5/4 skyline style 2-3 - rrr - 630am

RIDE REPORT!!!!!!!!!!

I never do ride reports, but I'm doing one today because this was my first Skyline... and I have Learned Lessons™

If you have never done Skyline, as I never had, here are my first impressions. Your mileage may very, I'm not a particularly zippy rider. Also, there may or may not be hyperbole in the following text.

Got up at 6:10am, a LATE start for me on a ride day. Usually have to haul across the city, but today I get to join the ride in my turf. Awesome. Sadly, I have two songs stuck in my head, Friday by Rebecca Black, and some track by Black Eyed Peas with excessive use of auto-tune. Horrible. These do not exit my brain during the entire trip, but form a 3 hour, hellish medley of chaos and suffering.

You know how they have recommended doses on Aspirin bottles? They do not do this on mojitos. This will become apparent later.

Nice, leisurely stroll from Stern Grove out to Skyline Blvd. Very pleasant, slight downhill, brisk. Feeling pretty good. Make it to John Daly & Skyline way ahead of the regular group, and have to pee already. Go to the viewpoint to take in the sights and give a what's-what to California by tinkling into the San Andreas Fault. Angst about having to leave Seattle now reduced a little bit more.

DG, Darrin and Lance arrive. Time to climb.

From the SF2G Skyline description:   It's not easy, but not ridiculously hard either....   BATMAN'S BALLS!

This felt like the longest climb of my life, though looking through Strava later I found some longer one's I had done recently that didn't seem as difficult (see: Mojitos)

The gang waits for me at the top and reassures me that this is the first of two climbs. I learn soon that this really just means this is the biggest climb and there is one more big one, but there are like 40 more in between them.

Everything's going smoothly, lovely weather. San Andreas Trail is fun. Scenery is nice, hey this is great. Stop off to get some water... then... what... WHY ARE WE ON THE FREEWAY?!?!?! Adrenaline gets me safely to the next exit.

Hillsborough Rollers next (not a fan.) At some point somewhere around here, I think, the temp drops to about -100 degrees for like 20 feet. I think I got snowed on. Then its instantly warm again.

It is at this point that I Get It™. Awesome, fast descents. I've never done the dam, but I though the detour was fun (until the climb, again got to see my ridemates disappear into the horizon.) Cañada: 10.5 Megatons of YES. Crystal Springs Reservoir, hello. This ride makes Bayway now seem kinda gross.

Moutain Home Road might be my favorite segment of the commutes I've done so far. One lane, mellowish flat or downhill in most parts. Enshrouded by trees like a scene out of Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Absolutely beautiful.

Some more awesome descents. Wishing Bayway had descents like this, but as my CPA says "You don't have to pay it if you didn't make anything."

My takeaway, my opinion only: you pay your taxes in spades on this ride and get rewarded handsomely for the effort. A+++++ EXCELANT EBAYOR

I plan to make this a regular part of my SF2G repertoire, but right now I just feel the legs burning.

Awesome ride, everyone, thanks for navigating me to the G!

Update: After waiting 20 hours for the usual Strava iphone freeze-up routine and sync, I finally see my stats. JD to BGS, 131st overall. You may be thinking, Matt, that's horrible. Until you realize there are over 6 Billion people in the world. Then you realize 130 faster people doesn't seem so bad. ;)

Speakeasy brewery - friday 4/29/2011 - 379 caltrain

Get off 22nd, meet us at Speakeasy, 1195 Evans

Hot Dog for Breakfast

Ride report
subtitled "Hot Dog for Breakfast"

Important lesson: if you've been away for almost 2 months, prepare to
carry extra food!

As I rolled into a Ritual overflowing with SF2G love this morning,
Trung mentioned to me that I already looked cold. That wasn't a good
sign, but I don't know sign language. Nevertheless, with the small
embarrassment of someone falling over (in front of a police car)
before beginning to ride, we the Skyline group departed ahead of the
Bayway group.

