2019 SMR 04

Last night I was only about 50% confident there would be a ride this morning.  But at 6:30 when I walked my dog the sky looked not so bad.  The forecast though said there would be rain by 10 o'clock so I figured it would be a Junction ride.  At The Gate, the ranger told us the road was closed at Juniper because ICE.  Ranger also said the airplane that crashed on The Mountain last Friday night had all been cleaned up so there was nothing to see.

So it was a nice ride up to Junction, and then we didn't stop like usual.  JB said "Juniper or until it starts to rain."  Above Junction it got steadily colder and foggier and windier and we got rained on a little in The Blue Oak Speedway; but with only a mile to go we pressed on.  They had spread some kind of anti-skid gravel stuff on the road in The Speedway which made a crunchy white-noise kind of sound under my tires that was very pleasant.  Got rained on a lot more on the way down, but it was only about a Rain Factor 2.

Lots of water was running in all the creeks and culverts and little waterfalls, and even a little snow remained in some of the ditches on Summit Road.

A couple weeks ago I noticed one of my bottle cages was broken - it still held OK but you can't trust a plastic cage with a crack so I ordered some new ones - exactly the same as the old ones!  That's quite an endorsement.  I decided it was a good time to wash The Beast and oil his chain while I was at it.

Product Review:  Profile Design Stryke Kage    looks good, easy to install, lasts long time.  These get a 10 on the DiabloScott bottle cage recommendation scale.  The packaging even lists the torque requirements for the mounting bolts:  30-inch-pounds... pretty hard to get a torque wrench in there though, so I just guessed.