I believe that I live in one of the greatest cycling areas in the world. A long drive may give me new scenery or less traffic, but there is really no better scenery or terrain than what I have within an hour's drive of my house. For months I have wanted to string together a series of the best rides in the Bay Area. Since the best rides around here are the climbs, it seemed obvious that this "dream ride" series should focus on the mountains.
Three of the four corners of the Bay are each dominated by a single peak. So that seemed the most obvious plan: to climb the tallest mountain in each of the 4 corners of the Bay Area: Mt Diablo in the East Bay, Mt Hamilton in the South Bay, Mt Tamalpias in the North Bay, and... I don't know... Highway 9 or something on the Peninsula? The tallest point on the Peninsula is actually the top of Page Mill Rd, but since that is my usual ride-out-the-door training ride, I figured that anything starting at my house on the Bay side and crossing over to the coastal road on the ocean side would be "epic" enough. So I arranged for Oscar to spend the weekend with his sister up in Marin (I have an arrangement with the family of one of his littermates) so that I could spend all day each of the four days of Thanksgiving on my bike without guilt or worry.
Day 1 - Mt. Diablo
Height: 3,848 ft
Total climbing: 6,581 ft
Total mileage: 66.78 mi
Everybody climbs Mt. Diablo. If you just bought a bike in the East Bay the past year, your first major mountain climb will probably be up Diablo. If you live in the Bay Area and you ride, then you climb Diablo at least two or three times a year. It's just one of those climbs. Even though it takes me over an hour to get there, and it's not my favorite ride, and I usually ride alone and so get to choose all my own routes, I still ride Mt Diablo a couple of times a year. It's like the Cheesecake Factory of climbs - tall enough to feel like a treat, but never too steep, so pretty much anyone can get up it.
I say Diablo isn't steep. That's not entirely true. The climb is about 13 miles long regardless of whether you climb it from the north or from the south, and for 12.9 of those miles it stays at a steady and civilized grade that is never overwhelming (usually sitting between 6 and 8% with a few rare pitches that get up to 11 or 12% but never stay there for more than a few yards). Even better, there are no false summits so once you've gained altitude, you never have to give it back. So you have a steady and rewarding march to the top. But that last 0.1 mile to the top is like a roundhouse kick in the forehead. The Stanford Geological Survey says that the final ramp up to the observation area is only 15 or 16%, but that's a fucking lie. For a few dozen horrible feet, that ramp is a goddamned wall and you will see your life pass before your eyes. There is one road that I train on that exceeds 20% in a few places; the final ramp on Mt. Diablo is steeper. Usually when I get to the top I'm shaky and have trouble balancing on my bike until I can get clipped out and put a foot on solid, blessedly flat ground. There have been times when I've reached the top and tasted blood.
...But we'll get to the top. I still have to climb it.
Since I live to the south of the mountain, I usually climb it south to north. However, for reasons that I will get to later when I describe Morgan Territory -- my least favorite road in all the Bay Area -- this time I decided to ride it from north to south. The two roads aren't all that different. As I mentioned before, they both are a similar distance and have similar average grades.
Diablo is a bald kind of mountain covered in mostly grass and scrub, so no matter which side you're on you have great views of the Bay and other grassy scrubby hills around you. About half way up, the two roads converge and you take the same road to the top anyway, no matter which direction you come in.
My climb was absolutely uneventful. I wished everyone that I saw a happy Thanksgiving, and more and more of the mountain dropped away underneath me. I'm sure that I felt some effort at the time, but in my memory I might as well have been on a slow and pleasant escalator to the top. I had started the ride in a bit of a bad mood. I was dreading all of the discomfort I would be riding through, the stress of possibly getting lost, possibly annoying people or drivers, almost certainly getting hungry... But as I got higher and higher without any discomfort, aggravation or suffering I thought deep thoughts about how much of my other life stresses were all just in my head. What's that quote about having many troubles in life and none of them actually happening?
