Gazos Creek to cut over), then near the top of Tunitas, I turned onto Star Hill, then up the Swett Wall and to Skyline that way. Man, the houses back there are intense. No way you could set up a defensible space around any of them. Fire comes, you get the hell out of there. 

Because I ran out of water, I came down the 84 to La Honda instead of riding over and taking Old La Honda down. It was a lovely and fast descent. Smooth. 

120 miles.  A tough 120 miles with the knee pain and headache near the finish.

Worth it.

The second #roguepumpkin adventure was a micro one. I dubbed it a #nanonano adventure - one that takes place in a day. Planned on Friday, enacted on Sunday. 

I found a road I wanted to climb: Nacimiento Road. It’s in Big Sur, off the PCH in California. Jon was a last minute invite, and he had taken a quick look at the road and seen that dirt looked to come off the top of it. 

It took just over two hours to drive to the start, and it’s not an ugly drive either. The climb itself is about 7.5 to 8 miles long, and only at the start is it anything resembling steep (though not steep. Just one of those climbs you start and think ‘man, if the whole thing’s like this, this will be a tough ride’.) But after a big right-hander it settles into a comfortable grade that just goes on and on and on. 

Amazing views. Just. ahhmazing. 

When we got to the top of the climb, we saw two dirt roads - the South Ridge and the North Ridge Trails - and chose the North to ride up to the trailhead of Cone Peak Trail, which was posted as being 6 miles from that spot. What followed was an amazing and stunning road, some nice and smooth for dirt, some mid-rough, with the air broken only by the sounds of our breathing and the sight of the fog rolling over the ridge line (which you can see in the full collection). 

I consider this ride to be a scouting trip of sorts. I want to do a two-three day camping trip down there, where each day is spent exploring roads like this on Pumpkin Butter. 

This will happen. 

Afterwards, we drove down further and cut across to Paso Robles to eat and have a beer at the Firestone Taproom. Big trip for what was 3.5 hrs of riding, but that’s what it’s all about. Riding where you don’t usually ride. 

Squeeze all the juice out of your weekend orange, people. ALL OF IT!

Full collection of photos from the adventure here

Here are a few photos from my trip out to Idaho for the gravelly goodness of Rebecca’s Private Idaho. I finally wrote up my ride report and it includes a poem “Sawtooth Beasts, they come undone”, which I wrote as an alternate way to tell the story of the ride instead of the standard format. If you’re into #longreads, then go get your read on riiiiiiiiggggghhhhtt here.   

On Thursday morning I was sitting at my desk feeling a little low. What I need, thought I, is an adventure.

Just me and Pumpkin Butter. But it needs to be somewhere different. Somewhere I can drive to in the Rogue. Thus was born a spontaneous adventure called #roguepumpkin.

I decided to head north, since it was supposed to be quite hot down south. Decided I really wanted to ride Avenue of the Giants. So I plotted out a route, started examining the segments, and realized I had accidentally plotted the exact route that the Tour of the Unknown Coast takes. (Regarded as one of CA’s toughest centuries).

Left on Friday and it took 7 hours to drive to the north end of the Avenue. Stayed in a hotel in Loleta, CA. 

The ride itself started with about 40 miles of relatively flat riding. But gorgeous riding. The part of the Avenue I rode was fantastic, but really, the ride along Bull Creek Flats Road was just stunning. I narrower road (no lines) and just amazing scenery. 

After that, I climbed Panther Gap, which was switchbacky and long (about 7 miles) and descended down into Honeydew. The descent, and the one later between the wall and the 8 mile climb) was steep and unforgiving. I stopped a couple of times to let my discs cool down some. And to take photos. Lots of photos. You can see them all here (about 30 in all, including the ones in this post).

Drove all the way back to Santa Cruz on Highway 1, which was epic and lovely and all was well with the world. Just wish weekends were three days. Anyway, it was a great day and super micro-adventure with #roguepumpkin. Got me thinking about another one. 

When adventure doesn’t come to you, you go find it. 

Strava deets here

Get out there. Do dumb things.

Last week, I did the Tour de Tree again. It’s a self invented event. No one pays me to do it. And guess what? All the rules, I made up. 

It takes place over 5 days and is 10 Stages - 5 AM, 5 PM. Basically riding to and from work everyday. Santa Cruz to/from Morgan Hill. That sounds easy, but my commute includes Mt Madonna, which has an amazing tree at the top of it. Rule is, when you get to the tree, you do a ‘tour’ of it i.e. ride a loop around it.

The week for me was roughly 66 miles/5,200ft of elevation gain on average a day. 

I convinced one other person to do ALL the stages with me, and some other folks joined me here and there for a stage or two (I encouraged people from Morgan Hill side to ride to the tree, do their loop, and head back down to complete a stage. A few did it in the afternoon, and two braved the morning and did a stage up to the tree in the fog.)

For the final stage, both Jon - the other person who did all 10 stages and  wearing the Van Dammage kit - portaged a tallboy to the Mother Tree and toasted our victory together. It was an amazing and very tiring experience. Wednesday was the hardest and I took to taking noonday naps on the lawn outside work while everyone was out on lunch ride just to catch up with sleep - getting up at 4:30am every morning does that to you.

I took a lot of photos and some videos for what is a very long week. You can view them all here, included some loops of the Mother Tree and a rather impressive puncture pic –> TOUR DE TREE - AUGUST 2014

Also, here’s an example of a stage. The final PM stage. I did change the afternoon routes from time to time, adding in more climbing generally, but this is the standard afternoon commute.