I’ve pondered why more members are not leading rides. My own trajectory to leading rides was slow. I joined the club and—if my recollection is accurate—I didn’t attend a club ride until maybe a year later. Part of it was time: I was in graduate school and working part time. I was also mainly into running at that point but did lots of errands in SF on my bike. But I kept getting running injuries and decided I had to get back to cycling. I can’t recall if I attended one of the monthly club meetings or a ride first. On one of my early club rides I met Ron Decamp, a member who lived in the South Bay. We talked about riding on the Midpeninsula and eventually we agreed to colead a ride since the club didn’t ride there often enough despite the area’s marvelous cycling routes. Neither of us had led a club ride before. After that first time coleading, it was easy to lead on my own even though I still didn’t lead often.

Making friends in the club led to doing more club rides and often we just got together to ride when there wasn’t a club ride (or a club ride that appealed to us). We also had the now vanished Decide & Ride: show up at McLaren Lodge on any Sunday at 10 am. Whoever came would decide where to ride. There almost always was a small group who showed up when there wasn’t another club ride. That all led to leading more rides. But I rarely led more than maybe three rides per year—usually less—unlike in recent years when I’ve led or co-led a couple per month.

We used to have monthly club meetings back then and I think they helped draw out some ride leaders. Those meetings always involved exhortations from the ride coordinator as well as a preview of next month’s rides and the slots in the calendar that needed filling. (We printed a monthly newsletter, the ChainLetter, which included the ride calendar for the month. So rides had to be gathered at least three weeks in advance.) At the meeting ride hosts would talk about their rides to encourage participation and informally members would talk about where they were interested in riding and get encouragement from others to lead a ride. Everyone was gently encouraged to lead a ride they liked and I think hesitant members got enough positive feedback at those meetings to step up and lead their ride.

Of course we no longer have regular meetings and most of our communication has shifted from in-person to the Internet. This I think makes it harder to foster ride hosting. Personal contact makes a difference in persuading members that they can lead a ride, and that other members will indeed show up. The most commonly mentioned reason not to lead a ride is “but what if no one else shows up?” and that fear was assuaged by people telling the potential ride leader’s face that they were interested in that ride.

Believe me I’ve posted rides and been the only person to show up. But I’ve made it a point to post rides that I wanted to do. So if no one else showed up, I still got to do a ride I wanted to do. It was hardly a burden if I was going to ride anyway.

I’m not sure why there is reticence today to lead a ride. There are the usual reasons: not wanting to be “obligated” to do it (FOMO??); being shy (as if we were going to judge you based on your ride); and “I wouldn’t know where to lead a ride”. At some level it is a matter of personality: some people are afraid of being in a leadership role. Is that due to lack of self-confidence? Chris Thomas is one of the shiest people I know and yet he went from volunteering to lead a ride in Fresno, where he lived at the time, to leading a zillion AIDS Lifecycle training rides and then Double Bay Double training rides. (Incidentally when he did list that ride, we drove all the way to Fresno to do his ride and support him as did a few other Bay Area members.)

But I don’t believe ride leaders are born even if personality makes it easier for some people to make the move. Ride leaders are made and we don’t yet have a proven recipe for developing ride leaders despite 40 years of existence. We are indeed slow learners! One thing I do know is that I cannot recall a single case of someone new to the club showing up and then leading a ride very shortly thereafter. Someone new to the club comes on a ride, checks us out, and decides whether to come a second time. If they like the experience, then maybe they come on a few rides and make friends in the club. Only at that point do they offer to lead a ride. That rarely happens nowadays. Coleading a ride with another member makes it easier to step up. Also, having a coleader means that someone else is guaranteed to show up!

I also suspect that we rely too much on self-volunteering rather than directly asking, “Hey, would you be interested in leading a ride for the club?” We replicate what we know and in my case no one needed to ask me to lead a ride. I haven’t started cold calling members but maybe that’s the next ride coordinator’s decision.

