Saturday, May 10, 2008

Gate - Junction - SG Kiosk - Gate

Beautiful weather this morning. Met JB at the Gate. Rick's doing a race in Pleasanton... he's almost ready to upgrade.

Usually I do better rides on Saturday mornings and JB does better rides on Wednesday afternoons. Today we took it pretty easy.

He asked me "Do you ever wonder how long you'll keep doing this?" And I said, "I had a vision recently that I was an old man, got to the Gate, started riding up, realized I just couldn't do it anymore, and then cried and turned around, never to ride the Mountain again." I suspect it'll be like that, barring injury or relocation. I'd be willing to put on a triple crank or even --gasp-- get a recumbent if it would mean a few more years though. And if I'm in any control of my faculties at all... I could see myself riding up on an electric Vespa twice a week to take photos.

Dudley Driveby: Actually he was stopped, admiring the view near the Bump. He had on a newish pair of black cycling tights!

After Chainbuster, JB decided to put the screws to me. I hung on for a while, then I lost contact, then with about 200m to go I went for a Hail Mary sprint and passed him for the win.

We both went down SGR but I turned around at the Kiosk.


There were dozens of these little orange plastic fences, I couldn't figure out what they were for.


The South Side is definitely a little more scenic than the North.

This guy was doing his own little MTB criterium - up this trail, back around on the road, repeat.


This cracked me up - one of the residents of Ranger Town was cleaning out his garage and this old exercycle was parked in front... get a bike!


Thank you Mount Diablo


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've seen those orange fences before, my guess was they are to protect native plants that they are trying to restablish on the mountain.

Diablo Scott said...

Yeah, that was my guess too, but then I looked closer and there was really no pattern to what they were placed in front of - sometimes there was an ordinary bush, sometimes an ordinary ground plant, and sometimes there was just dirt behind there.

Also, they didn't seem to be placed at areas where the plants behind them would likely get stepped on or run over anyway.