Riding in groups is pretty normal. But you have two sorts of groups - those who stay together and those who are racing each other. The first normally becomes the second as each person's abilities increase with experience.
The huge fires all over California had turned the skies reddish in the San Francisco bay area with particle counts as high as 400 when 200 is considered dangerous to people, especially those with breathing and lung problems. All of the hardware stores sold out of high efficiency masks.
So for the last week we haven't had any riding beyond one ride I did very easy. So instead of the normal 40 mile ride with 3500 feet of climbing on Tuesday we met for breakfast. Keeping group solidarity is a good thing to do and we have these sorts of events on non-riding days pretty often.
We always end up with half of the group out of town or skiing in Colorado. Or riding Centuries in San Diego though I can't see how they could do that now with the smoke from the LA fires. Maybe they moved them over to Arizona where the air is clean.
Because many rides end up being races, the ride often breaks up and many riders go off on solo rides. These normally cover more mileage. So long mileage rides in these old farts groups is the norm and the younger people in the group get really beat up not from the speed or climbing but from the sheer distance. Most of the local passes from the bay to the ocean or the bay to the Livermore Valley have very steep roads that become reasonably easy over time. Palomares north to south is more than a mile of 9% blending into 10%, then 11% and finally at the top 12% for the final 30 feet which by then makes you think is straight up. From the other direction it's 3 miles to the top but most of the gain is in short sections perhaps a quarter mile long and 12.5% for those three areas. The top is 1,100 feet.
Norris Canyon is about 8% over much of it and then there is a burst of 11% that slowly flattens out near the top.
Niles Canyon is fairly shallow but it has become a highway with heavy trucks and high speed cars and in many places no shoulder. So we get cyclists killed on it eastbound pretty regularly since they are going 6 mph on narrow bridges uphill while heavy trucks are attempting to do 60 mph on these same roads. Westbound is slightly downhill and you can usually keep your speed high enough that the closing rate of cars and trucks from behind is slow enough that they have time to think and avoid. Or at least that is the idea as you're doing 20 mph.
Dublin Grade should not be used by auto and truck traffic but it is while the freeway is directly next to it. Road planners showed that they are willing to risk the lives of the cyclists, runners, dog walkers, etc. by having 55 mph speed limit so that cars and trucks will use that as an adjunct to the freeway.
Redwood Rd and Pinehurst too are being used as freeway bypasses despite the fact that it is destroying the roads. These are long very tight turns and no trucks should be allowed on them. Yet I watched a heavily loaded double semi backing and turning, backing and turning to get around one particularly tight turn even though that road is marked "no trucks". The worst drivers on these roads are the Park Rangers who will often come around blind turns with wheels on the edge of losing traction. On these roads you will find people have dumped large amounts of garbage such as old mattresses and broken furniture. The Rangers don't do anything about this so exactly why are they employed? "Big" Pinehurst is the northern end of that road and you don't have to worry about truck traffic there since there are several very tight turns including one section that was repaired after a truck broke the entire road off of the roadway. And then there is a 15% U-turn that no truck can negotiate though everyone seems to think that a steep road it isn't that bad. On the other side coming up from Oakland is Sheffield and Snake Rds. The top of Sheffield is 20% so people don't normally climb that road (despite being narrow and mindless drivers) Snake Rd is usually only used by locals and has long stretches of 11%.
Tunnel Rd is pretty easy. At the bottom it is perhaps 9% for perhaps 200 yards and then it is 6% the rest of the way to where it turns into Skyline and then continues on to Grizzly Peak Road. Skyline continues from the edge of Bezerkely to the southern edge of Oakland. On a clear day the outlooks are great. But there are also hard climbs that are the highest on the east side of the bay and in many places the roads are so bad that you have to swerve into the opposite direction lanes.
The hill roads on the west side of the bay can be FAR harder and the traffic can be as well, but there are several routes in which you can get to Half Moon Bay without traffic problems because the routes are so perverse.
You can also go south to Capitola or Santa Cruz by riding over to Los Gatos, taking the dirt trail to the bottom of the dam, riding up the paved road on the face of the dam and then cutting over to the Old Santa Cruz Highway which is so difficult to get on that the traffic is light most of the time. The group would to the 100 miles down there each year as a rule and return the following day. Going up the Old Santa Cruz Highway is pretty easy but returning up Soquel-San Jose Rd is a little daunting.
The group used to go to San Juan Bautista once a year but the last time no one but my ex-sister-in-law wanted to go so we did the flat ride down through the farmland and returned over the mountains to San Jose. This was along a Century route that I did several times before.
If you want altitude we have three tall mountains in the area that go pretty high - Mt Hamilton is 5,000 ft. Mt. Diablo is just under 4,000 ft and Mt. Tamaulipas is 2,500 feet but a clear view over the Pacific
If you don't have a group to ride with put one together. Bike clubs are almost everywhere.