Stepping up to leading a ride is surely a sign of some emotional investment in the club. When you make friends in the club, leading a ride becomes much easier. We certainly don’t expect every member to lead rides (although that would be wonderful!) But at our membership level we should have about 15-20 active ride leaders in any year and we’re below that.

David Goldsmith asked me that question years ago. I can’t remember exactly what it was in reference to but I do recall being amused and of a lightbulb popping up in my head about the cultural zeitgeist behind that question. There was a time when people did most everything around the house whether it was house cleaning, fixing the car, installing a new garbage disposal, gardening, or wiring a new outlet. It was just understood that we could do that and we only hired someone to take on tasks that required a professional such a lawyer, doctor, architect, etc.

Certainly part of the ethos of 1950s and 1960s was that boys learned from their fathers (or that shop class in high school) and girls learned from their mothers (or the home ec class in high school) how to do these kinds of things. Boys grew up learning how to do household repairs and to wield as many tools as their dads could afford to store in the garage workshop. Is that still true today? Perhaps less so. Today boys’ spare time is devoted to a myriad of after school activities instead of helping their dads with household repairs.

When I was in high school I hung out with a small group of budding bike fanatics and yet none us had anything remotely special for a bike. (I had a Schwinn Continental with steel rims and an Ashtabula crank!) One day John suggested we take our bikes apart, clean them, and put them back together. On his backyard patio no less. Before that I had only a vague idea of how bikes worked and were put together. John knew only a little bit more then I did. That experience was revelatory if hard and frustrating. It was a bit over our heads but we managed to take apart our bikes right down to the ball bearings including the freewheel and reassemble everything. It took all day. And yes, we did have a couple of parts left over. But by that point we were exhausted and our bikes appeared to work fine anyway. The end result was that I was never intimidated by working on a bike again.

Until now. Taking apart a downtube indexed shifter is as “contemporary” a repair as I feel confident to do on new technology. Shimano shifters—thank god!—are not intended to be disassembled and if they fail you just replace them. But other technologies give me the heebie-jeebies: suspension forks, hydraulic brakes, and electronic shifting systems. I have managed to learn to use a torque wrench and live with tubeless tires. I know that at some point I’m going to bite the bullet and learn how to do those repairs, make a shitload of newby mistakes, but eventually get competent enough to handle my own repairs and maintenance. But I am avoiding it as long as possible, ie. until something irretrievably breaks.

But beyond the higher technological skillset necessary to take care of these repairs—it really isn’t that much more complicated than before—there has just a cultural shift in bike repair: find people to do ALL your maintenance and just throw money at your problems. The inability whether it’s due to lack of time, lack of interest, or just ennui is much more acceptable these days. We all understand when someone hires someone or uses a convenience instead of doing the work themselves. Instead of preparing a meal we go out to eat. It’s easier especially when you’re tired after a day’s work. Fix your bike? You’d rather be riding it instead of wasting your precious Me time wrestling with a recalcitrant tire. How many of us still clean their home instead of hiring a cleaning service? Dry cleaning? Nowadays we can send out all our clothing for washing and it’ll be returned nicely ironed and folded too. There is no shame anymore in not knowing how to do things ourselves; we just understand that we hire others to do things for us. It’s just more things than before.

When I was a teenager I took car repair classes at the local community college. I am probably the last person with any kind of abiding interest in cars. I’ll drive anything as long as it’s cheap and can get me from point A to point B and is reliable. But I thought I should know something about our car and feel less marooned when it came to an unexpected failure. Working hands-on on my car was just as revelatory as working on my Schwinn. After those classes I didn’t work on my car very much but I certainly felt competent and could talk to my mechanic. As with bikes, auto technology has quickly advanced and now nothing can be done to a car engine without a diagnostic computer to tune it. So I’m back to square one again: ignorant and completely in the hands of auto mechanics.

