Gate - Summit - Gate

Me, JB, and Rick today. Warmest ride of the year so far but only Rick wore shorts. I had on a wind breaker that wasn't cycling-specific and flapped around in the breeze too much.

Poppies everywhere today.

Lots of these little purple wildflowers too.

We noticed that part of the road just below the Upper Washout was starting to slide downhill from all the rain. Looked like about half of the upbound lane was cracked for twenty or thirty meters. JB called it "The Washout Before the Washout". Might be single lane through there soon... or maybe next year.

Dudley Driveby: Near the upper entrance to the Upper Ranch.

Roadkill Observation: A big fat frog, I forget where.

Hardly anybody at Junction, we decided to go up. It immediately got cooler and windier. Rick coaxed me into trying the "standing all the way through the Blue Oak section again but this time I had it in my lowest gear and just plugged so I made it to Anti-Gravity Corner.

We stopped at Juniper for a while and JB decided to quit. Rick and I kept on going.

A pause at Juniper to contemplate the next 8 or 900 feet of vertical. I noticed a sign at the campground that said the elevation was 2900 feet, but a hundred yards up the road was the 3000 foot elevation marker... one of them is wrong.

Poor folks over there have a lot more fog to deal with on a regular basis.

Looking toward Pleasanton.

It's really greener than it looks in this shot.

A little windy but the sky was beautiful.

Only a couple cars and a couple bikes at the Summit.

Rick got a flat on the way down... that's him just past the bend changing his tire... I was leading and it was a good thing I heard him shout out.

Coming down on Summit Road.

This guy came by while Rick was fixing his flat.

There were tons of people coming up North Gate Road about 10:30 while we were going down - most of them had on Team in Training jerseys... they might be doing the Death Ride or the Ride Around Tahoe... don't know.

I gave Rick a lead out to the Dips but it was so windy he didn't come around very fast. So we decided to have another sprint on the way back to his car but he pulled a cleat and banged up his shin... that's gonna hurt tonight!