After about an hour and a half I reached the final ramp to the summit. I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth and started spinning. As the road reached its steepest I passed a woman walking her bike and said, "Bleeeerrrg...!" since words didn't really seem necessary in this context. However, I probably could have mustered a "Happy Thanksgiving" if I needed to and was allowed to take a breath in the middle. As I crawled over the hump and into the parking lot, people were there cheering. "Careful! I'm a puker!" I hollered. I had the wind to shout at full volume. Then I rode past them in a semi-straight line without feeling like my legs had turned to spaghetti. To say I was overjoyed would be a lie, but I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't think that I was in that good shape, but I had just had my strongest climbing of Mt Diablo ever. Go me.
I ate a snack, went to the bathroom (always a production in bib shorts, but worse in the winter and with full pockets!) and headed back down the south side of the mountain. The problem with riding up one side and down the other is that somehow you need to get back around the mountain to get back to your car. There are two options: there's a God-awful bike trail with terrible pavement, a lot of street crossings, and I'm pretty sure (based on observation) an organization that encourages deaf and retarded parents to bring their young children outside to practice their twirling routines in the fresh air. The other way to get back is a lovely and little trafficked single lane road called Morgan Territory. Morgan Territory is hands down my least favorite road in all of the Bay Area... Nay, in all of California... No, in all the world. I fucking hate that road. I think I would rather ride on Jupiter, and Jupiter doesn't even have a surface.
First of all, the pavement is in terrible shape. I don't think it's been repaved or patched since the time of the pharaohs, and there is little enough car traffic on the road that as the asphalt crumbles, the gravel doesn't even get pushed off the road. It just sits there waiting for you to come around a bend with a granola bar in one hand, and lines itself up on exactly the line you planned to take. It's also steep enough that even getting up the damned thing is a test of willpower, so the concentration required to pick a safe, gravel-, acorn-, sand- and frost canyon-free line requires way more mental concentration than I can comfortably put together. If you wanted to start an urban legend about a road where the ghost of a heartbroken widow wanders looking for her husband lost at sea, you would choose the northern slope of Morgan Territory as your setting.
The other horrible thing about Morgan Territory is that it goes over a goddamned mountain. I suppose that it's not surprising that to go around a mountain you should have to go over other littler mountains. But on Morgan Territory it is surprising because the whole thing is wooded and twisty, so you can never see more than 100 yards up the road and you can't see the terrain to the left or right. You'll climb some atrocious, bombed-out, steep grade, get to what you're sure must be the top, turn a corner, and see another stretch of road just like the one you just climbed but a little steeper. Maybe it's because I'm always tired from climbing Diablo when I'm on that road, but I have never gotten up Morgan Territory without throwing a temper tantrum for a couple of miles. 1500 feet is a long way to climb when you're mentally done with climbing. Fuck that road.
But then the reward for getting through the icky-poo side of Morgan Territory is that you come out at the top and it opens up into ranches and there is a beautifully-paved, swooping descent back into town. The reason why I had driven the extra handful of freeway exits and put together a loop of all left turns was so that I could try riding Morgan Territory in the other direction. It seemed like a brilliant solution: ride up the beautiful part, and ride down the icky-poo road. If there were academy awards for the advancement of the art of cycling route planning, this would probably have earned me one, I was sure.
Riding through the ranch land on the way to the back side of Morgan Territory, I passed a couple stopped to look at an extremely large and wooly cow standing by its fence at the side of the road. "Cow," I said as I passed the first rider in the couple. "Big cow," I said when I got to the second of the couple.
"Very big cow," she replied.
I don't understand why I have so much trouble finding people to ride with me. See? Not only have I raised the bar on route planning for future generations, but I'm also a brilliant conversationalist. Really, you should want to be my friend.
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| A flock of Thanksgiving survivors |
Here's what I learned from riding up the beautifully paved, bald hill on the Livermore side of Morgan Territory: just because you can see miles of road up ahead of you going almost the whole way to the top doesn't mean that steep sucks any less. This wasn't as steep as the near-death ramp at the top of Diablo, but it sat at a steady and uncomfortable incline and just didn't let go until I was gasping, my lungs were burning and my back was so tired from heaving for air while pulling on the handlebars and also holding myself upright that I was having trouble not pitching face first and breaking my front teeth on my stem.
But I got there, dammit. And it turns out that I was right, the icky-poo pavement was only 90% as terrible going down as coming up. Even better, the haunted road lasted well under a lifetime. About 3/4 of the way down I passed a girl riding up toward me with a look of shock and despair on her face. Chump! I thought. You've got no idea what you've gotten yourself into, you poor sucker. She's probably dead now.
