28/8 6:30 RRR?

Ride report:

I texted a few numbers around 6:00 saying the ride was on for 6:20 from Ritual.

I rolled out of my house at the ungodly hour of 6:28. I thought I might have spied a helmet but no, it was far too early for that I told myself. I parked over at Martha's and after a little squabble with a cabbie (who didn't understand the concept of parallel parking) a lone rider appeared. He rolled on by saying he was trying to catch the early group. I consoled myself thinking that Matt must have convinced a person or two to head out at his proposed unsane time. Another 10 minutes or so brought Theo who said Ritual was devoid of sf2g peeps. We went on a mission to catch the group pushing a solid 20-25MPH pace past the Bayshore Caltrain station and around to the hotels. About that time we noticed the helicopters in the sky and I explained my disbelief in such things. Traffic was kinda heavy but slow as we passed Amgen. We turned onto Gateway and the po-po were out in force. Every driveway had police scowling at anyone who thought about pulling in and the truckstops/coffee shops/gas station/IHOP parking lots were full of people hanging out with their cars. We assumed dude with a gun or bomb threat, how could we have known it was a leaky sausage plant!?

http://www.ktvu.com/news/20599255/detail.html

Theo and I managed to avoid the poison gas cloud and continued our pursuit through SFO and decided rather than ride the scraped pavement section of fail we'd take the detour around along the lagoon and come out better for it. Right around this time we also both caught sight of the group of riders or an amazingly lifelike mirage of a group of riders. We figured we'd cut em off and our hands would be much less jarred than theirs before coyote point. Yeh, that was the plan until on the last turn as we were about to leave the lagoon Theo went down on a little patch of wet green stuff growing out of/on the sidewalk. He seemed ok but need a few minutes to recover and we were on our way again. We caught the group at the rest stop tho Matt was long gone. the rest of the ride was at a much more chillaxed pace with no one to chase down we settled into cruising speed calling out all poles extra careful for the sake of Adam. cars stopped on Gateway:

http://picasaweb.google.com/scrosby/SF2GArchive#5375128618986180338

http://picasaweb.google.com/scrosby/SF2GArchive#5375128624542637362

Theo walking off his crash:

http://picasaweb.google.com/scrosby/SF2GArchive#5375128628571477810

Adam and his nemesis, the pole:

http://picasaweb.google.com/scrosby/SF2GArchive#5375128635132226690

Bayway - 08/14 - 6.30 @RRR

ride report:

while slurping a macchiato at ritual, mike decreed with some authority that a mt. san bruno assault would be required to consider today's ride worthwhile in any conceivable sense of the word, so the RRR gang rrrolled right past cortland and cruised mission st. until john daly, then left, then left again at price, and left yet again at s. market st., and up/over mt. san bruno. gorgeous view of the urban forest and the bay from up there, i'll have you know.

now, the descent of mt san bruno can be fast, and it can be very windy. today it was both, and Fast Faye and I got blown around on the tandem quite a bit, but still clocked a fairly zesty speed:

57.5mph

being somewhat over the speed limit, we felt secure taking the lane. nearing the bottom we eased up a bit and were only going 50mph when an unfortunate red light presented itself. lucky for us the 203mm discs could stop a caltrain, and no suburbans got t-boned.

the rest of the ride was moderate-to-brisk, with some spirited riding here and there. just made it to breakfast at 9:31, not bad for all that Kemler waiting.

someone's got some pics right? my unfortunate shorts are doubtless being pilloried on bsnyc by now...

-sc

My addendum:

On my non-tandem I hit 52.8mph on the Mt. San Bruno descent, and almost ate it once from an unexpected gust of wind but recovered nicely. I would describe the ride from the airport on as more 'brisk to race-pace' then 'moderate to brisk' but that's just me. When Xton leads out on a 30mph pull and then the tandem attempts to attack him, life is not fun at the back of the pack trying to hang on for dear life

Another personal achievement, I stayed up M. Gaiman's wheel about 1/2 way up Mt. S.B., though my HR was 175 and his was probably 90. At that point he looked back, saw me on his wheel, downshifted once and immediately rode away from me. Still, I felt it was an achievement for me.