We are embodied beings so knowledge we acquire through our bodies and not just from reading or watching YouTube videos can take us to another level. The experience of using our hands especially to learn about the world is valuable knowledge. How much torque do I need to apply to snug up a bolt? What does that feel like? How much to turn that adjustment screw to quiet the rattle in the rear derailleur? You learn that through your body. It is felt knowledge. Buddhists say that you don’t give a starving person a menu, you give them food. That is to say, talking about enlightenment is worthless; one has to experience it directly to know. So it is with bike repair. To understand your bike intimately you have to work on it. Yes, mechanics can make your problem vanish. But will you be “fed”?

Has it felt like there haven’t been many club rides recently? Maybe you hadn’t noticed because you’re not riding much. Or, at least you’re not riding much with Different Spokes. And we know one begets the other: fewer rides results in less interest and expectations, which results in even fewer rides. This has been a bad year for the club partly due to the record rainfall for the first four months of 2023. But we didn’t rebound once the weather improved for riding. As some of you know this has also been a bad year for illness, injuries, and accidents and not just among the usual ride leaders. Both David Goldsmith and I have been derailed this year from leading many rides (although David is doing a lot better than I!) Whether it’s a home remodel, Covid, accidents, or one’s aging body letting one down, life has a way of interfering with cycling.

There is also usually a lull in rides before AIDS Lifecycle as some members focus on that event. But honestly we don’t support AIDS Lifecycle anymore as we used to by offering training rides. Lifecycle has its own robust training ride schedule and doesn’t need any help from us. (We’ve outlived our usefulness to it, it seems.) This year the rebound post-Lifecycle didn’t happen for some reason and we had very few rides offered.

What has been revealed in glaring clarity is that there is little interest in leading rides in the club right now. The Jersey Ride, which by the way has been the most popular and well-attended ride in our history, does not have throngs of members eager to lead it. It’s usually a board member or an ex-board member who finally relents and volunteers to lead it after much exhortation and prodding from Yours Truly. Do I like beating the bushes to find a JR ride host? No, it’s a minor chore but the fact that I have to do it rather than having a member spontaneously step up before I even ask, saying, “Hey, I’d like to lead next month’s JR? May I do that?” reveals the lack of volunteerism and ennui we have now. I find JR hosts and often with a response such as, “Oh, I’ll do it but only if no one else does.” Apparently leading the JR is also viewed as a minor chore by others. And perhaps that says something about the JR itself. Maybe it was a good horse in its youth but it’s outlived its time and should now be put out to pasture. If no one is jumping for joy to lead the JR, then perhaps we should just stop offering it in its present form. If you like the JR, then maybe you should do something about preserving it by leading it once in a while because frankly that burden has fallen on an extremely small number of members who likely would prefer to be riding somewhere else. Or maybe the JR needs to get away from the Tib loop and go elsewhere as a breath of fresh air?

The shitshow on the GG Bridge in the afternoon doesn’t help. It’s one of the reasons David now leads the Short & Sassy Tib loop since it starts and ends in Marin and he doesn’t have to risk life and limb on the Bridge. It’s also the reason Roger and I no longer lead it: after two JRs where we were nearly hit we will no longer ride southbound on the Bridge in the afternoon and prefer to lead the much safer East Bay Tiburon loop. Maybe you feel the same way and that’s why you don’t want to lead or participate in the JR? But your silence tells us little. Speak up and let us know.

One could argue that the resistance to leading the JR is idiosyncratic. But we’ve had a glorious summer almost devoid of oppressive heat waves and wildfire smoke and yet we’ve had less than half the number of rides we usually have had. For at least a couple of years we’ve averaged about one club ride per week throughout the year. This year it’s going to be much less than half that.

This isn’t to say that no one volunteers to lead rides. There are still a few members who without urging will occasionally post rides from their repertoire. But the ride leader cohort has been dwindling and not replenished at the same rate, so it’s fragile right now. When two or three of the main leaders can’t lead rides, the calendar suffers greatly. This might be tolerable for a month or two. But at some point I would expect members to think, “Gee, there haven’t been many rides. I’ll lead one next month.” This was actually my thought process when I volunteered to be the ride coordinator back in 2016. The ride calendar was dismal and we hadn’t had a ride coordinator in over two years. So at first I led more rides and then in the vain hope of having a multiplier effect I volunteered to be the club ride coordinator. It clearly had some effect since the numbers went up. But now rides are dwindling again and frankly I’m not sure what to do to rectify it. Perhaps there is no rectification needed and this is just part of the natural up and down cycle of the club.