I know that my Garmin is supposed to be able to do maps and navigation, but unfortunately I can't figure out how to use that feature. The last time I tried to plug it into my laptop it deleted my entire history and reset all my data screens. So I still use my "oldschool GPS" (all the major turns for the day written on my forearm in Bic pen). I also can't figure out how to change what is displayed on my data screens, so every ride the largest number on my home screen is my fat calories burned. But since that is calculated based on heart rate and I don't wear a heart rate monitor, it just shows me a big, fat goose egg all day ("Keep riding, you fatass!" it tells me.) My "old school" GPS is somewhat more reliable and gives me the correct information... sometimes. But it does not tell me how long I should expect to ride between turns. This means that I frequently spend a lot of my rides in a state of mild panic worried that I have missed a turn.
The longest miles in the world are the ones when you are ready to be done, you're not sure if you're lost, and you have to ride through mile after mile of identical strip malls thinking that for sure you'll recognize something at the next intersection. At the four hundred thirty-eighth intersection I did recognize where I was, but I still had to ride around each of the stations of the cross to find the school parking lot where I'd left my car. Usually these last few miles would have left me cranky and stressed, but I was happy to find that I still felt fresh and optimistic. It was a good sign, because tomorrow was going to be a big day.
Day 2: Mt Hamilton (back side, from Mines Rd)
Height: 4,360 ft
Total climbing: 8,432 ft
Total mileage: 99.74 mi
I had been trying to get back to the back side of Mt Hamilton for years. I ride the front every couple of months because you can drive right up to the bottom of it, climb for 22 miles of easy, stress-free spinning, descend without shitting your shorts on its mild and gradual hairpin turns, and then be home in time for lunch. The whole thing is over in 3 hours, and you still get to climb high enough that your summit photos look like they have a blue filter on them from all the ozone.
The back side of Hamilton is another matter entirely. The nearest towns to the east are 50 miles from the summit, and in those 50 miles there is one single intersection where the road from Patterson and the road from Livermore join and head off to the mountain together. There are no services back there: Nowhere to get food or water. No cell reception. (In point of fact, there is a campground with running water on the road that I did not take. I found out about it on an organized ride that I might finish the report for someday. But I was riding up the other way, and who knows if I would ever be able to find that campground again on my own). In 2011 I had climbed off my bike and walked it uphill for the first time in my life on the final climb to the top of Mt Hamilton from Mines Rd, and I'd been dying to come back and try to ride that road again. But it was just so damned hard to get to.
Once I had paid to board my dog for the day so that I could ride it, but had to turn around just 4 miles short of the top (after over 40 miles) because I was afraid that I wasn't going to get back before the kennel closed and Oscar would have to spend the night. That day I also ran out of water, and by the time I got back to the car my mouth was so dry that if a bug had flown into my mouth, I wouldn't have been able to spit it out. I had come back and ridden the lower slopes several more times, but circumstances had never been right for me to have time to drop off water in the wilderness, and then drive back to civilization before riding all day. I had been planning this opportunity for months.
I got to the road just as the first rays of sunlight were appearing in the sky, and spent the next 15 miles trying not to drive off the twisty, squiggly road as I kept my eyes glued to the sky and tried to take pictures out my front windshield. For the first 10 miles you climb gradually through exposed, grassy hillsides into the notch of a valley. Then, eventually the road flattens out a bit and you're riding through a rocky little mini-canyon with those twisty, sort of haunted-looking trees. You can see the sort of impressive wildlife out here that you only see when the balance of man and nature are squarely in the nature column: hawks and eagles, deer and wild turkeys. I'm sure that this is mountain lion country. After about 15 miles I found 3 boulders that were distinctive enough that I would recognize them both on the way up and the way down, and hid a gallon jug of water behind one of them. Then I hid behind the biggest one to take a pee before heading back down to the bottom to park and ride back up.
This being the day after Thanksgiving, I had stuffed myself full of "healthy" carbs (anything savory is healthy, right?) like mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing, sweet potatoes, mac & cheese, and pie so I was feeling carbo-loaded to the gills. I wanted to feel like I could ride this whole mountain on a single breath mint. I've been experimenting with some fasted workouts (a post that someday will see the light of day... I hope), and suddenly I understand what carb loading is actually meant to feel like - and it's incredible! When I reached my water drop again after about an hour and a half and 2000 feet of climbing, I felt like I'd just left the car a few minutes before.
