Saturday, October 31, 2015

2015 SMR 37

Last ride of Daylight Saving Time.

Wildlife Encounter:  Deer at Little Pine Creek

Wildlife Encounter:  Turkeys at Dumpster Gate - they were doing some kind of dance or maybe playing duck-duck-goose.

Kind of quiet today... where is everybody?








 Emptying my cell phone photo folder:

Every year about this time, I fall in love with my sew-ups.
The love usually fades after couple months.

Hari's bike shopping.
He likes this Cannondale, is he a 54?  or a 56?

So many freewheel remover tools, so few freewheels.

Accidentally put my flash drive through the clothes washer
 - WORKS FINE!

Saturday, October 24, 2015

2015 SMR 36

Put the sew ups on Eddy - let's ride him today.
Maybe I should put a new saddle on my Amazon wish list..

The engineer in me wants to design the perfect wheelchair bike -
somebody beat me to it.
Bon jour Michelin et Jean!


Hurricane in Mexico... a few clouds on Diablo







Blog reader Keith decided my blog contained too
few photos of the blogger himself.





Nice one Keith

Thank you for driving safely, folks.



Dude, take a class.


Made use of Bay Area Bike Share on Thursday...
mixed feelings but fun.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

2015 Cycling 4 Veterans

It's the one-year anniversary of my broken ribs crash at Foxy's Fall Century. Haven't done a full century since then.  Wasn't planning on this ride either but my neighbor Laura said her son wanted to do another organized ride with me so we signed up for this one.  Also, Racer Rick was one of the organizers so it was nice to help him out for a good show on the inaugural event.


AND - just glued on my sew-ups so I figured it would be a fun ride on my vintage Eddy Merckx.













Nice organization, nice route, nice cause.  It was a little windy but not at all bad for the Livermore area.  We did feel a few raindrops.




We got a little bit of a late start due to a registration issue, so for a while, we were the last riders on the course.  We met support rider Mike who was kind of sweeping the course along with the SAG vehicle.  Mike had a custom Steve Rex; he and I swapped stories about riding in the good old days when steel bikes and sew-ups were the norm.

 


Vladi did great - I coached him a little on pacing, and straightened out some misconceptions he had about gearing, and he put out a good effort.



 No veggie options for the post-ride lunch, but I got some chips and salsa.  There was a band and some other festival-type activities going on but we didn't stick around.

I talked to the guy who owns this business - he had a pretty cool setup.

Cycling 4 Veterans (Enhanced) from Diablo Scott on Vimeo.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

2015 SMR 35

Well Wednesday Night Rides are over for DiabloScott.

Nice weather today - a little cool to start and a little warm at the Summit.  I didn't think of drinking enough though so I had too much Cytomax left over.




Lots and lots of riders being responsible patrons of The Park





 
This guy liked my bike, so he makes my blog.



Dan and Steve on the Diablo leg of their 118km epic ride.



A cat shooter?  This is North Gate Road, not Syria.


Sunday, October 04, 2015

2015 Diablo Challenge Volunteer

Another one in the bag.


This is the SEVENTH year I've been a volunteer.  I'm so grateful for an opportunity to be a part of this and promote cycling on Diablo.

The first year I did this was in 2007 - may have been the first year that it was a Save Mount Diablo event instead of whatever the previous charity group was.

So I missed 2 years of volunteering since then, and my involvement looks like this:

2007
2008
2009
2010
2011 - not
2012 - not
2013
2014

In 2007 I called to volunteer and the organizer went over some possibilites and when she found out I had a pickup truck suggested that I be a backpack driver.  I'd only had my truck for a few months at that point so it was perfect timing.  Lots of nice advantages to having a truck, this is one of the best.















Saturday, October 03, 2015

2015 SMR 34

Me and JB this morning.

Diablo Challenge is tomorrow so maybe there won't be as many riders as usual? Maybe a few.

Army Al made the newspaper yesterday - there was an article about how they ought to listen to him about safety measures; and about how the right folks were starting to pay attention... this new CalTrans sign also showed up.



This guy did a cool single-speed conversion to his Cannondale - but he left the double chainring and front derailleur on to make it a two-speed, and left the rear derailleur on for a chain tensioner... so I guess he was afraid to commit.  Anyway, he was fast.



Always fun to see tandems on The Mountain.


Sweeping the rocks for tomorrow's big ride.


OK here's something I have NEVER seen before - water bottles mounted to the fork.  Looks like he has a nice gravel-grinder kind of bike and filled up the main triangle with some kind of gear bag - and I guess he just doesn't like CamelBaks


Stop.  Reduce heart rate.  Ingest HammerGel.  GO


Lots of very safe and polite and patient drivers on The Mountain today.