On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

Day 4: the final stage of the Tour. And I was worried. This was the longest day, with each leg delivering its own dose of pain. Leg 1: Strawberry Fields, a short but intense climb leading to a long run to the rest stop. Attacking here is a must, but then it's almost hopeless to hold a gap the rest of the way. Leg 2: Harris Grade. This is the most challenging climb on the whole official route. It winds up a hill, with multiple right-hand-turns presenting themselves as strong candidates for the summit, until eventually you hit the actual peak and it's a technical descent to the rest stop in Lompac. Then next is Gaviota Pass, a long, painful, windy grind ending in a final steeper pitch to the summit and a screaming-fast descent to US101 and the final rest stop. Then finally the long run to Galena along the Hwy 101 shoulder. From the exit it's still a considerable distance to the finish, but along scenic Cathedral Oaks and Foothill Ave, a purely enjoyable finish to t...

Prologue Day 3 of the MDR is the "recovery day". It's also the day of Gregg Ferry's descending contest. Janine the night before had declared the traditional 9:00 roll-out was to be replaced with a 9:30 roll-out to provide more time for rooms to be made ready at the destination hotel, which was this year to be the Rose Garden Inn in SLO. I was a bit disappointed, as I like SLO and preferred to spend the extra half hour there, but so it was. We rolled at 9:30 sharp. To breakfast I was with Peter, and had mentioned to him that tomorrow was quite hard enough, and had no interest in following Michael Rowe, who was doing an extra climb, up Highway 46. Highway 46 is a busy road with wide shoulder, so climbing it has only the attraction of training, and I was getting plenty of that already. So we rolled as a group to Cambria, the traditional breakfast place. As we got to the turn-off, David Hover continued straight with some others to ride further, to Pismo Beach per...

Prologue Day 2 of the 2014 MDR was the highlight. I'd done MDR tour four times before, but three had been the "inland" route through King City. Only once before had I ridden the coastal route, and that year it was cold and damp through Big Sur. This year looked much more promising: some low-hanging clouds, but it looked to burn off if Friday was to be anything like Thursday, and indeed the forecast was for it to be warmer. Last night had been interesting. After my regular roommate bailed out on me to get his own room, exploiting spots made available by cancelled riders and willing to pay the single-room rate, I ended up with Mike Morgenfeld as a partial roomate. He'd been in a room of 3 and slept in the free bed in my room, keeping his stuff in his original room. Roomates are more interesting: I have a lot of good conversations with them on MDR. The only real issue I fear is sleep incompatibility, as I very rarely sleep over 8.5 hours except when camping, but...

Day 1 of the Memorial Day Ride... prelude The night before, after having bought food at the local Trader Joe's to eat for supper, after an invitation from my host I opted instead for the $20 meal option at the AirBNB and it was well worth it. Dinner was an excellent selection of vegetarian Indian food, and breakfast was hot almond milk, grains, and ripe peaches. Both were delicious, and excellent, nutritious food for the ride. The bed was super-comfortable, I slept well, and I awoke after a solid 8+ hours. I packed my bike and headed over to the start, arriving precisely at the 7:00 recommended arrival time. Yet there was already a solid crowd there. There were plenty of familiar faces: MDR has a very high return-rider rate, and I think some occasional riders made a special point to be there for this 25th. There were only three first-timers. I removed the panniers and rear rack from the Allaban, transferred the contents to the duffle bag I'd had in my handlebar bag for ...

MDR is a 4-day tour, but my last two times the adventure for me has started day 0, as I've ventured southward to stay overnight near the tour start location. Last year I shared a hotel room with Jeff. That went well, but Jeff now lives closer to the start, so he can just drive in day-of. I didn't get anyone else to share a room with, so I resigned myself to Motel 6, which is the cheapest option around here. But then I thought of AirBNB . Maybe there was something close by. Sure enough, within virtual walking distance, I found a place. So I signed up. Things weren't super-smooth, though, as Pam's (not her real name) policy was to only rent to people who had a history with AirBNB. This makes sense, because with a history you get reviews, and that serves as a filter for the undesirables. But I showed here my LinkedIn page, and she saw whom I knew. In particular, we both knew a women with whom I'd worked fairly extensively when I was at Stanford. Weird. So I se...

