Diablo Junction plus South Gate Road to Blackhawk – 38 miles

Rick, Peter, and I all started right at eight, JB said he was coming but we left without him and put up the rock. I felt pretty good, but not very energetic. It was a beautiful day, the sun was quickly warming up the mountain and there wasn’t much wind. There did seem to be a lot of traffic though, maybe some kind of trail maintenance event going on. Lots of riders too – regulars as well as some I hadn’t seen before.

Just before the Bump, JB caught us and made some remark about how he must be in top form to do that and I said if he were really in top form he would ATTACK us and so he did, because he is, and we didn’t see him again until Junction.

After the Bump I picked up the speed a little bit and Peter got shelled, but I tried to wait for Rick to catch up. Since he hadn’t done so by the Upper Ranch I decided to go for it and pulled out the plug. Never did catch JB, but I passed a bunch of other riders and finished with a 40m20s Junction time – about the same as last Wednesday.

TONS of riders at the Junction, and several really nice bikes, and there was lots of friendly chit chat. I examined my tires here and noticed some thread showing through the rear so I made a mental note to change it. I got 2000 miles out of that tire though so that’s reasonable. JB and Peter turned down so Rick and I discussed part 2. He asked for a ClifShot but nobody had one so he decided South Gate and Blackhawk would be a better ride than the Summit.

That residential section at the bottom gets worse on a weekly basis. I wonder how bad they’ll let it go before they do something.

So on Diablo Road and Blackhawk Road, Rick and I rode some good tempo and he tried to challenge me on a couple of sprinter hills but I beat him every time – he was close once though and really made me dig.

Then at 9:45 I’m pretty sure I saw blog reader Larry and a buddy on Blackhawk Road and I shouted out to him because he told me he’d be there, but I’m not sure he heard me and he didn’t stop.

Back to Walnut Creek on Danville Blvd and I did most of the pulling just because I was enjoying the power workout. A post ride Jamba Juice was especially delicious since the weather was pretty warm by then.

Then later in the evening I went out for a ride with my daughter and our Halfwheeler (she calls it the "two-headed bike"). She enjoys learning bikie lingo like “Let’s hammer Dada!”, but she doesn’t like it when I call her a wheel sucker. She also helped me put a slightly used tire on my rear wheel to replace the one with the threads showing. Her favorite part is using the floor pump.