The huge fires all over California had turned the skies reddish in the San Francisco bay area with particle counts as high as 400 when 200 is considered dangerous to people, especially those with breathing and lung problems. All of the hardware stores sold out of high efficiency masks.
So for the last week we haven't had any riding beyond one ride I did very easy. So instead of the normal 40 mile ride with 3500 feet of climbing on Tuesday we met for breakfast. Keeping group solidarity is a good thing to do and we have these sorts of events on non-riding days pretty often.
We always end up with half of the group out of town or skiing in Colorado. Or riding Centuries in San Diego though I can't see how they could do that now with the smoke from the LA fires. Maybe they moved them over to Arizona where the air is clean.
Because many rides end up being races, the ride often breaks up and many riders go off on solo rides. These normally cover more mileage. So long mileage rides in these old farts groups is the norm and the younger people in the group get really beat up not from the speed or climbing but from the sheer distance. Most of the local passes from the bay to the ocean or the bay to the Livermore Valley have very steep roads that become reasonably easy over time. Palomares north to south is more than a mile of 9% blending into 10%, then 11% and finally at the top 12% for the final 30 feet which by then makes you think is straight up. From the other direction it's 3 miles to the top but most of the gain is in short sections perhaps a quarter mile long and 12.5% for those three areas. The top is 1,100 feet.
Norris Canyon is about 8% over much of it and then there is a burst of 11% that slowly flattens out near the top.
Niles Canyon is fairly shallow but it has become a highway with heavy trucks and high speed cars and in many places no shoulder. So we get cyclists killed on it eastbound pretty regularly since they are going 6 mph on narrow bridges uphill while heavy trucks are attempting to do 60 mph on these same roads. Westbound is slightly downhill and you can usually keep your speed high enough that the closing rate of cars and trucks from behind is slow enough that they have time to think and avoid. Or at least that is the idea as you're doing 20 mph.
Dublin Grade should not be used by auto and truck traffic but it is while the freeway is directly next to it. Road planners showed that they are willing to risk the lives of the cyclists, runners, dog walkers, etc. by having 55 mph speed limit so that cars and trucks will use that as an adjunct to the freeway.
Redwood Rd and Pinehurst too are being used as freeway bypasses despite the fact that it is destroying the roads. These are long very tight turns and no trucks should be allowed on them. Yet I watched a heavily loaded double semi backing and turning, backing and turning to get around one particularly tight turn even though that road is marked "no trucks". The worst drivers on these roads are the Park Rangers who will often come around blind turns with wheels on the edge of losing traction. On these roads you will find people have dumped large amounts of garbage such as old mattresses and broken furniture. The Rangers don't do anything about this so exactly why are they employed? "Big" Pinehurst is the northern end of that road and you don't have to worry about truck traffic there since there are several very tight turns including one section that was repaired after a truck broke the entire road off of the roadway. And then there is a 15% U-turn that no truck can negotiate though everyone seems to think that a steep road it isn't that bad. On the other side coming up from Oakland is Sheffield and Snake Rds. The top of Sheffield is 20% so people don't normally climb that road (despite being narrow and mindless drivers) Snake Rd is usually only used by locals and has long stretches of 11%.
Tunnel Rd is pretty easy. At the bottom it is perhaps 9% for perhaps 200 yards and then it is 6% the rest of the way to where it turns into Skyline and then continues on to Grizzly Peak Road. Skyline continues from the edge of Bezerkely to the southern edge of Oakland. On a clear day the outlooks are great. But there are also hard climbs that are the highest on the east side of the bay and in many places the roads are so bad that you have to swerve into the opposite direction lanes.
The hill roads on the west side of the bay can be FAR harder and the traffic can be as well, but there are several routes in which you can get to Half Moon Bay without traffic problems because the routes are so perverse.
You can also go south to Capitola or Santa Cruz by riding over to Los Gatos, taking the dirt trail to the bottom of the dam, riding up the paved road on the face of the dam and then cutting over to the Old Santa Cruz Highway which is so difficult to get on that the traffic is light most of the time. The group would to the 100 miles down there each year as a rule and return the following day. Going up the Old Santa Cruz Highway is pretty easy but returning up Soquel-San Jose Rd is a little daunting.
The group used to go to San Juan Bautista once a year but the last time no one but my ex-sister-in-law wanted to go so we did the flat ride down through the farmland and returned over the mountains to San Jose. This was along a Century route that I did several times before.
If you want altitude we have three tall mountains in the area that go pretty high - Mt Hamilton is 5,000 ft. Mt. Diablo is just under 4,000 ft and Mt. Tamaulipas is 2,500 feet but a clear view over the Pacific
If you don't have a group to ride with put one together. Bike clubs are almost everywhere.
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