Time for the 20th edition of the MDR "Memorial Day Ride", 4 days from Campbell to San Jose. This year: the coastal route. I may indulge in the Wes-inspired detour up and down Nacamiento Fergusson Road on the Big Sur Day. But let's see. The key right now is getting to the start. So I packed my stuff in the Winter Allaban and will take the train to San Jose, ride from there to an AirBNB in Campbell, then from there it's 1 km to the tour start. Perfect. This will be my first AirBNB experience. It took some work to convince the host I was trustworthy. She prefers repeat-users who have a review history. But it turns out we have a common friend, so I think that helped. Coincidences.... At the ride start, I'll ditch the rear rack and panniers, transfer my stuff to the duffle bag I have in the handlebar bag, and I'll be good to go. The tour is supported, so I don't actually need to bring even the handlebar bag, but I very much look forward to having...

"Back in the day" it was common to have a "racing bike", or at least "racing wheels", and a set-up more generally used for training. The idea was the training bike would take more wear & tear, while the racing bike was kept in more refined condition for racing where small efficiency gains were truly important. Examples of tradeoffs include: cost: given a fixed amount of wear & tear or damage risk, it's better to use a cheap part than an expensive one, since the cheap one is easier to replace. Examples of this include wheels, cassettes, and chains: these parts wear out (wheels from rim brakes, drivetrain from normal use) and if the performance gains of expensive stuff aren't important in a particular ride, it makes sense to go with the cheaper parts for these. reliability: lighter parts tend to be less reliable, with less wear life, so even at the same cost (which they're not) it makes sense to stick with more durable stuff if the t...

Day 4 of 2013 MDR began with, for the second day in a row, a feeling I'd left something behind as I sat on my bike in the parking lot. The day before I'd lost my California International Marathon T-shirt, so surely this was just a ghost of that guilt. The day's ride was a challenging one, each of the four segments presenting a particular challenge. The first segment: Strawberry Grade. As part of what is likely the quietest, lowest-traffic section of Highway 1 in the whole state, the road passes strawberry fields around 7 miles south of SLO, then after a brief flat section, there's a climb of a few hundred vertical feet followed by a fast descent. Then it's a challengingly long run into Guadalupe, the first rest stop. I was well positioned when the road turned, third behind the tandem and Kerry, and as soon as the climb began, I went hard. This established a nice gap, and I went over the top alone. But at the bottom of the descent is a traffic light, relative...

Day 3 of the Memorial Day Tour is a traditional recovery day, and while some chose to flaunt that tradition by climbing the challenging west side of Santa Rosa Creek Road, I prefer to embrace it and instead focus on the highlight of the day, the descending contest. We rode south on 1 back to Cambria where we stopped at various places for breakfast. Most stop at a cafe serving the usual breakfast goods, but Kerry, Paul, and I went to Medusa's Real Mexican. Anytime I see "real" in front of "Mexican" I get excited, because really there's no better food in the world. Both Kerry and I skipped over the breakfast menu and went straight to the lunch menu, I getting tacos, she a burrito, while her husband Paul went with some more typically breakfast thing. My tacos really were quite good, perhaps not King City good, but better than the ones I'd had in San Simeon. That made tacos four days in succession (after Burrito Barn in Campbell) and I wasn't close...

Day 2 of any multi-day cycling event like a tour or stage race is always a bit of a gut-check, or more typically an exercise in self-denial, because one is faced with the prospect of a long, difficult day on the bike when what the body expects is a leisurely day of rest or perhaps an easy spin. No rest for the weary, though, we had to reach San Simeon. The route for the day included two key Strava KOMs: Quadbuster and Interlake. I wanted to make good efforts on each. Quadbuster came first, only 9 miles into the day. Leaving the hotel a small group slipped through the tail end of a green light and was away. Unlike the previous day, Mike and Janine's tandem wasn't in that group, so I felt confident we'd catch them. Not long after we turned onto a short bike path and I found myself with a gap off the front of the main bunch. I gave this up when I unclipped at some moderately deep sand part-way through ("keep pedaling!" I heard Janine shout to those followin...