28 June 2008

Fremont Peak

Fremont Peak It was cool and cloudy in the morning. At Water and Front, the light turned yellow as I approached due to a car arriving on Front. That would become aggravating, because, on Soquel, the same thing would happen 12 times, due to either a car arriving on a side street, or an oncoming car getting into the left turn lane. Two of them happened fairly long before I arrived, but the rest of them occurred when I was fairly close to arriving at the intersection. Finally, at Soquel and State Park, it was the last of those occurrences. I continued to Freedom, Bonita, San Andreas, Beach, Thurwachter, McGowan, Trafton, Salinas, and Elkhorn to Kirby Park and got signed in. On Salinas, just before the turnoff to Elkhorn, there was a dead orange and white cat, roadkill.

Pretty soon, we headed out. I didn't get a route sheet. So, where the route sheet said to turn left at either Hidden Valley or Strawberry, I was in a group of 4 or so that went straight. It was okay, though. We turned left at Castroville Blvd, and then left at San Miguel Canyon, rejoining the route at Strawberry. We continued on Tarpey, San Juan Rd, and Carpenteria to Aromas for a stop, which would be pretty short, since someone had to be somewhere and wanted to get going, so some of us went too.


Hazy western view from Fremont Peak State Park We headed up to Carr, then took Carr and Anzar and San Juan Hwy into San Juan Bautista, and stopped at the Windmill grocery for an early lunch. After that, some of us headed up to Fremont Peak. I had never done this climb before. Some of the lower and middle parts reminded me of the lower and middle parts of Page Mill. Some of the middle parts reminded me of Soda Springs, and some of the upper parts reminded me of the upper parts of Montebello. At the State Park, the view was mostly obscured by fog or haze from the smoke from the fires. There were lots of bugs buzzing around. At one point in the climb, a bug flew right at my throat and maybe stung me really quickly. I still feel it 6 hours later. Then we descended. At one point, the guy in the lead couldn't take a sharp steep turn and had to go off the left side of the road. Fortunately, there was no traffic and there was a gravel area on that side of the road rather than a dropoff. We stopped at one point to regroup and yakked for about 20 minutes. Later, I felt my rear tire go soft, and my rim hitting the pavement. I must have had a slow leak or something. I changed the tube with bugs flying around. That took another 20 minutes or so. One guy came back to check up on me. He rode from home as well, so we would ride back together. The other 2 were riding back to Kirby Park. We got back to San Juan Bautista at around 2, so I put fake data in my records of arriving there at around 1:20 to account for the time stopped.

We backtracked to Aromas via San Juan Hwy, Anzar and Carr. It was windy and we traded pulls in the headwind. From Aromas, we took Blohm, Aromas Rd, San Juan Rd, Murphy Crossing, Hwy 129, and Carlton. By Carlton, I was running low on energy and was fading, so we took a break at the store on Hwy 152. From then on, I just sucked wheel as we headed back via Casserly, Green Valley, Pioneer, Varni, Corralitos, Freedom, and Soquel. My riding partner cut out just before Dominican Hospital, so I was on my own for the rest of the way. It was sunny then, but by the time I got back to downtown, it was overcast, like it was in the morning.