Over the past five years the board has worked to structurally make it easier to lead rides. The club RideWithGPS account has a curated library of rides throughout the greater Bay Area including a Most Popular selection for each county. This should make it easier to peruse and find interesting rides without having to generate a cue sheet, map, or GPS file for participants. Some rides even have ride notes and ride history information in their files. Posting rides on the ride calendar is easy through the “post a ride” link and usually are up in less than a day or even faster through the QuickEvents method. There is a dedicated ride leader forum for those who lead rides to discuss and problem solve issues pertaining to ride leading.

I suspect the common reaction amongst you to the dearth of rides is at best very mild disappointment. It’s so easy to get on a bike and ride by oneself; you don’t have to do any work to arrange or coordinate it, you can leave at whatever time you want, and you can do whatever ride you want including changing your mind midride. Leading a ride does involve a time commitment at an appointed date and time. Why bother when it’s easy just to text a friend or two and see if they want to join your personal ride than it is to organize a ride for the club? I would like to say that it’s easy to find another ride at any of the non-LGBTQ clubs. But that is becoming harder too. Larger clubs such as the Valley Spokesmen and even Grizzly Peak Cyclists have diminishing ride calendars and they periodically plea for more ride leaders. So it’s not just us.

The idea behind leading a club ride isn’t to put members through an ordeal. If that is your reaction, then don’t do it. In all the years I’ve ridden with Different Spokes leading rides has been about wanting to get together with your friends to ride. If that’s not enough to get you warm and fuzzy about leading a club ride, then don’t do it. You should feel eager to lead a club ride, jazzed about it and not repulsed. If that is not the reaction of most of the members, then it’s time to shutter the club. Don’t lead a club ride if you don’t feel like it. On the other hand, as a member you should feel that giving back to the club is something you want to do. Those who take should also give. Or have we forgotten the moral of the childhood story of Stone Soup?

At this juncture of the club, the real question is why members don’t want to lead rides because not wanting to do the most vital function of our club means there is something radically wrong. The culture of the club should be one of excitement, fun, and sharing. And sharing means sharing the “work” of making the club a continuing, viable organization. If there aren’t enough members who want to contribute to the club, then we will wither and vanish just as Different Spokes Seattle, Rainbow Cyclists in San Diego, and River City Cyclists in Sacramento all did.

Well, if you don’t care, then you don’t care. But I know some of you do and now is the time to act rather than sit back in the in the draft and let others plow into the wind. You know what cyclists say about wheelsuckers, don’t you? I’m flicking my elbow at you. Yes, you.

It is with a huge amount of sadness that I am writing this to let the club know that our dear friend and longtime member, David Sexton, was killed in a fatal accident on Saturday, July 1. David was rear-ended while riding to meet up with his partner and fellow Different Spokes member Gordon Dinsdale and died immediately.

David was a longtime rider with the club. He rode many, many, many miles together with us. David loved riding in Italy, and he entertained  us with stories of his and Gordon’s many trips abroad. Despite being one of our strongest riders, he always extended a warm welcome to newer riders, kept them company on rides, and helped get them going. David was a thoughtful guy, and funny as hell. I will miss him terribly.

David had another side to him that many of us did not see. Professionally, he was a chemotherapy nurse at Kaiser, and, during his career, helped hundreds of patients endure what can be an extraordinarily difficult time. He was a loving presence in Gordon’s life as Gordon supported his mother, Phoebe, through her last years.

Please join me in extending my heartfelt condolences to Gordon, and to David’s other close friends in the club, on this terrible loss.

