Diablo Summit 33 miles

Arthur Mijares, an anti-satanist from Oakley has petitioned the USGS to change Mount Diablo’s name because he finds it “derogatory and profane”. Mt. Kawukum is his suggestion for a new name. LINK1 scroll down to page 6 for the petition, LINK2 for a news article about it. I would call Mr. Mijares a dumbass but that might be libelous, so instead I’ll say this is a dumbass idea… that should be safe.

Today’s plan was for Rick and Nicole and their 5 year old son to ride up from Dublin and meet us at the café. They have a trailer cycle and their baby sitting plans fell through so this was their only way to get a ride in.

So it was just me and JB this morning, we waited a little bit for Peter but didn’t see him. There was a guy on an OCLV and in a Discovery jersey (first time I’ve seen one of those on the mountain) who was waiting for another buddy but JB and I left before they did. It was pretty chilly at the bottom, we both had leg warmers and arm warmers and he even packed his rain jacket.

Things started out briskly for a good conditioning pace. We both tested each other a little bit but I figured my chances were pretty good if I could hold things together for a sprint. I stayed glued to his wheel when he picked up the pace with a mile to go. He started trying to shake me at Chainbuster and he has some good speed but not much of a jump so his accelerations never opened up enough of a gap to get rid of me. I didn’t want to come around too early so I waited until only 50 meters to go and then I burned my whole book of matches and my plan came together perfectly. Gotta remember to play my strong suit in these things. Junction time: 42 minutes.

From the Junction on up things started to get warmer. The Discovery guy and his buddy had arrived and started up just before us but weren’t too much faster. Ranger scuttlebutt is that Summit Road will be repaved soon, and they may close the entire section to all traffic while they’re doing it so it won’t take so long. I think that unlikely as I’ve seen several repaving operations and they always did one lane at a time with traffic controls, but we’ll see. At Juniper I stopped to take off my arm and leg warmers because I was getting hot. The bugs were bad everywhere today, but up near the radio antennas there was a thick cloud of gnats that was like riding through a sandblaster – they’d smack into your helmet and get stuck in your arm hair and it was hard to breathe without sucking some in – yuck! There was also a foot race going on so those poor buggers had to deal with it too. JB beat me to the Upper Parking Lot by a couple minutes – my time: 83 minutes.

I called Rick’s cell phone and they were at Rudgear so it looked like the timing would be perfect for a meet-up at the café. Lots of riders were at the Summit and lots more coming up on the way down; road cycling has never been more popular around here. Rick and family arrived at the café just minutes before JB and me so today’s plan was perfect all around.