Diablo Junction from Work - 30 miles

Very warm, high 80's, a little wind at the bottom.

I left work alone, JB and Adam were running late so I took an easy ride to the Gate. I figured if I didn't push it Adam worked JB trying to catch me he might be easier to stay with on the climb. They caught me on Walnut and then we stayed together until the Gate. Adam announced that today he would be breaking 30 and we chuckled because he's said that a bunch of times but hasn't been very close to that time in more than a year. But at the Gate he jumped on it and we didn't see him again.

JB and I rode together until the Double Dips where I took a little flyer and soon I had a huge gap on him. I was going harder than I could maintain, but that seemed too easy. I kept it up for a while and saw that he was catching up again near the bottom of the Bump. But there was a guy in front of me - a guy with brown hair, a yellow sleeveless jersey, no helmet, and an older Miyata with downtube shifters (the kind that mounted on TOP of the downtube, not on the sides? very interesting). So I was chasing no-helmet guy and JB was chasing me and that was kind of fun. I passed no-helmet guy and he said "whew!" or something like that and then I hammered through the easy part after the Upper Washout and the gap to JB got bigger. But suddenly he caught me and I got on his wheel for a few minutes while we went around Clavicle Cracker and past the Ranches. He rode away from me after the Upper Ranch and wound up beating me by a couple minutes.

Junction Time: 41m04s - but I felt a lot better than other recent rides so maybe I'll be going for some fast ones soon.