Gate Junction SGR Gate

Big storm was coming in Friday morning when I took this photo...



Lots of wind and rain but it was all over by late afternoon and today was cold but pretty nice.

HEY! They painted the Gate green! Looks nice but didn't seem to be necessary as far as I can remember.

Also, they added a thick stripe of Bott's dots at the exit - probably to slow down bikes... I don't know why they worry about that so much. Anyway, they put them in nice parallel diagonals so it's pretty easy to ride between them.

JB and I rode to Junction. Chris Horner guy passed us and one guy coming down near the Lower Ranch was in camping shorts with no shirt on.

Lots of people came up from the South Side while we were there. JB had a house project he needed to get to so I went down SGR.

It was a lot wetter over there.

Went a couple miles down past the Kiosk and decided to turn around. Chris Horner guy was coming down from the Summit already.

Just before I got back to the Junction - Chris Horner guy passed me again! He voiced a mild disapproval of my position on the road, which made him require changing lines as he came around, but I didn't know he was there.

See 'em?

Treat Overpass update photos:

North side

South side

Nobody was there, but they left the construction fence open just for me!

Gate Junction Juniper Elbow Gate

Met JB at the Gate - he has a new Blackberry wtih GPS and he started recording as we left.

Nice and sunny.

Roadkill Observation: OK, this is a new one... a Great Blue Heron?

• Hardly saw any cars on the way up NGR. Any bikes either for that matter - very quiet.

• Past the Ranches it started to get a lot colder and we could see some dark clouds ahead and to the south.

• We didn't stop at Junction long because of the cold, but while we were there we saw about 20 vehicles full of US Marines going up Summit Road and wondered. We waited for them all to go by before we started up. Also, JB realized he hadn't started his GPS after all - there was like another screen that was waiting for an input.

• The fog cleared up a little higher, but it got even colder and more windy.

• Then at Juniper we saw all the Marines - doing some kind of physical training - it was a little less intense than boot camp but they were pretty serious with yelling and push ups and stuff.
  
  
  
  

So when we got to the Elbow, we decided to turn back.

JB was ahead of me and almost ran into one of the guys from the Marines - they were hiking up and taking over most of both sides of the road and he didn't see them around a corner. I don't think they still understood how stupid they were being.

The rest of the way down was uneventful.

Photo Update on the Treat Overpass:

Gate Junction Kiosk Junction Gate

Met JB at the Gate. We were joined by Kid Kulaki who rode with us for a mile or so before he got bored. I told him I could probably keep up if he had brought his daughter in the trailer along.

Started off pretty cold but my jacket was a little too much insulation and it got unzipped early on.




We joked about the fickleness of Mark H - all gung ho for two weeks then he disappears.

No tarantulas left on the Mountain... I wonder if they hibenate.

Nice and sunny when we got to the Junction, but SGR was cold and soggy.

I turned around at the Kiosk and went back up but JB kept going to Danville.

Some decent progress on the Treat overpass.

Iron Horse Trail Bridge Over Treat Blvd

Found some on-line stuff about the bridge under construction. Looks like the schedule is for it to open by next summer so my guess of February was optimistic.

That profile looks very much like the Ygnacio bridge, so I guess that keeps a bit of continuity - nice design I think. $7 million was the winning bid; mostly federal funding but some local tax sources as well.

This is going to shorten my commute time by several minutes - I usually have to wait for the light on Treat and Bancroft but now I'll take the short cut through BART and eliminate a long stoplight.