Mines Rd is I think named that because back in the 49er days, miners used to pan for gold in the little anemic river that dribbles down the valley. Then again, it could totally be named for Jimmy Mines who built the first ranch in that valley. I made both stories up and have no intention of looking up how the road got its name. Whenever Jimmy Mines put down his gold pan and set down the stakes on his homestead, the trend didn't catch on. You have to go about 20 miles before you hit the first ranch. That didn't discourage some dipshit last year from taking the time to stick a Trump/Pence bumper sticker to every single barrier post and road sign along the way. Sometimes I fantasize about buying land in a place like this and living the life of a recluse. I bet it's cheap, but it must be lonely as hell. I imagine that if I had to commit to a 40 minute drive down a windy road any time I needed to do anything, I would never leave my house again. It's not the sane that make the decision to live like that in a place like this.
About 25 miles up you pass a place called something like, "Ruthie's Trash and Treasures." It's a barn with a ton of crap in the yard: things like a leather boot with silk flowers stuck in it like a vase nailed to the fence. I wondered what sort of people patronized Ruthie's Trash and Treasures, and how often. Ruthie must live a life that is completely separate from the need for and pursuit of money. What in the world did she do and think about all day? I would love to think that she is a wonderful eccentric who thinks deep thoughts and has a completely original and fresh perspective on life that we could all learn from, but she probably just spends her days getting drunk on cheap wine or cooks meth behind the barn. Maybe she's even a dental assistant with a horrible commute. Who knows? Not me, I didn't stop.
Some time after Ruthie's the road starts rolling over the foothills leading up to the mountain. Normally I'm a big fan of downhills, except when they are between you and the summit and they mean that you're giving up hard-earned elevation. I was still feeling fresh and strong, so the downhills barely registered as a setback. I was just eager to get to the main climb. But since I planned to ride an out-and-back, I knew these hills would suck on the way back out. Between my 25th and 40th miles I climbed and gave back about another 2500 feet over bare, exposed hills until I'd finally climbed onto what must have been the shadow of the main peak where some dried-out looking pine trees managed to grow.
One cool thing about Mines Road (and then San Antonio Valley Rd as it's called after The Stop Sign) is that the mileage is painted on the road. When you leave town in Livermore, the numbers count up. Then, after some 20 miles you cross the Alameda/Santa Clara county line and the numbers count down to the summit of the mountain. It left no doubt as to how much was left, which was a comfort as the fatigue started to catch up with me right as I hit the base of the main climb. Only 4 miles to go, the road told me. No matter what lay ahead, it would all be over in 4 miles.
The last time that I made it this far -- the time that I got off my bike and walked -- I was about 150 miles and 16000 feet into a 212-mile 20,000-foot suicide ride. I was probably bonking and definitely exhausted at the time. Climbing about 2500 feet in 5 miles could be a leg crusher, but it could also be "not that bad," depending on how the climbing was distributed, and how fresh you are. I'm sure I've done several rides this year with a similar rise over run and ridden on without giving it a second thought. Then again, maybe this was one of those roads that squeezes most of the climbing into a short, relentless stretch of road that brings you up to your red line and then just never lets off until at some point you just can't suck in the oxygen to turn over the pedals one more time. I had no clue which one this would be and I had waited literally years to find out.
The answer was that it was a hill that treated me like a pot of boiling water treats a frog. It started out okay, I guess. And then it gradually got steeper in a way that you didn't notice happening, but tightened the squeeze on my legs and lungs like a boa constrictor. Eventually it reached a point where I was definitely uncomfortable and wishing for an end (sorry, I'm out of reptile metaphors). I was thinking, "Man, if this goes on much longer, then I'm going to start thinking about how if it goes on past that I'll be in trouble. I sure am worried about how I'll feel in the near future." And then, with about a kilometer to go, it started to flatten out. There was actually a small downhill in the last half mile as I came off of the back sub-summit and headed for the main summit where the observatory and Mile 0 marker were.
