2013 SMR 13

Man, off the bike for two weeks and I felt too weak.

Nice day, shorts and a windbreaker.

Mountain's starting to go brown already.

Missed Wednesday and Saturday for a business trip.  Then missed another Wednesday for being sick.

Folks at work are getting excited about Wednesday night rides again.

Junction and back home to plow the back forty.

Please sponsor me in the *Ride for a Good Cause*

I've done a bunch of charity rides in my time, but this one really has me excited.


Click HERE to sponsor me!  Every dollar counts.

You can feel good about your contribution because it's going to a good cause!

These folks really know how to put on a ride.

My sponsors are the greatest!

Help me reach my goal of Gold Level participant

Gold Level Fundraisers get to meet celebrity spokesperson 

FLO from Progressive in the after-ride party.

And all contributors get this complimentary bumper sticker.

More information HERE:

2013 SMR 12

A little moist but some good riding weather.

The display case at Junction had a whole lot of AMGEN TOUR OF CALIFORNIA MOUNT DIABLO STAGE information.  The roads will be closed at 2pm, or earlier if they have reached "capacity".  The race is expected to enter the park at 3pm with a 3:45 finish.  There is also a photo of the official commemorative AMGEN ToC Mt. Diablo Stage jersey which will be available "on race day"... I assume that means they'll have a merchandise booth at the Junction or something - like they had at Bonny Doon on the Santa Cruz stage a couple years ago:

Bonny Doon Booth

Road Kill Report:  1) black cat, 2) blue bird,  3) brown frog

We decided today was probably the greenest the Mountain will be for the year.  Bring on the brown.

2013 WNR 01

The Wednesday Night Rides have returned.  It was kind of dark but it was because of rain clouds in the sky... sun didn't set until well after I was done.  Brought my knee warmers but didn't need them.



Clavicle Cracker





JB at Upper Washout








Wounded Knee



Wildlife Encounter:  BOBCAT!

Passed'em:Passed'me ratio = 0:1

2013 SMR 11 -- The Pipe

Doo doo doo dit dit doo dit:  Important announcement... My e-mail service that was associated with this blog (diabloscott@terra.es) will be terminating soon.  I have convinced the nice folks at Yahoo to allow me the use of this new address:  diabloscott@ymail.com

I've updated the text over there in the margin so you can always come back here to look it up if you send me something and it bounces.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog.

OK, today's plan was to ride up to my proposed AMGEN TOUR OF CALIFORNIA Mount Diablo Stage viewing area.  A few times I have stopped for photos here but didn't really remember how much of the road below I'd be able to see.  On the way up I noticed a few other places that could see lots of South Gate Road, so they'd be decent back-up plans.  The Pipe is about a quarter mile up from Juniper - just past the 3000 ft elevation sign; and it's about 2 miles from The Summit so it should be a strategic point in the race for both the stage win hopefuls and the GC contenders.

I'm predicting this will be the money shot.

View from The Pipe

Top of the Pipe

The Pipe from Below

When I got to The Pipe I found that I could see quite a bit of Summit Road below, but not much of South Gate.  Anyway, here it will be... nice views, a place to sit if I want, a place to display my California flag, and a better than average chance of achieving the Ultimate Prize (getting on TV).

I figure that if you can't edit your ride video to less than three minutes, you'd better have some exceptional footage.  Today's clip is 2m17s.

The Pipe from Diablo Scott on Vimeo.

Saturday Morning Ride with the Health Club Team

Product Review:  You already know Hammer Gel is like liquid go ... but the Montana Huckleberry flavor is crazy good; it even has little seeds in it.  Thanks to my brother's family for giving me this jug for X-mas.

My usual Diablo partner knew he was going to be sick in plenty of time to let me make arrangements with the health club team for their Saturday Morning Ride.  They called the route "Franklin Canyon and Cummings Skyway" but I saw neither a canyon or a skyway.  I didn't have a route map so I just followed the people who looked like they knew where they were going but I'm still not quite sure where I was most of the time.  I mean I've looked at the map since then and I know where the roads are, but I don't think I could find them again without a GPS or something.

I think that's the Vallejo-Carquinez-Al Zampa bridge.

Golden Bear on the smoke stack of that ship.

So good riding with good folks.  That guy with the Capo jersey is an animal.  There were four or five of us that could ride with him but we didn't do much of the pulling.

Roadkill Report:  two skunks on some road about 20 miles northwest of Diablo.


Hammering Franklin Canyon from Diablo Scott on Vimeo.


Team Club Sport: Franklin Canyon and Cummings Skyway from Diablo Scott on Vimeo.

2013 SMR 10

Well... that was some nice weather!

Wildlife Encounter:  turkeys near Wunderbar Pet Hotel

From Junction I went down to the Kiosk and back up... created a new Strava Segment for it:

Д Mt. Diablo SGR: Junction-Kiosk-Junction

Be sure to go AROUND the kiosk.

Oddball Siting:  one of these things... my daughter calls them "running bikes".  It would be fun to try one sometime... but I'm really sure I'll never own one.

Barely cracked the 1.1kW bar in spin class Wednesday... probably because I had lemonade in my bottles instead of Cytomax.

Righteous Diablo video below.

20130302 from Diablo Scott on Vimeo.

2013 SMR 09

Cold but sunny, and a little too windy.

Just me and JB to the Junction.

No wildlife today, there was snow on The Mountain Thursday, but there were POPPIES this morning.

Random C4 dude.

The ZigZag

1149 Watts in Janet's spin class Wednesday... that's a PB.

Actually I hit over 1300 Watts but the sample rate
only records once a second and since it didn't get recorded,
I obviously wasn't doing it for very long!

2013 SMR 08

Almost warm enough to skip the jacket this morning.

Roadkill Report:  Jackrabbit GoreScore=8... severed head and his eyes were open, but not a lot of blood.

Wildlife Encounter:  lots and lots of turkeys.  There was one really studly guy who looked like he was doing a mating dance around one of the hens... no wonder the population is growing so fast.




Heard there was a pretty serious cyclist injury with helicopter medivac on SGR about 11 o'clock... let me know if you have details.

2013 SMR 07

A rare Sunday Morning Ride.

I wondered how things would be different on Sunday...
Turns out they're kind of the same except with different people.
Traffic wasn't any more or less either.

So it was just like a Saturday Morning Ride except I was solo and I was riding Eddy.

My Contour mount doesn't fit on the skinny Columbus SL head tube as well as it does on the larger diameter Klein aluminum head tube so the camera kept slipping to one side or the other when I hit a bump or turned a corner... I'll have to figure something out.

I had good intentions on doing a Summit today, but it was really windy and by Junction I had lost my attitude.

These guys kept passing me and then stopping on
the shoulder where I'd pass them back.

Wind and cold = clear blue skies.

2013 SMR 06

Today's plan:  up NGR, down SGR, collect Kevin at the Tire Poppers, and re-Junction, back down NGR where his ride would pick him up.

I think the worst of winter is over... today was quite pleasant.

Walnut Avenue... best bike lanes in town.

North Gate seemed like a normal day, but there were masses of people on the Easy Side.

Kevin said his legs felt like limp noodles... we assured him that was a good thing.

JB Grabs Some Draft at Moss Landing