a hilly and chilly february ride
we went for a not-too-long (no 300k for me) but hilly and cold ride yesterday that started in the low 40s and probably warmed up to the high 40s. We got off to a late start, which I didn’t mind – I was able to get some food in me in advance and my body had time to settle from the espresso buzz. We would have had to have left at around 6:30am to get to San Francisco in time for one of the official AIDS Lifecycle training rides. I was okay with missing that because 1) I would have been tired and groggy and 2) the temperature was about 34 degrees at 6:30am.
It was still cold despite departing quite a bit later.
plastic bags + socks = windproofish. despite this, one of my toes was definitely a little purple when I examined it at the end of the ride. the tingling in the shower scared me a little bit. but they seem okay. no gangrenous tissue so far.
we took tunnel road up the hills. The clouds were beautiful and the steady mild climb kept me sort of warm. At some of the turns, you feel like you are almost in the sky.
a bunch of hikers at the top of tunnel. we noticed that there were a lot of tree stumps on the left side of the road during the climb – what gives?
We turned onto grizzly peak. I was pretty cold by the time we reached south park rd. We made the descent to save some time since we got such a late start. It was probably my slowest descent ever – I was freezing and the wind would have been way too much. I looked carefully for newts on the road but didn’t see any. maybe it was too cold for them,
Wildcat Canyon was a chilly descent as well – though it’s much slower than south park so there was less wind in my face.
We stopped for a second on Bear creek rd to enjoy the warmth of the sun and the beautiful wild mustard that was blooming.
beautiful day on papa bear. super wide shoulders are nice but probably necessary given the speed of vehicular traffic. We took the short climb up happy valley and turned back along sundown terrace to miner rd and took wildcat canyon back over the hills to go home.