Also painted on the pavement near the top were "Sagan," "Jensie" and "Amgen [heart, smiley face]." Obviously the Tour of California had used this route a few years ago, which was exciting. I'm a fan of both Sagan and Jensie, so I was excited that they came to ride my roads, even if we were separated by several years and even more miles of natural ability. I no longer have any illusions about being anything special on the bike. I would characterize my ability as "significantly better than average," but no one will ever paint my name on the pavement near the top of a mountain. Instead, I take a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that very, very few of my friends who ride could make it to this point unsupported. There ought to be a jersey for that.
When I had sat in my living room and planned the ride, and it was nothing more than a map on my laptop screen with a dramatic and exciting elevation profile, I had planned to ride down the front side all the way to the bottom (22 miles away and 4000 feet below me), but this morning when I'd woken up and thought, You mean ride it with these legs?! reason had won out. I decided instead to only ride down the front far enough that I would have completed a century when I got back to the car. The summit fell at 47.5 miles from the parking lot where my car was waiting, so I rode another 2.5 miles straight down until my GPS read "ZERO CALORIES, FATASS. KEEP RIDING.... (and also 50 miles)." Then I turned back and climbed the 600 feet I had just descended.
When I left the observatory at the summit for the second time and headed back out into the wilderness I still felt jubilant. Probably because there was no choice but to finish a ride that I had been intending to do for years. Also I knew that most of the climbing was behind me. But once I got back to the rolling hills in the middle section, I remembered that just because a climb is not the longest, steepest, or highest of your ride doesn't mean it can't be the most exhausting.
I can turn wishful thinking into an art form when I'm tired. If you're riding a loop and you don't know what exactly lies ahead, it is easy to convince yourself that "Surely this is the last hill" or "It can't possibly be as long or as steep as I originally thought" or "Maybe that last hill doesn't actually exist..." But it takes real talent to engage in this kind of self-deception when you are riding an out-and-back and you think, "That 10-minute descent that I rode a couple of hours ago, I'm sure it will have flattened out by the time I get back" or "surely the downhill momentum will mean that I don't even have to pedal on that one-mile, 500-foot uphill." But when I'm riding, I really believe these things. And when they turn out not to be true after all, I melt down like a toddler.
Based on my Garmin's "total climbing" figure at the summit of the mountain (under 6,000 ft, I think) and how tall I knew the mountain to be (a little over 4,000 feet), plus the roughly 500 bonus feet that I'd climbed on the front side, I figured that I would probably be done climbing when my total ascent figure fell between 7,000 and 7,500 feet. I have no idea if that math works out, but it was what I had figured out at the time. I switched big ring to small ring and back to big ring every few minutes for miles. I didn't remember this many undulations on the way up. I still hadn't found the single T-intersection on my 50-mile descent. It couldn't possibly be so far away from the summit. Maybe I was lost on a straight road with nowhere to turn? Even though the miles were painted on the road, I deliberately turned off my brain's ability to do math. The numbers were counting up now, and I couldn't remember exactly how high they went before the county line. I promised myself that I wouldn't check my total mileage until I reached the county line and the numbers started counting back down to the car. It had to be soon... this couldn't possibly go on forever... I would be there in a few minutes... I had to be finished with climbing. I was already well over 7,500 cumulative feet. In fact, it looked like I might even hit 8,000 feet before all of this bullshit was over. But every time I turned a corner, I found that the road went up, and up, and up, and up some more. I hit 8,000 feet. Then 8,100. "Why won't you fucking let me go!" I yelled at the hill. I turned several more corners. I exceeded 8,300 feet, and then 8,400. "Enough! I want out of here!" I yelled. Finally, finally after more than 8,400 feet, I turned a corner and found that the road went down...ish.
For several more miles I rode on the most gradual of descents. You wouldn't have even known it was a descent, but my legs were too tired to be taking anything but a downhill in the big ring so I must be descending. I went on for a few more interminable miles. I still hadn't passed the county line, and I still didn't know how many miles were left. How could this be? This road was going to be 50 miles up, and 80 miles back down. Where was that damned county road sign? I passed Ruthie's. I hated Ruthie and her hoarding hermitage. Get some fucking therapy, you batty loser! Ruthie's dump must have moved, because I remembered it living on the count-down side of the one intersection. So if I was seeing her house, then the house must also be on the wrong road. I knew that I should be eating, but I didn't want to take my hands off the handlebars or do anything that was going to slow me down by even a fraction of a second and prolong this damned ride. Finally the county road sign appeared, a dozen miles late as far as I was concerned. I had 19 miles to go: less than an hour. This would be the longest hour of my life, since the last time I went on a ride that was too long.