Winter rains are a long gone memory, we’re in a heat wave, and the living is easy, right? Except for those pesky roads that were washed out and destroyed in January and February. Those of you who plied those roads regularly know which ones I’m talking about. But Spokers who live in more ‘isolated’ communities such as San Francisco may be blissfully unaware that some of the best roads for cycling are still unrepaired and have no firm timeline for repair.

This past winter was one of the rainest, wettest on record. In Orinda we received 53 inches of precipitation; an ‘average’ year would bring us about 35-36 inches. That rain damaged and led to the closure of the following, among many others:

• Redwood Road
• Stage Road
• West Old La Honda
• Wildcat Canyon Road
• Veeder/Redwood Road
• Norris Canyon
• Highway 84
• China Grade
• Schulties Road
• Glenwood Drive
• Old Santa Cruz Highway
• Highway One
• Crow Canyon
• Mines Road/San Antonio Road
• Patterson Pass
• Bolinas Road

Most of these roads are still closed with uncertain timelines for reopening. A few such as Mines Road and Bolinas Road have partially reopened to one-way traffic without the wash-out or road failure being repaired. Quite a few roads that had been shut down have been fully repaired such as Patterson Pass and Crow Canyon. Some of the closed roads are still being used by cyclists although it involves ignoring a closure sign and possibly walking the bike around the collapsed section of road such as Wildcat Canyon and Veeder/Redwood Road.

Roads such as Redwood Road and Stage Road are used heavily by cyclists and they have no easy alternate. This means either ignoring the signs and K barriers or consigning oneself to not being able to do a larger set of rides to which these roads lead. A secondary effect is that if a closed road has an alternate, it’s also being impacted by car traffic. An example is Old La Honda Road. With Highway 84 closed for an indefinite period of time, traffic from Woodside up to Skylonda or to the San Mateo Coast is forced onto Kings Mountain, East Old La Honda, and Page Mill Roads making these roads even more hazardous for cyclists. To make things even worse these roads are curvy and have sections with terrible sight lines and no shoulder.

A pleasant and unexpected benefit of a few road closures is the absence of car traffic once you get beyond the road closure. You may recall the Mud Slide which took out a huge section of Highway One below Big Sur in 2017. A hastily, ad hoc trail built through Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park allowed walkers and cyclists to access Highway One from the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge all the way down to Limekiln State Park, one of the most scenic sections of the Big Sur area, to enjoy with almost no car traffic. Wildcat Canyon Road is closed to cars but cyclists continue to use it from Inspiration Point to San Pablo Dam Road; it’s incredibly pleasant not having to share it with the rush of cars hurtling through the narrow curves!

If you look at the various county websites listing road closures you will see that none of these roads has a timeline for repair. Some list inspections and geotech surveys having been done but that is merely a prelude to engineering a repair and then lining up a contractor. These road repairs are not cheap and county road budgets are wellknown to be under stress for many years already. Highway One and 84 are state roads and are therefore under Caltrans’s purview and we can expect them to be dutifully restored to their prior condition if not better. But even today Highway One has not reopened even though the extent of the damage in no way compares to the Mud Slide in 2017, which took about a year and a half to be remediated enough to be reopened. Wildcat Canyon is not expected to be reopened until sometime in 2024 or 2025! Redwood Road, Stage Road, and West Old La Honda have no date for reopening whatsoever, not even an estimated date and that indicates that the eventual repair is no where near beginning.

In the meantime as we await reopening we can remind ourselves of notorious road closures in years past. Calaveras Road, which was also ruined this past winter (but has since reopened) was closed for about ten years (!) due to the earthquake retrofit of the Calaveras Dam; the repair of the Crystal Springs Dam in San Mateo similarly took more than ten years for Highway 35 to reopen. I doubt we’ll have to wait that long for these roads to be repaired!

