The idea for this ride came from a previous ride I did, lead by Tony Moy, over Labor Day weekend two years ago, where we met at Orinda BART and did a loop thru Moraga to Canyon/Pinehurst and Redwood Roads to Castro Valley, and back to Orinda via Danville, Walnut Creek and Lafayette. So why start in Lafayette this time? Well, it’s where I grew up (and it’s a few miles less for me to drive to from Hollister.) So how to make a 52 mile ride longer? Well I played around with the program called Klimb and figured that we could head out to Sunol and return back to Castro Valley by following Niles Canyon to Palomares and then retrace our route to Lafayette. This would be the first time to use the program to prepare a route for a ride, and it estimated 78 miles and 5,370 feet of climbing.

So nine of us met on this sunny Sunday morning at the Lafayette BART station: Bill B., Jeff P., Scott S., Randy D. (making five ALCers on the ride including me), Mark P., Erik L. and Les D. Now it’s embarrasing when the Ride Coordinator forgets the waiver, but I did (note to self: put blank waivers in the glove box for future reference), so the ride became an unofficial DSSF ride. We headed out about 9:2o, Lafayette has some nice bike paths and it’s a quick jaunt out past the reservoir and on to Orinda. In Orinda, we headed up to Moraga, a gentle climb, and then headed on to Canyon, Pinehurst and Redwood Roads.

After a regroup at the Willow Park Public Golf Course, where Rico pointed out that the golfers at the driving range were using floating golf balls, which we didn’t belief at first, but as we headed out past the reclaimation pond, sure enough, floating golf balls.

Arriving in Castro Valley, we made our way to Paloverde Road and then up and over the Dublin Grade down to Foothill Boulevard. Foothill Boulevard took us all the way to Sunol, which was a good thing as I had looked at a Google Map and it appeared we would have been better to cut over to Pleasanton-Sunol Road, but we never saw Sunol Boulevard but it worked out. There’s not much to Sunol, I figured (hoped) there would be a deli or cafe, and Mark had eaten at one on a ride with Victor & Kyle several weeks earlier at the Sunol Coffee House & Cafe which was like something out of Fried Green Tomatoes without the southern accents.

Lunch in Sunol marked the 40 mile, halfway point, so the rest is all return. We started back west on Niles Canyon Road, the five miles to the almost always missed sharp right turn up Palmares Road. Going up thru Palomares Canyon the Garmin Edge 305GPS bike computer lost the satellite signal several times. And on the five mile climb this was the only stretch of road we did with any sign of slides or damage to the road from the seemingly never ending rains of the spring. In fact, all the roads were quite nice the entire 80 miles, making the downhills even nicer, not having to worry about badly rutted roads.

In Castro Valley, Rico & Scott left us to catch BART back to the city, and so off we set on the climb up Redwood Road another 5 mile climb like Palomares, but tougher after having done Palomares already. For the most part, almost all the climbing was spaced out fairly well, and it was nice that the last few were shorter, up Pinehurst, where Bill & Erik were waiting for me, and notice an ominous sign on the side of the road, like something out of an old western.

On Randy’s suggestion, we returned to Lafayette via Orinda, rather than continuing all the way down Moraga Way as I had planned; the stretch from Rheem to Lafayette is windy, narrow and not so good, so that bumped the total mileage to just over 81 miles. Jeff caught BART back to the city in Orinda, and we continued on to Lafayette and Starbucks before heading home.

Oh, and the final ride statistics varied. The Polar HR monitor measured 5,580 feet for the ride, and the Garmin GPS read pretty close to that before uploading the data. But after uploading the data it varied, 6034 feet according to the Garmin software, or 6,823 feet here at MotionBased.com where you can see the route and details of the ride. Thanks again everyone! See you next time.

I was looking forward to Strawberry Fields Forever again this year, an organized ride in Santa Cruz & Monterey counties with themed rest stops! Western, Turkish and so on; last year the Italian theme stop had an expresso cart at in a strawberry field! So I was looking forward to doing it again.

