Claire and I are really enjoying our time off.  It is great to stay around Sonoma County and be able to enjoy things like a tourist.  Yesterday we drove out to Bolinas with Eric the Fireman to do the Dream Ride.  It has been a while since Claire and I have done the ride, and Eric the Fireman had never done it.  It was supposed to be windy, but that didn’t affect us much except for a great tailwind heading down Hwy. 1 at the start.  We parked on the side of Olema-Bolinas Road, which is nicely shaded so Mathilda could hang out in the bus and wait for us.  This is a terrific 30 mile ride.  You get a bit of everything with the ocean, Muir Woods, and then Ridgecrest over Mount Tam.  We were lucky enough to do the ride on a weekday, but we have done the ride on a weekend before and leaving early helps out.  You can add mileage by parking in Pt. Reyes, or Olema.

After the ride we came home and made pizza.

Well, I haven’t got out for as many rides as I would have liked to lately, but hopefully next week that will change.  Claire is arranging the week off for us as I speak.  Let’s see, Claire and I rode the Ibis tandem over Old Caz on Tuesday.  We took 9 minutes off of our last time.  The conditions were much nicer since we have had the rain.  We were still able to ride across Austin Creek, but this time Claire’s feet got wet.  We started and ended in Duncans Mills.  Here is a link to the ride.  I accidentally reset my Garmin a couple of miles into the ride, so it shows up shorter than the 22 miles.  Here is a picture of the top of Old Cazadero Road.

We also went out last Friday and did a relaxed ride through Annadel.  It was a beautiful evening, and we both just needed to get out and unwind after the day at the shop.  We are heading back up to Annadel in a couple of minutes, and I am feeling the need to push myself a bit tonight.  We will see how things go.

We went out on Friday and rode in Annadel before having pizza at Mary’s across the street. I planned on taking it easy, but got a little caught up in things on the climb up Marsh. At one point I looked down and my heart rate was 199, I had to remind myself to relax. It was a perfect evening, and we saw plenty of other people up there.

Well, we are back in the swing of things at the shop after our time in Death Valley. We have been trying to catch up on our sleep after staying awake for about 35 hours in the car following our riders. I did get out on a short run Tuesday evening after work. We are going to try to get out of the shop early today to go mountain biking, but sometimes things get a little too busy for us to do that.

Last weekend, Claire and I drove down with 4 of our friends who were doing the Furnace Creek 508 bicycle race. They were in the two tandem relay division. If you have some time, check out the website, and check out the video. This is a race that I have completed once in 1994, and have crewed for various riders 4 times. Claire has crewed 5 times since she crewed for me in 94. The race rules say that each rider must have a crew that drives behind him or her during the night and provides all of the food and water and support that the rider hopefully needs. This race starts in Valencia and ends in 29 Palms. It goes through Death Valley at about the half way point. Anyway, if you check out the website you can get more info on that if you want. Suffice to say that this race is always very difficult and has a high drop out rate.

We got off early from the shop and decided that we needed to get ourselves out for some exercise. We had decided on doing the Sweetwater loop, even though it was 90 degrees out. We hopped on our Burley tandem and rode on down River Road. It was definitely nice and warm, but as soon as we turned into Rio Nido, it cooled way down. Well, to make a long story short, we broke our chain part way up Sweetwater. It was in one of those corners where you are probably pushing around 24% or so. Anyway, a broken chain wasn’t any big deal, so I took out a link and put it back together, but when we took off again, the chain started skipping around like crazy. It turned out that we had badly bent the easiest 3 gears on our cassette. We couldn’t use the 4th one down either since the 3rd was bent into it. I figure what happened is that when the chain broke, it came over the top of the cassette, and since there was no chain on the bottom of the ring to balance things, it just bent it over. We did the same thing many, many years ago shifting into the big chain ring on the top of Old Caz. Claire wanted to keep going on, or at least give it a try, but pushing a 30×17 gear up a 20% grade was not in our power. So, we turned around and rode back down and then did a little ride through Armstrong Redwoods before coming home on River Road. Here is a link to our loop. Getting home sooner than we had expected did allow us the time to sit on the deck and enjoy some beverages while the sun set.

Tomorrow A2 will be getting married.

Claire and I went out yesterday and did my favorite loop on our Ibis tandem. It was a great time and we were in no hurry. We stopped in Duncans Mills at Gold Coast coffee and had some pastries after we had descended 1400 feet down Boxsprings Road. We added in Duncan Road at the end. This is a fantastic ride that I would recommend to anyone with a cross bike. We got a little warm at the very end, but otherwise the temperatures were perfect. I had a mocha while Claire stuck to straight coffee.

Claire, Mathilda, and I went out on our favorite loop, and then were having so much fun that we added in something extra. It was a beautiful day out there, with lots and lots of cyclists. We don’t get out too often on Saturdays, so it was neat to see all of the groups and individuals enjoying the day. Everyone had big smiles on their faces and waved to each other. It is not surprising that sometimes those folks in their automobiles get so jealous of the cyclists. We did not experience any of this jealousy yesterday. Here is a link to our loop.

We finally managed to fit in a couple of days of exercise. The shop has really been kicking our butts. We both feel like we are working as hard as we can, but we are not able to keep up with the business. Anyway, last week we decided that we needed to get out for some activities, so we took off early two days and came in late one day. On Wednesday we went to Howarth Park and did a short run. On Thursday we headed back and did a little mountain bike ride. And on Friday morning we went out on a very pleasant tandem ride through wine country. We paid for this time off on Saturday, but I think it was worth it…