Garmin Data: Here

-Ted

The best part of the ride was definitely that descent. I particularly

liked taking the lane. Too bad there were not a lot of cars to overtake.

There was one point, I think right before we hit the curves before coyote, point when Xton was going about 47 mph and my Captain suggested "more power" "more power" "close the gap", when I much more in the mood to lie my little helmet clad head on Scott's back and take a little nap.

But the good thing is that even if I am powerless (and I was), officially speaking, I could do no wrong :)

-Fast Faye

You people are crazy and now I'm intimidated.

I don't want to pull a Kemler and end up in the next ride report.

But +1 on the next tandem ride.

-Jen

Pics of the famous duo of this morning:

http://picasaweb.google.com/julie.deroche/SF2G#5369919272214153410

Did you guys make it to breakfast? I actually arrived at Google (solo) at 9.36am... Fun ride, and San Bruno-Bayway is my new Bayway! Thanks a lot for stubbornly insisting on doing it this am, and all my apologies for the Martha's group. Alex and Debbie had left RRR at 6.30 sharp so I was hoping you would have caught them.

-Mozilla Julie

First a little personal disclosure. I currently have 6 bikes. 1 folder, a MTB in baby hauling mode with attached sidecar, 2 fixed gear bikes( only 1 of which fits well and is in actual working order ) and 2 road bikes.

Foldy bike is great for getting on full caltrains but not great for anything of any real distance ( tho if someone wants to organize a clown bike ride i'd consider joining in ). MTB as stated previously has the sidecar which while great for hauling the kid about isn't great for the commute down. The sidecar has a quick release but dropping it off makes it look like my bike is sporting an enormous erection, seriously. So let's just say that bike is best left as a single purpose hauler.

My happy fun space age road bike is currently sidelined as I decided to swap out the old brakes for new ones but the old cable housing came up about an inch short so rather than rocking the bike equivalent of high waters it is waiting patiently on the wall.

A couple weeks back when I dropped my chain off my old-school-steel-i've-had-since-high-school bike I ended up bending a link. I replaced the chain, rode down and found out my barrel adjuster inexplicably also was busted so that bike is currently sitting in my repair stand waiting for me to swap out the derailleur.

So I've got a 2cm too small fixed gear hanging in my garage that I haven't ridden in at least a year(anyone want a cheap fixed ride?). The rear wheel is currently on loan to a friend.

So that leads me to the one fully functional ride I have is my other fixed gear. A couple people remarked on it today but really, it's my only current choice. There's no honor here, I'm just a lazy lazy mechanic.

--- Anyway, given the speedy rides we've had down lately I rolled out my door and was at Martha's by 6:40 sharp. As we started collecting people a few riders rolled past and I thought I caught Debbie tho someone in our group said is was Alex and Alex and Alex and Alex, seriously I think they went on for like 2 minutes enumerating all the Alex's. I stopped counting at 2. We shouted something at them and they said not to worry the whole group wasn't far behind them. We waited, IIRC Mark rolled past, gave a wave. Eventually the clock ticked over to 6:53 and we called it. Andrew, May fresh back from her nasty wreck, Yo-yo and myself rolled out. Andrew cursed us by commenting that the wind seemed to be slightly like a tailwind in addition to being very sideways so it switched to a headwind promptly as we crossed under 101. Yo-yo dropped off somewhere out there around the marsh, I'm not sure where but given this is his second ride down this week I was pretty sure he could fend for himself.

Around SFO we added Paul and Christine to our merry group and continued on to midway. Debbie and the 8 Alexs were pulling out just as we pulled in to refill our water. They sneered back at us and quickly sprinted away leaving little cartoon like circles of dust in their wake.