17, no, 19, no, 20 of us made our way up to Skyline on a blustery
sunny morning. When I got to work, my coworker from San Jose was
convinced we must have had great tailwinds because he'd experienced
headwinds. The only explanation for both of us suffering is that the
winds emanated directly from the Googleplex. (Not too far off the
mark: http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/wind/windarchive.cgi?hour=8&day=2&month=2&year=2011&data=wind&controls=image)

We stuck together until the San Andreas Trail head, where it appeared
the fast Skyline subgroup had already vanished into the lack of fog.
11 of us continued on to the rolling lumps and marvelously clear bay
views of Vallejo Dr, opting to skip the bone-chilling and narrow
Sawyer Camp Trail, with the sure anticipation of the bone-chilling and
broad Crystal Springs descent before us. How cool is it that our route
can now include what must be the 2 coldest spots on the whole
Peninsula?

After a difficult Polhemus and the bike path, we stopped at the water
temple on Cañada to refill water and hear a lecture on how not to
disobey civil codes from two recent victims of Woodside police stop
sign ambushes. Then we stretched out, and the miles stretched onward,
and onward... Soon I could see no one in front of me, and only Eimear
behind me. I noticed after the last rise on Cañada that she was gone
too. I waited, and there were enough passing cyclists expressing
concern for me that I learned she had a flat, so I headed back down
and we fixed it. (Obligatory cat picture:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/01/12/wait-ill-fix-it-2/)

I called Tracy, waiting at Roberts, to tell her and the rest to go on
without us, since we'd both been falling behind anyway. I took Peter's
Arboretum-way through Stanford to cut a bit of climbing on Junipero
Serra, but the headwinds did not relent. Neither of us was too
energetic, and my consensus of one, one who could scarcely keep his
head up, thought I probably had bonked. Eventually, on Charleston, I
sent Eimear ahead to make it to her 11 o'clock meeting (probably, but
a close call). With no such obligations, I sank further behind,
knowing at least In-n-Out could ease my ailment. Uncertain visions
cavorted through my head, or what little of it remained, since no one
ever told me what In-n-Out serves breakfastwise.

But one the third-to-last block of Charleston, a light dawned---the
light reflecting off a hot dog stand. 'Tis not so deep as a tamal, nor
as wide as a taco, but 'twill serve. The cliche to describe how I ate
my hot dog is "with relish" even though that would literally be
untrue. It may not have made me any faster for the last mile, but it
did restore a smile to its rightful face.

It was a good ride, but for me, a wicked slow one, with my
disembarkation clocked at 11am. Next time I'll pack extra food, I
promise.

--
Yoyo Zhou

Sweet! I finally made it into a ride report...good thing I have a big ego because that spill was rather embarrassing (in front of 17 riders). Clearly one of those OK let's roll, clip in, look over shoulder, cars coming, no ones moving, stop moving, "oh, crap!", kind of moments. That one could make it here. Sadly, no coffee, bumper, cement, wave or even an other riders tire to blame...oh wait...maybe it was the lack of coffee.

Great write up btw.

one-T

-----

Yeah thanks for the write-up! Great ride everyone, I think we counted 21 people at the skyline/1 intersection. Greg and I also decided to stop at In and Out post ride :)  Thanks for stopping to help Eimear with her flat. 

Maybe again next week?

Tracy

-----

Great report Yoyo! I made it to my 11am meeting (well, 11.05, which is on time by my standards) after the fastest shower ever!

-Eimear

12/14 Style 2 Bayway, 6:45am @ RRR

Sorry we lost you, Peter. We should've stayed to proffer you tubes.

Otherwise, fantastic ride today. Somehow, without any conscious effort, I've been 5 weeks off the bike (Barway exempted). With a week of travel and nearly a week of Thanksgiving, I'm amazed how easily the time slipped by.

