Diablo Junction from Work - 33 miles

Warm and humid this afternoon. Not nearly as hot as last week but the weather definitely slowed us down. JB and I rode out together, met Jeff at the Church and were happy to find Mark P at the Gate. Mark says he's ready for the Death Ride and he does look fit. Just past the Gate, near the welcome sign was a snake in the gravel shoulder. Looked like it had been injured by a car and could only move the head-half of his body while the other half wouldn't cooperate. There was a ground squirrel there that looked like he wanted to eat the snake but not while we were watching.




I didn't think squirrels would eat snakes but Mark said they sure would. It was a nice little nature break.

Jeff used this opportunity to get a head start on all of us - I guess he doesn't like snakes. Mark talked to JB and me for quite a while about his preparation for the Death Ride (ride lots, go to the gym, don't worry about altitude). JB dropped us at the Bump where I started to have coughing problems - I haven't been able to shake this congested cough thing that's left over from a cold I got almost a month ago! So at the steep bits I had trouble keeping up but after we got past the Ranches I caught up with Mark and Jeff. I noticed that they took down the sign for Turtle Creek Ranch - the wooden structure is still there over the driveway but the sign is gone.

At Chainbuster I left Jeff and Mark behind so I must have been feeling better. Mark said his new Polar HRM/cyclocomputer was messed up and then we realized he had it set on kilometers instead of miles so Jeff fixed it since he has the same model.

Product Review: Look Compatible VP-ARC1 Cleats After Saturday's ride I put on some new cleats that I got at Encina. I hadn't heard of VP before but I figured I'd give them a try. They came with good hardware and seem to be well-made. They didn't have the bi-material type for reduced squeaking but I didn't get any noise on today's ride. I'd guess these guys make a lot of store branded stuff for relabeling; they have a lot of different pedals that all look like clones, and they have headsets and bottom brackets too. Their website doesn't really say where they're located but they have distributors all over the world.