Long Ride For a Weekend

Lat Fall, when Orv, Mike and I rode rented bikes back on the east coast, Orv started talking about trucking the bikes down to Northern California and riding some of the spectacular roads around Weaverville that I have written about in this blog. It seemed like a good idea to me and I began to look forward to it. Unfortunately, Orv couldn't make it, and that is not where the suck stops, either. But I needed a good long ride. This has been a tough winter and spring. In January we had more snow and cold weather than at any time in the 22 years we have lived here. A nearby pond froze over thick enough that people were ice skating on it, and the schools had so many snow days that they had to request a break from the state requirement for a certain number of days in the school year. In February I was recovering from my knee surgery and the weather wasn't fit for riding anyway. Then came March and April. It rained 48 out of the 62 days. I had to have a ride to look forward to, so I proposed to Jenny that I ride down to San Francisco and we go for a ride over the weekend. The first weekend in May was chosen as one that she was available and the destination was to be the Lick observatory on top of Mt Hamilton. Jenny has done this ride before and the way she described the road going up to the observatory made me want to give it a go. I started out this morning with a plan to stay overnight in Crescent City, CA, which is my normal overnight for the two day ride to SF. The weather has done a complete flip flop and today was beautiful, verging on being too hot in the afternoon. I first took the liner out of my jacket and then took off my long sleeve shirt. I couldn't do anything more to get cool. About that time, though, I was approaching the coast and before too long I was putting everything back on. I decided not to stop in Crescent City because it was still pretty early and another rider I met advised me that hwy 101 was really messed up by the winter rains and would not be fun tomorrow in the expected rain. So I continued on to Eureka, and before long I put my heated vest on and plugged it in. Today was a long one. No stopping for lunch and dinner was at 8pm, but I covered 476 miles. Needless to say, I don't have many photos to share, which is a shame because all that rain has made the countryside a lush green and very beautiful. I did take one photo with my new camera. This was taken at a rest stop:

Tomorrow I should have more time to take photos.