Now the darkness only stays the night-time
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It’s not always going to be this grey

George Harrison

Yesterday in lieu of a ride we went to a celebration of life for Bob Powers. Who was Bob Powers? Probably no one else in Different Spokes has a clue. Bob and his wife Bonnie were the founders of Valley Spokesmen Cycling Club back in 1971. For the arithmetic impaired that was 52 years ago. This was in an era when being a cyclist was a sure indicator you were a dork, maybe a communist, and possibly immature or daft. So for this “power” couple to form a cycling club in the hinterlands of Dublin CA, which was at that time barely a dot on the map, was bold as can be (or possibly a scream for help).

We’re by no means involved members of Valley Spokesmen. When the club put on the annual Tour of the Sacramento River Delta, we often joined that two-day ride, which by the way was another Bonnie and Bob invention. The Cinderella Classic was another of their many creations, a century ride just for women and girls in order to encourage more female participation in our sport. We saw Bob annually every year at the Cinderella where we usually volunteered to help out with morning registration. Both the Powers were always there with Bob being the go-to guy for any emergencies or out-of-the-ordinary problems and Bonnie supervising registration. But Bob was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and passed away at age 86 just two weeks before this year’s Cinderella.

Bob and Bonnie were/are the strong roots of Valley Spokesmen even into their eighties. They have continued to pour immense energy into the club including the Cinderella Classic, which they invented. Every year they were key organizers and put in hours beyond compare. I learned at his memorial that in addition of forming the club and creating and organizing its signature events, the Cinderella and the Mount Diablo Challenge, they also were responsible for the Hekaton Century, which I used to do annually as well. Oldsters will recognize this as a great century that toured Contra Costa County but is no longer put on probably because Contra Costa is now so developed and many of the roads have become busy thoroughfares. What else? They also organized many of the club tours such as the ride to Paso Robles for the Great Western Bike Rally, two-week tours in various locations in the US and Canada including most recently in Kentucky.

Although Valley Spokesmen is eleven years older than Different Spokes and is a much bigger club than we, there are similarities between us. The early Spokers were also avid bike tourers and both clubs developed at a time when cycling was just starting to lose its weirdo halo. That Valley Spokesmen were lucky enough to have two such “Power”-houses to pour energy into it was a blessing.

Our club too has had members who took up the reins to create and re-create the club we have but no one has the longevity of the Powers. Although Derek and I are the only long term, extant members from the early ‘80s left, our interest and involvement in Different Spokes has waxed and waned over forty years. (Dr. Bob and Karry, also oldsters from the early ‘80s, recently rejoined after many years absence.) But like the Powers many of the oldsters, though gone now, had the same dream of a cycling club for their community.

The Valley Spokesmen is still a large and vibrant club. It has a racing team, still puts on several important cycling events every year, donates scads of money gathered from the Cinderella to local women’s organizations, and has an enthusiastic leadership team. But like Different Spokes it too is struggling with “succession”: ride leaders and and new rides continue to be difficult to cultivate. Does that sound familiar? And recently the leadership asked its members for volunteers to step up and help create a renewed club vision. Clearly they are thinking that continuing to do the same-old, same-old perhaps needs to be challenged.

Different Spokes is in a similar place. The current leadership needs to be refreshed badly for the club to remain vibrant and fresh. Roger, David, and I have been doing this for six-plus years now and whatever vision we had is likely turning stale; Jeff, Mark, Stephen, and Laura are more recent board members and I hope they stay on. Unfortunately Different Spokes has not had members as long lasting and visionary as the Powers have been for the Valley Spokesmen. Even so our small club is still capable of great things if we all put a little energy into the club.

Temporarily liberated from the incessant rainfall we went out for a bike ride. The Three Bears is nearby but we hadn’t been out that way recently and not just because it’s been raining biblically. It’s a good, short loop out in open space, rare in the urban Bay Area and loved so much that it’s a standard ride for Different Spokes as well as for Grizzly Peak Cyclists. But after you’ve done it a few hundred times—kinda like the Tib loop—its beautiful sheen becomes dulled through familiarity. But we knew the enormous rains surely had made the green hills verdant and lush and so we looked forward to getting out there.