Mother nature, and Accuweather, both insisted that it was going to rain, off and on, in that area. But at 7am, it was only cloudy, no rain yet. So Bill B. and Jeff P. and I met and decided to go to the first rest stop at 15 miles, going up Soquel-San Jose Road to Summit Road and the fire station. A bad mud slide this year meant that this rest stop was a turn around point coming back right past the starting point (instead of continuing on Highland and down Eureka Canyon Road to Corralitos.) So it made the first leg and out and back. Good thing, it started raining about 4 miles into it and did not stop till we got to the rest stop (2300 feet in 15 miles.)

You can imagine the downhill from there, wet and very cold, as we began the long descent. Fortunately, it is a road (one of the few, after this winter’s storms?) that is in good shape. Of course, it started raining again. And then I lost the bite valve on my Camelback and promptly filled my right shoe with water (not that the rain wasn’t doing a good job of that on it’s own.)

When we got back to the start point we all opted to bail. A fellow cyclist took this photo, she was headed off to find a bike shop to buy a rain suit, just because.

On my drive home, headed south the direction we were to go, it poured! Tom B. also reported that he and his friend doing the 100k got rained on out in the southern section of Santa Cruz county, where we would have headed to next, and they also bailed at 30 miles. Oh well, there is always next year.

While the Evil Step Sisters ride was rescheduled to Sunday, the club still had a presence at the Cinderella Classic, despite the weather.

From Sharon Lum:

This year’s Cinderella Classic has to be the windiest one I’ve ever ridden and I’ve ridden about 15 of them.

Despite the lousy weather, I was amazed at the number of women who showed up for the ride. The Valley Spokesmen were well prepared for them as well too with what seemed like a lot more sag vehicles than I have seen in the past.

Started off at 8:20am. Didn’t see anyone I knew so started off on my own. No rain when I started, but the roads were pretty wet, so I put on all my rain gear as I didn’t want to spend the day in wet clothes from spattered rain puddles. Heavy winds from the west already and continued that way throughout the day.

Lots of folks fixing flats on the side of the road on my way to the first reststop. Fortunately no flats for me all day.

Spent a lot of time at the first reststop deciding if I should remove some of my rain clothes or not.

Nice ride out to the Flynn Road and the lovely climb through there, away from all of the suburbia in the area. Nice green hills, but no wildflowers. This was the furthest east we travel, so for most of the rest of the way back we had to battle fierce headwinds.

Got to lunch at noon and met up with Spoker Rachel G in the lunch line. We decided to ride together for the rest of the ride. Right when we were about to leave, a former Spoker, Susan H shows up and we decide to wait for her to eat and for the three of us to leave together. During lunch we discuss various options to avoid having to deal with the wind.

As we were about to leave, we noticed dark rain clouds in the direction we were going to have to ride in. We decided to wait for the thunderstorm to pass and continue on our way, which was to do Lemondrop Hill and then bypass Blackhawk and San Ramon and make a beeline down Camino Tassajara back to the start, cutting off about 8 miles of the ride. By the time we left, I had spent two hours at lunch.

As expected we had very strong headwinds on our way to and up Lemondrop Hill. The winds were so strong that we had to pedal every mile DOWN the hill too. This was the only part that I got rained on, and it was a very light rain.

Headed back to the finish down Camino Tassajara and noticed many sag wagons filled with bikes going our way too. Talked to a friend yesterday who lives in Livermore and she said she noticed many Cinderella riders avoiding Lemondrop Hill entirely and taking Livermore and Stanley Roads back.

Finished around 4:30pm and many more riders were still coming in. Normally things are starting to wind down by now.

Overall a fun, but challenging Cinderella Classic.

And from Mary Anne Reno:
Well, I think the worst was the headwinds. I hit a couple of patches of rain (2-3 minutes each – not very hard), but I quickly dried out. However, I turned onto Patterson Pass Road and stopped for water and to adjust my route sheet; at which point I was hailed on for 2 painful minutes OUCH!!!.

