2 August 2008

Solo ride

I just wanted to do a quick ride, so I decided to get in my monthly Jamison climb. It was sunny and very warm.

Right away on High St, there were a bunch of cars in the bike lane and there was a police barricade. It was a sign of things to come.

When I got to Encinal and Hwy 9, next to the Salz Tannery construction, I knew the light didn't detect bicyclists. However, there was lots and lots of cross traffic. So I waited and waited. Finally, I decided to run the light, even though there were cars stopped on Hwy 9 and I didn't know how the light was going to change. And a second after I went, my light turned green.

In Henry Cowell, at one spot, there were signs warning of horse crossing and people sitting by the side of the road in orange jackets looking like they were something like course marshals. I didn't see any horses, though.

Somewhere after Felton, there was a siren going, and an ambulance came by heading the opposite way. Then, just before the Glen Arbor intersection, 3 cars were stopped on the shoulder, so I went around them. There was some greasy spillage on the road, and the drivers were walking around outside the cars. I didn't see anything that looked like a crash or anything, though. I didn't really look, though, and turned right on Glen Arbor and headed into Ben Lomond.

At Brookdale, I forgot to look at the restoration of the James Dean mural on the Brookdale Lodge. A week earlier, the legs had been repainted, but the rest was still gone.

A little before Boulder Creek, traffic suddenly clogged up. Police had closed one lane for something, but I didn't see anything there when I went through. Whatever it was was probably cleaned up by then. It probably had something to do with the ambulance from before. When I got to Boulder Creek, I went by another ambulance that was parked on the side of the road.

From then on, it was pretty uneventful, though the heat was getting to me, even though it couldn't have been that bad, like no more than 90 degrees in the sun and the shade was still reasonably cool. I headed up 236 and got to the bottom of Jamison Creek at 12:55. The climb was tough. My legs weren't being worked too hard, but my heart and lungs were. I think I even was in 34/23 instead of my usual 34/26. I think the heat was a factor. The 1.33 sign had the US flag, the strip of paper, and the remnant of the skunk tail still. There was slightly more car and motorcycle traffic than usual, due perhaps to the stoppages on Hwy 9. It was 1:21 when I got to the top. I knew during the climb that I didn't have a very good pace, and that was confirmed with the time of 26:30.

I continued back on Empire Grade. The cool wind from the shaded descents felt good, but it was still uncomfortably warm in the sun. It took a while for me to recover from Jamison too. At the intersection with Chinquapin Trail, there were more horse crossing signs and people in orange jackets sitting by the road. I didn't see any horses this time either. Perhaps the horses were going between Wilder on the coast and Felton. After that was the final descent back home.