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I haven’t been up the lower section of NW Saltzman in a while. There’s some funky art installation before you get to the gate, now?
Only photo I took from the trail today. It started raining just after.
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You’re giving me motivation to build up my 1x1!
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you need to do it. these things are so fun!
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whereish?
Sultan Basin Road. I figured I’d get a ride in before my kid’s track meet at Sultan High school.
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Taking the modified emergency randonneuse out for a couple of hours this afternoon:
Less than 30 miles, because I’m (a) an old, (b) out of shape, and (c) free of the ravages of testosterone, but it’s still a nice afternoon out.
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Little one can keep his head up and its nice out so we are in business after a dad bike break.
The level of smugness I felt while loading more groceries and two kids into this bike than the dude with one bag that he was putting in the back of his big truck was unreal.
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Today was perfect road riding weather at 70° and overcast.
I had been disillusioned with road riding after being in a cluster of a group ride a couple of weeks ago but it turns out pretty roads by myself are still tons of fun.
Last night was great, too. Left my house about 6:30PM and cruised around for a few hours enjoying. I ran across this angry little one on the bike path:
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Bitey fren noodle!
Spent the weekend in Philly and got to do a couple varieties of ‘greatest hits’ rides. Saturday we rode gravel bikes through a couple of parks, up Port Royal (a steep cobbled climb in honor of Flanders). Sunday we rode MTB in the Wissahickon and even got to chase @Jacobell while he shredded his SS rigid bike. What a great city to ride bikes in!
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I’ve been told that philly is great for cycling
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I took gf to a conference and spent the day peddling around a couple years ago. The drivers just followed me down skinny mixed roads without being shitty. I didn’t really have a bad interaction.
alright stagecoach 400 recap time. long so i will put it under a spoiler
day one - 146 miles / 13,000 feet
started at 8 am with around 60 others. had a great time on some fire roads and ripping flowy single track out of idyllwild, stoke was high all around. made some new friends and then watched one of them, Eric, one of the two other single speeders, tumble off a rock quite spectacularly about 10 miles in. he took it like a champ and kept cruising.
about 5 miles later i saw him hiking back up the trail because he had lost his phone (maybe in the crash, maybe not). i kept on cruising. lots of descending this day, and also a lot of pavement. ended up in Julian at a surprise neutral aid station serving apple pie to racers. Eric was there! he had somehow passed me when i stopped at a gas station or something. he had not found his phone but said he killed about 45 minutes looking for it. his partner Hannah rolled up in full race mode, and the three of us took off together out of town and rode for a bit.
Hannah dropped off and Eric and i hit some glorious single track around the lake at dusk, then pushed on closer to san diego. at this point we were well ahead of the third singlespeed, who was quite a ways back. i pulled over around mile 145, a bit too close to the highway in the outskirts of san diego, and slept for 4.5 hours. all around felt pretty good this day, though i was a little too jacked on adrenaline and nerves to sleep well.
day two - 184 miles / 13,000 feet
woke up and checked trackleaders to see that Hannah and Eric had pushed another 30 miles past me, so I was back to being alone again. spun like mad all through the flat section of San Diego on various bike paths around dawn. passed a guy practicing his sweet nunchuck skills under a bridge at 5:45 am. I rode alone most of the day.
after ~75 miles of more or less flatlands through the city and burbs, i really started to climb back up to the mountains. hit a multi-hour hike a bike section around 3 or 4 that felt really rough. i was wearing chacos and a big blister on my foot popped during this section, too (i guess i have lost my sandal callouses from last summer). that sucked. I was still trying to catch Eric and Hannah but not feeling very motivated at this point. my main goal was to sleep a few hours at a lower elevation on the other side of the mountains to stay warm since I only had a 40 degree sleeping bag, so the desert was my main motivation for the day.
ate a caffeine mint and had a blast ripping that same lake singletrack from day one where the route crossed over (at dusk, again), and then descended down Oriflamme Canyon down to the anza borrego desert. I rode Oriflamme a few years back and it was like a staircase. super steep, rocky, and loose. this year, it had been graded shortly before the race, so it was a much easier descent. i was kinda looking forward to the chunk, but i made good time dropping back down into the desert. hit pavement and had a glorious tailwind. felt so good to be in the desert! i truly love it there.
turned off onto a very sandy and bumpy wash with a steady climb. had to focus pretty intensely on picking a line in the dark so i didn’t get bogged up in sand. passed a number of folks hanging out around campfires around midnight, which always kind of sketches me out at night when i’m out in the boonies, and even more so when i’m sleep deprived and caffeinated. came around a bend right as someone shot off a giant bottlerocket above me. had absolutely no intention of stopping and hanging out with these yokels when they started trying to flag me down. turns out it was another surprise neutral aid station where chas and a handful of other dudes who had raced stagecoach before were hanging out. Hannah and Eric were also there and we were all very stoked to see each other. i declined their cigarettes, fireball, and beer, but did take a field roast veggie dog and some bars for later.
Hannah and Eric were planning on pushing about 30 miles further than I was planning on, which made me want to push harder just to keep up. dropped them on the sandy wash descent and pushed pavement to the Iron Door bar in Ocotillo Wells which is friendly to stagecoach riders. slept for 2 hours and woke up to push into Borrego Springs for my last resupply before a big desert stretch.
day three - 76 miles / 8,000 feet
20 miles of pavement to Borrego Springs. hit the gas station for more candy and water. took a selfie in the taqueria bathroom mirror with jesus etched into it. rode out past some amazing smelling citrus groves into coyote canyon which was… sandy! more hike a bike.
made it to the “willows” section, a notorious part of the route that is basically hiking your bike through an overgrown creek in the middle of the desert. I will say it’s much easier to do this when you’re following 6 other people on a grand depart than on a solo tour, because the bushes are already pretty beat down. i still got lost and had a frustrating 20 minutes trying to push through some insanely overgrown brush until i realized i just needed to retrace my steps completely and find out where i got off trail originally.
after that there was a long, hot climb out of the desert, and then one last resupply at the sunshine market where i filled my water and tried to slam some chips and a pepsi as quickly as possible while an 8 year old kid talked my ear off about his nerf guns and sniping terrorists. from there i had a decent mix of fire roads/pavement/single track, all pretty steep. still lots of walking my bike, especially since i was so cooked by this point. did my best not to stop at all and maintain my ~10 mile lead on Eric so I could get 1st singlespeed.
all in all i went about 24 hours faster than i expected to. final time was 58 hours and 2 minutes. finished 7th overall, 1st singlespeed. I was very motivated by riding with my new friends, and then eventually pushing to get in front of them. it was a blast, such a beautiful route. my legs are still very sore, foot blister situation isn’t ideal, and i fried my taste buds on sour candy and gatorade way too early on in the race. it still has a bunch of open sores in it. sorry for all the words.
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Great ride. Some cool pix, really nice scenery.
it was a really beautiful route. i grew up in San Diego and spent a lot of time camping in the Anza Borrego desert and up in the hills by Lake Cuyamaca, so it felt extra nostalgic and very cool to see it all linked together in one big figure 8
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