We were not mistaken. Despite being late to the party–usually by now the pasturelands have been nibbled down to the stubs and the lack of rains starting to turn the hillsides tan—it was positively viridian. Even though the cows had made short order of the lush grass, it was still brightly green in an Irish sort of way such was the power of munificent rains.

But that intense green came at a cost. Having the earth so saturated meant that things were going to slip and slide. As we rolled south on San Pablo Dam Road by the turn to Wildcat Canyon we saw the K-barriers and signs that it was closed due to a landslide taking out the road. Date to reopening: unknown. Heading north a little further along San Pablo Dam Road we were surprised to see a 40 MPH speed limit sign. 40 MPH? It’s used to be 50. Then came a 25 MPH sign and a double line of hazard bollards. Then we saw why: the entire width of SPDR had buckled into an ugly and dangerous whoop-de-whoop as if the earth under the road had dissolved and the roadway was a taffy coating sinking into the gap.

On Castro Ranch Road we encountered more of the same. The road had buckled creating de facto speed bumps; on the descent to Alhambra Valley Road the roadway edge was destabilized leaving a set of wavy undulations. We moved to the left into the roadway.

Turning onto Alhambra Valley Road the road quality improved partly because a huge section had been rebuilt after the winter of 2016-17, the last time we had a torrential rains and it was closed for months. But the unmistakable signs were there: in several places the shoulder had collapsed into Pinole Creek right up or just into the road. The good news is that all this rain seems to have kept people from dumping their old furniture and construction debris on the roadside so that the beautiful pasturelands actually still looked pastoral rather than like Tobacco Road.

Bear Creek Road was in much better shape than either Castro Ranch, Alhambra Valley, or even San Pablo Dam Road, seemingly unaffected by our winter other than having slightly more debris in the shoulder. Water was of course streaming over the road in multiple locations. But that was about it all the way up Mama Bear and Papa Bear and back to San Pablo Dam Road. Fortunately no other slides or slips had occurred and if the soils can just dry out some more we may avoid further damage and destruction this spring.

Despite having received more rain this year than the winter of 2016-17, road destruction in the Bay Area seems less gargantuan. If you recall five years ago Pinole Creek completely washed away the bridge connecting Castro Ranch Road to Alhambra Valley Road, Moraga Creek slid and took out the bridge from Moraga to Pinehurst, Morgan Territory had a humungous landslide due to waterlogged soils, and Redwood Road slipped away. All of the repairs took a very long time to be finished; in the case of the Canyon bridge it took three years! And that is just a short list of the roads closed that winter. This year we’ve had a slate of well-loved roads closed by rain damage—La Honda Road, west Old La Honda, Mines Road, Stage Road over on coastside, China Grade, Palomares, Patterson Pass Road, and many others. But some of them are already reopened at least partially and I doubt any of them will take more than a year to be rebuilt. We can all wish for wet winters and green springs but sometimes it’s too much of a good thing. That said I love looking at a verdescent Mt. Diablo!

So far this has been a year unlike any other. Similar to the winter of 2016-17 when we also had a series of atmospheric rivers plow through northern California, this year our drought prayers were answered with double-fold irony: we’ve had so much rain that only the hardy go out to ride and when they do they’re confronted with washed out roads, downed trees blocking roads, and lots of mud and pools of water whose depth is uncertain. San Francisco to date has had over 29 inches of rain when the average year nets just 19 by now; SF averages less than 23 inches for an entire year. In Contra Costa we’ve received well over 47 inches to date when usually we get about 35. If we receive more than 50 inches by June 30, I would not be surprised given how prolific this rainy season has been. By the way, although Seattle and Portland have reputations for being rainy cities, but did you know that the annual average rainfall for Seattle is 37.5 inches? Portland is just 36 inches. And this year both have gotten just 40 inches to date. This has been a wet year!

That few of us are venturing out for rides is not news especially since our rains have been mostly constant and steady. In previous winters the rain wasn’t a serious deterrent for me and even this January despite my intentions to use Fulgaz and ride in the comfort of my living room, I just had to get outside and I rode 23 days rain or shine. I was expecting that I would continue.