We were hanging around the water fountain talking about what a superior experience it is to meet at Martha's when Kemler rode up. We got it from him that Gaiman used his Jedi like powers of mind control to drag everyone up San Bruno and that they were all likely behind us somewhere. A few minutes later another rider showed up clad in Wildflower jersey. Once we all topped off our water and fooded up we wandered off in search of feral cats which both Paul and Christine expressed their disbelief in. I counted at least 4 large feral felines lurking off the side of the trail.

We cruised onward towards the 92 and eventually caught the bucket list on the other side of the bridge, Kemler went off the front and so we took turns taking pulls up through Oracle. As the path ended the geese started. They were everywhere, blocking the bike lane, path and menacing an AC transit buss that was defeatedly doing its own honking in an attempt to communicate with the birds.

The light at Airport blvd affected a regroup. We rolled to the start of the path next to 101 mostly as a coherent group. Somewhere between the start and end of the path we got crazy splintered. I waited around to sweep our group before the bridge to nowhere and was hanging with Paul and Christine. Just as we got through the Parking lot Andrew came back to sweep, but everyone else was gone. Paul peeled off at the Bayshore Expressway and Christine and I got to Sun with no problems. As we were waiting there Xton appeared in mid bunny hop out of nowhere. He said simply 'breakfast time trial' and the light changed. Gaiman and the Combination Scott/Faye vehicle scurried out of the bushes and across the street. Faye said something about how I missed her brownies and with maniacal laughter dug her spurs into Scott and they reared back before disappearing over the horizon.

Gotta give props to Faye/Scott for the matching team colors and generally rocking the tandem of insanity. Paul for finally making the ride down after first told me about sf2g nearly 2 years ago. Christine for getting so deep into riding so quickly.

-steve

That was fun today. Definitely not civil like wednesday. It's amazing what the threat of no oatmeal can do to a group's average speed. See you all at party car.

~Xton

Roadrash!

Hey everyone. Let's talk about road rash! Every one of us will crash someday (sorry) so this is something we all need to know. I'm including here the knowledge that I accumulated from 2.5 years of racing and over a dozen crashes in that time. I don't claim to be an expert and everyone has their own opinions on the subject so please do chime in.

There's alot of bad and outdated info out there about caring for road rash. Most of the patch-up jobs I've gotten at races (and even in the ER) have required 20-30 minutes of soaking and tugging and tears at home to remove the crusted-on bandage and then redress properly. The general gist of this method is 1) keep it moist and scab-free at all times, and 2) let your body do its thing. You should be able to find tegaderm and hydrocolloid bandages at at least one local supermarket or drug store in your area but it might take some hunting.

• Step 1: Crash (or if possible, don't crash and skip to step 9).
• Step 2: Make sure you don't need to go to the ER. Do you have any deep gashes that might need stitches? Do you see alot of white in your wound? Do you know what day it is? These are all clues.
• Step 3: Go home and shower. You need to clean out the dirt and debris from the wound. Do so with mild soap and water (unless you happen do have a cache of sterile saline solution lying around...). Don't scrub too hard or you'll cause even more damage. Do *not* use hydrogen peroxide (as one wise medic once told me, "use that stuff to clean the blood out of your clothes and nothing else").
• Step 4: Dry the wound. Air dry or use sterile gauze.
• Step 5: Apply Tegaderm over the wound. Cover a half inch of healthy skin on all sides. Tile several pieces if necessary.
• Step 6: Wrap a protective layer of gauze around the wound and tape it securely. This both pads it and absorbs the fluid that will fill up and eventually leak out of the tegaderm. I use surgilast tubular elastic bandage retainer (see link below) to make this dressing even more secure. Not easy stuff to find though.
• Step 7: Now let it heal. You'll need to change the outer gauze layer every time you shower of course but the tegaderm will last for several days untouched. The wound will produce an alarming amount of fluid. This is good. It keeps the wound moist, helps you heal more easily, and the bubble under the tegaderm will help pad the wound even more. Watch for infection. Burning sensations and redness spreading from the wound are bad. When you change the Tegaderm don't scrub the wound. That's new skin you'd be scraping away.
• Step 8: After a few days or whenever the wound will stop weeping so much switch to a gel/hydrocolloid dressing. These adhere to the skin like tegaderm but absorb rather than collect the fluid that the wound exudes. They're less tricky to apply and don't need a second gauze dressing but they can't handle as much exudate. The dressing thickens and turns white as it absorbs fluid and creates a sort of pillow over the wound.
• Step 9: The wound is healed when the gel bandage stops pillowing up. Treat the new skin gently.
• For Trinh: I'd take a nice long bath or shower to soften your scabs a bit before you dress your wound. Either tegaderm or gel dressings are probably appropriate at this point. After a day or two under a moist dressing the scabs will probably fall off on their own when you shower and change the dressing.
• For small bits of road rash that you may find next to your big missing patches of skin, I still use antibiotic ointment and bandaids. Or just small gel bandages.