Like, Sharon I saw alot of cyclists bail out after the last rest stop and take the sag back to the start. I, however, did the entire ride and then went home and took a hot bath.

Thanks for the photos, Sharon. And thanks for the tales from the road, Sharon & Mary Anne!

In typical March 2006 style, the weather proved to be the step mother for this ball; Friday afternoon as the forecast continued to look grim for Saturday, there was enough interest in doing the ride Sunday, that we just rescheduled it. From the initial reports from those doing the Cinderella Classic on Saturday (Headwinds! Hail! Headwinds! Rain! Headwinds! Crosswinds!) this definitely was a good choice.

Sunday morning seven hearty soles met at Peet’s for the annual Evil Step Sisters ride, which takes you for a climb up Mt. Tam and then along Panoramic Highway for some gorgeous views, followed by a long steep downhill to break at the Alpine Dam. David G., Scott S., Michael S., Jeff P., Erik L. were joined by newcomers Dino G & Raymond P., as we headed across the city to face Mt. Tam.

We regrouped at the usual spots along the way, nearly missed the turn onto Miller, but proceeded safely thru Mill Valley, carefully stopping at all stop signs so as not to repeat last years run in with the law.

At the ranger station, Dino & Raymond announced that they would be skipping the snack stop at Alpin Dam, something about needing to be home or else they might be in “trouble” for having riden both days.

We had a nice snack break at Alpine Dam before continuing on and climbing up Fairfax-Bolinas Road before descending back down to Fairfax, where we stopped as usual (ride to eat or eat to ride?)

The five of us continued on through the various Marin townships on to Camino Alto. I recall someone mentioning that it seemed easier, maybe because we had already climbed over 3,000 feet? Crossing the flats to Sausalito was amazingly wind free and a pleasure, making that climb to the Golden Gate Bridge just a bit easier. Jeff turned off to head home, and the remaining four headed back to Peets to finish the afternoon.

Another great ride!

Thanks Jeff, for leading us on a fabulous Sunday afternoon ride down the coast. Ten of us, including several of the elusive she-wolves, joined Jeff on this ride. Riders included David G., Erik L., Patrick H., Bill B., Liz A., Anne Z., Chris R. and Scott S.

We started at the southern end of Half Moon Bay at the fire station, heading south to do a 20 mile stretch of Highway 1, on a wonderfully clear morning with a nice tail wind.

This stretch of the coastline is fairly flat, with a few short climbs, one as we passed by San Gregorio State Beach. We continued on down the coast, past Pompano and Pescadero State Beaches and turned onto Gazos Creek Road.

This led us inland where we hope to be protected from that nice NW tail wind that carried us down, sections were protected, but we had a bit of wind and most of the climbing is in the 30+ mile return to Half Moon Bay. Nothing to terribly difficult, but then looking at this Klimb profile after a ride it does look impressive!

We stopped in Pescadero and had lunch, before continuing on Stage Road to San Gregorio. We jumped back on Highway 1 for a brief stretch till Tunitas Creek Road.

We did not take this all the way to Skyline, but turned and took the Lobitos Creek Cutoff back to Highway 1 for a quick jaunt, and then again we turned off the highway onto Verde to catch Purisma Creek Road and our final climb of the day, before a nice downhill back to the fire station in Half Moon Bay.

Thanks again, Jeff. Looking forward to that next ride!

Khai reports: The Cinderella Classic training bike ride on Saturday, 2/18, went beautifully. My odometer read 37 miles when we were finished. I think not bad for a group of people who claimed to not have been riding very much this Fall/Winter season! It was my first time “leading” a ride…a virgin…and thanks to the wonderful group of women on the ride, it was a great experience. 😉

Alright…here is the group picture at the beginning…ready to go.

Thanks, Khai!

What a fabulous February day for the Jersey Ride, check out these smiling faces!