Even in that short time, I feel everything—mind and body—has reset. I woke up with absolutely no idea why my alarm was going off so early. Yet somehow after the second snooze push, I dragged myself up. Fuelled up with my free $5.75 Ritual coffee (thanks, "Heavy Drinker" card), I was feeling pretty good setting into the rain. Danny and I were the only 6:30 holdouts, so we upgraded to the 6:45. We were by no means pushing it today. Definitely on the relaxed/slow end of Style II. We had a few rain/cross bikes in the mix, and everyone was chill. Still, by the time we hit Gateway, I was really feeling it... heart rate up, legs unhappy. We took SFO easy, and I got my second wind after that, and from Airport all the way to the Wailing Wall, I was fine. We'd even picked up some South Bay stranger named Julian by then... :)

Then, thinking my body had finally come to its senses, I tried for a pull on the Sun Sprint. Eh... not so much. Lasted about 10 seconds and fell back off the pack, utterly unable to sustain the required measly 21mph for even a second.

So, it looks like I have a good bit more riding to get in before I'm back to speed, ... a few weeks off really sets you back. But damn does it feel really really (really!) good to be back on a bike after a break! SF2G how I've missed you!

-BMW

Midway("Fleaway") Ride Report

First off - never mock a fellow cyclist, I gave Lina some shit
yesterday and flatted twice today, suffering added humiliation that
the first was because I had patched a tube with a "Lame Ass Patch"(Tm)
and the second because I failed to follow my advice to myself to
"THROW THIS TUBE AWAY" and put a tube with an undiscovered slow leak
into my saddlebag, thus having to stop twice to add air just to get to
a bike shop.

You may however mock triathletes at will. Don't ask me, ask BSNYC.

Anyway - "Midway" also known as "Fleaway"

http://app.strava.com/rides/224309#

Doing Joe Gross Monday I was thinking "There has to be a better way".
There is (IMHO, YMMV). I did a little recon yesterday on the way to a
train station, and today since Theo bagged but Bret didn't, we decided
to try it out. First, we took San Jose/Alemany which I very much
prefer to Mission. San Jose has a bit of a freaky factor but not too
bad, Alemany has a bike lane and great pavement compared to Mission.
In theory you can switch from Mission to Alemany post San Jose.

We then took Hillside headed toward the hustle but took a right on
Lawndale, left on Mission, and then just past the BART station we got
onto the Centennial Bike Path. Joe Gross is basically 200 yards West
of this bike path the whole route, on El Camino. To be fair to Joe,
when he made the route, the path didn't exist. It dumps you off onto
Huntington at San Bruno BART, Huntington is actually a pretty good
road. Then you kind of wind around in a neighborhood, crossing the
tracks twice (once on a pedestrian crossing on a path) and then under
them and down a street that supposedly has no outlet but for bikes you
go through some poles into the Millbrae BART lot, then onto Rollins
which is very comfy. Right on Broadway takes you to Carolan where you
re-intersect with Joe Gross. We were spelunking a bit but I think it
will end up roughly the same time as Joe Gross but it's a lot more
pleasant.

Carolan to right on Oak Grove, left on El Camino, right on Occidental.
It looks like we can avoid El Camino here as well and still get on
Occidental. We then took a very bucolic route through Burlingame and
Hillsborough subdivisions. So far the ride has been pretty flat
outside of the slow rise up Alemany and one tiny bump in the
Hillsborough section. Left on Crystal Springs, Right on Alameda De Las
Pulgas - Avenue of the Fleas (thus "Fleaway"). That's when it gets
fun.

Stay on Alameda/Junipero/Foothill to your preferred exit. There are
many rollers on Alameda and one little bitch of a climb entering
Belmont, Strava says 3/4 mile at 8%. Ouch. There aren't a lot of
lights, there are some stop signs, nominal traffic but overall
reasonable riding. It's not Skyline, it's not Bayway - it's in
between. In climbing, in time, in scenery, in sketchy sections.

I took Arastradero to see what the "To Google Time" would be, roughly.
I had 2:40 rolling time to Arastradero and Central. Then it sort of
fell apart with the two flats.

Moderately recommended. I like it better than Bayway, less than
Skyline. Longer than Bayway for Googlers, probably shorter for Palo
Altans/Applers, FCHSMB.

--murph