Some random, quickly-googled references:

8/7 NRLB - Bayway - 6:30am rollout from Ritual

Somewhere between work outtages, the caffeine required to combat them and my cat deciding that my face was the most comfy bed she had ever seen every 30 minutes I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night and was reconsidering riding when I woke up. I choked down a powerbar, a couple Advil and some water before gearing up. My stomach was a little cranky but I told myself if it wasn't better by SFO I could bail to Caltrain and headed out the door a few minutes later than planned(06:44). Yo-yo had +1'd from Martha's and I always like to meet new people discovering the premier meetup spot if I can. Unfortunately as soon as I stepped out onto my front steps I could see helmets cruising past on Cortland. I cruised down and caught peoples on Bayshore. We had a very mellow ride from there down past Bayshore Caltrain and a smaller group starting massing at the front led by Mark, Christian(#2), Faye, Logan and myself ( did I forget anyone?). I tried pulling a little but no one wanted to grab my wheel so I settled in to a decent tempo. Logan mentioned it was a little fast and started yo-yo'ing a little but eventually did manage to claw his way back in. We cruised down past Amgen and our small group rolled up on the first of many green lights. We made SFO with remarkably few reds and picked up another rider clad in purple on a titanium frame for a short time until he went off the front a bit before Coyote Point. Christian(#2) and I chased the mystery rider down and rolled into midpoint, Mr. Grape blew past. Mark said something about trying to make a 9AM and didn't wait around for any more than 3 seconds. The rest of us chillaxed a bit, ate some food and refilled water. In another few minutes Debbie and then shortly thereafter maybe another 9 riders ( most of who I'm sure I can't name ) rolled in. Around then our small group headed out to visit the feral cats. We picked up another rider or two and Christian(#2) pushed the pace and attacked a bit. Once we passed the Bucket List(TM) and were onto the straight bike path Debbie who was now in our group also burst off the front with mighty bursts of speed. Faye, ever the impatient, suggested strongly that we raise the pace up a bit and so we burned up the pavement remaining between us and Oracle in no time. Again we made the light onto Marine pkwy and yet again from Redwood shores pkwy. Just before the bridge to nowhere we picked up another rider. Happily everyone managed BTN with no scrapes or falls and I expect our group was off the road easily by 9:15.

It was good to see Logan back out on the bike. And never having ridden with Christian(#2) before welcome him as well.