But then life intervened and I couldn’t ride because of other responsibilities. Usually when I’m under stress going out for a ride has been a welcome relief and reinvigorating for handling life’s other travails. But not this time. And with the rains whatever incentive I had to get out just vanished in a puff. So almost a month went by and I did hardly a lick of a ride and whatever strength and stamina I had eked out became a faint dream. At my age it’s important to keep moving because every recession in fitness is just another ratchet downward no matter how hard I try to resist and come back.

Last week Roger and I finally went out for a (re-)inaugural bike ride, just a “stroll” down and up the local MUP. It was 25 miles and we rode it at a leisurely pace. No problem. That night Paul pinged me and asked if we’d like to go for a ride the next day. He too had been unable to ride, and since Saturday was to be a dry day with the rains returning on Sunday it was going to be the only day to get out. Both Roger and I felt alright (= not sore or tired) so we delightfully agreed to meet him. My left brain was telling me it was probably a mistake; my right brain was telling me how nice it would be to go for a Different Spokes-ish ride. Paul is a relatively new member who also lives in the East Bay, so it would be a good chance for us to get to know him a bit better. He’s also in our cohort, ie. as old as the friggin’ hills.

Paul was going to take BART to Orinda but he surprised us by riding over Wildcat instead. I thought, “Hmm, that would be more than I would be able to do if I were just starting to ride again”. We took him on a ride that we do often, which is out to the back part of Walnut Creek on lightly travelled suburban roads to some “hidden” hills in Danville and Alamo and then back to Orinda. It’s about 35 miles and although it has hills, they are short and not too steep. It’s a ride that we normally would consider a ‘light’ ride but with enough hilliness that you can make it as hard or as easy as you want. If we did it at an easy pace, it should be no problem.

Paul had never ridden out that way even with Grizzly Peak Cyclists, his other club. He was a bit lost in the morass of suburbia even though it is far more varied than the cookie cutter homes in Daly City, for example. Admittedly we were taking a lot of “roads less travelled” with lots of turns and cuts through cul-de-sacs that make the route confusing the first time. We had a nice time and I was surprised at how calm my legs felt despite having ridden the day before and after a month of inactivity.

On the way back my legs very quickly became tired and I slowed down. A lot. My leg muscles felt completely exhausted, as if I had ridden a century yet it less than 30 miles—at an easy pace no less! Riding two days in a row—never a problem in the past—this time was turning out to be massive overload. Just a couple of miles from home both my legs locked up, spasming uncontrollably. I pulled to curb but I couldn’t even dismount. I had waved Roger and Paul to go ahead to the coffee shop just before I cramped up. All I could do was stand there and not move. After five minutes my muscles had not calmed down. No matter which way I attempted to move, muscles would lock up like a vise. Eventually I stumbled onto the grass and sat down trying to find a position to stop the cramping. After minutes of agony I called Roger and asked him to come get me.

On a long ride I would have brought a small bottle of pickle juice in case of cramps. (You didn’t know pickle juice can help with cramps?). But this was a short ride so I hadn’t. I also had consumed all my water. Roger and Paul arrived and tried to help me. But the cramps were unrelenting and exquisitely painful. Roger went home to get the van because there was no way I could cycle up the hill to the house. Paul, who suffers from dehydation on rides, had some electrolyte pills. I gobbled three of them and more water. After about 15 minutes of struggling I was eventually able to stand and walk very slowly to a cul-de-sac where Roger could pick me up. Paul was very helpful in escorting me in case I fell victim to cramping again. But I didn’t. Roger arrived, we said our farewells—next time we’ll get coffee after a ride, Paul!—and headed home.

I never expected that starting cycling again would bring about such suffering. Each time I have to take an extended break from cycling or exercise, I feel like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill only to see it roll back down. In this case it was like Sisyphus pushing a rock uphill and then getting leg cramps!