For double bonus points did anyone else spot the former sf2g regular jogging along the lagoon?

wed. aug 5 - bayway exploration - civilized 7:30 departure - Philz!

checking out the "official" redwood city bike route, in blue. usually we go green.

stickering up the route in SF

start of the bay trail south of the airport

some dirt involved, cool

why not ride on the beach?

typically indifferent-to-humans canada geese

this is the "blue line" in the image

report:

explored some pretty cool dirt/paved trails along the ol' bayway today, and since I had the 'cross bike, there were some excursions into the squishy parts of the way. may be making a recommendation to the executive committee to make the south-of-airport start to the bay trail the default route, rather than the kind of lame S. Airport Rd., which is narrow and trafficky.

as for the "official" route immediately preceding the BTN (see previous email), it's loose & narrow dirt, pretty fun but not great.

also did extensive route-stickering until I ran out, which hopefully is noticeable for the first 15 miles of the ride.

see attached for some photo documentation.

-sc

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 11:52 PM, James A. Morrison

> 2009/8/4 Scott Crosby >> plotting to do some route marking and exploring of dirt paths tomorrow >> in the vicinity of the BTN. see attached map. the green line is the >> usual route, the blue line is the "official" bay trail, according to >> redwood city politicos. oh, also going to go around the dirt hill at >> the san mateo rest stop, which for some reason I've never done. >> should be good times. > > We did this last week since Stoerr mentioned there were wind sculptures there. > >> i'll be getting the world's most delicious coffee at 7:15 @ philz >> (folsom/24th) and then moseying on down the bayway, stickering it up >> as i roll. >> >> >> -sc >> > -- > Thanks, > Jim > http://phython.blogspot.com

Skyline 5 Aug, Peet's 6:30 rollout

ride report, or "oops i got lost":

for a second i was happy my alarm rang since i was dreaming i was in an annoying conversation and thought the alarm was a great excuse to finish that conversation. then i realized it meant i had to get up and that didn't sound like a good idea. i arrived late at peet's and jim, mark, marius, and bret were already there. i made them wait even longer while i ate a croissant and drank some coffee and bitched about work. stupid work. we headed out late and despite being really frustrated with work i was being slow - you'd think frustration would make me go faster but apparently not today. sorry for being so slow today, guys! mark took off at the start of SCT, we lost bret and marius at the end of SCT, and jim and i went on. i was being so lame i couldn't even hang on to jim's wheel on canada. i had suggested a couple of detours to jim, but he needed to get to work. i knew there's some road called olive something or other shooting off canada but i didn't know where it went so i figured i could find out. it went to albion ave! that seemed awesome since i just moved to albion st. then it went to some other road and then it went to some other road that was called king's mtn road. i was still pissed at work and decided there was only one way to fix this, if the normal skyline ride wasn't enough. so i went up. up up up. yay up! and then i started to feel less frustrated and think about constructive ways to fix the work situation. then i went up some more and reached skyline. it was kind of nice to see the tunitas creek sign even though i didn't get to ride the actual road. it's just that i have a crush on tunitas. it was, after all, on tunitas that i first realized i love climbing. then i went up a little bit more on skyline. then i went down a bit on skyline and there was a pretty nice but short descent. since the portola valley loop is pretty sucky when you're alone and tired i decided i'd rather go to page mill than 84, and then i could avoid the portola valley loop. turns out it's really far from king's mtn road to page mill! like 13 miles apparently, on very rolly rollers. i didn't mind! i've seen lots of dead deer on the side of the road on my bike rides. i saw one on the side of foothill yesterday. up on the ridge i saw one that was just a skeleton by now! i haven't seen that before. i think that's the best roadkill i've seen so far. eventually i reached page mill and it was awesome. nice descent. well, it was awesome until the road was suddenly full of people walking all over. and not only were they people, they were soldiers. with rifles! i did not approve. but i didn't hit any of them despite them walking in the middle of my lane, which is good, because they probably would've shot me if i'd hit them. instead they all smiled and said hi but i find it challenging to smile around rifles. they were soon gone though and the rest of the descent was good. i now feel like a real person again and i'm much more pleasant to be around, which my co-workers should appreciate despite my late arrival. yay cycling!

stats:
• distance: 65.88 miles
• average speed: 14.9 mph
• deer skeleton sightings: 1

-Lina