At this point I really needed an extended period of not pedaling. I had earned it! But other than the 5 miles at the top and a handful of short dips through the foothills, this entire return trip had been either a pedaling descent or more fucking climbing. For fuck's sake! Let me stop pedaling!
I reached my water drop point, filled up, and forced myself to eat a snack. I had 15.75 miles to go: probably only 45 minutes in the saddle. But I couldn't slice those 15.75 miles into small enough slices to make them bearable. Each hundredth of a mile lasted a lifetime. With 10 miles to go, I finally hit my free miles and luxuriated in not having to pedal as the road slipped away underneath me. When I turned a corner and had to pull on the brakes for a lifted truck on tires big enough for Crossfitters to get a hard-on for flipping, I was livid! It would take me 5-10 pedals strokes that I had not intended to take to get back to coasting speed! I'd been robbed! Where were the police when you needed them?!
Once I reached the bottom of the hill and the ranches gave way to suburban farms and the sort of non-farm houses that have chainsaw wood sculptures out front, I only had about 4 flat miles to go. I turned my brain's ability to do math back on and realized that I would fall a fraction of a mile short of 100 miles. I pulled into the parking lot with 99.74 miles on my odometer. I could have gotten to a round 100 by circling the parking lot for less than a minute, but I've never been that kind of anal retentive rider. I'm not a triathlete! I dismounted, dismantled my bike, and threw it in the back of my car.
I was ravenous, but I was also far too exhausted to go find food. Even a 711 would have involved too much waiting and too much effort. And anyway, I was the kind of hungry where nothing sounded good. I would eventually drive all the way home (almost an hour) and shower before going to a taqueria down the street and ordering an enormous burrito, chips and 3 fried plantains which I polished off with gusto before moving on to kill an immodest number of thaw-and-serve cream puffs. Happy Black Friday.
Day 3: Mt Tamalpias
Height: 2,576 ft
Total climbing: 3,914 ft
Total mileage: 32.28 mi
Mt Tamalpias (Mt. Tam) is an institution for San Francisco cyclists. With the only non-suicidal way to ride out of the city being over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin, and the roads that climb Mt Tam being the only roads that do anything but snake past crunchy millionaires' homes to a dead end for about 30 miles, Mt Tam is just about the only weekend ride that San Francisco cyclists do. For being the center of the country's best cycling, San Francisco is a really shitty place to be a cyclist.
Mt Tam is gorgeous, don't get me wrong. It sits on the prow of the North Bay and on a sunny day you get stunning views of the ocean, the unsettled hills of the Golden Gate recreational area and back to San Francisco. Which is why it is so fucking crowded, and that is why I hate it so much. There are too many cars driven by tourists that don't know how to drive on twisty mountain roads, too many cyclists (many of them too inexperienced to know how to coexist with cars and other riders on twisty mountain roads), and also there are dumbasses that just walk in the street. The roads are narrow and have no shoulder. Frequently the white line that delineates the right edge of the road is only half painted on tarmac before even the paint falls off the side of the road and the woods take back over.
I also hate Mt Tam because there is no clear route to the top, and I hate riding roads that make me feel dumb. Where most mountains (like Hamilton and Diablo) only have one or two roads that go straight from bottom to top, Mt Tam is covered in roads that look like the squiggly lines on the surface of a brain. I have ridden that mountain probably a dozen times, and I have never been entirely sure where I was at any given time... Yet I recognize everything that I see. I may have even ridden the same route every time and I would have no idea.
But if I was going to ride the 4 tallest mountains in the 4 corners of the bay, there was no way to deny that Mt Tam was it for the North Bay. Also, my dog had been staying at the foot of the mountain all weekend, so I had to be up there anyway. My plan to avoid the crowds and to avoid getting lost was to ride the road out to the coast (although there are tons of roads that go over the mountain, there is only one that goes around it to the ocean), and then follow signs to the summit. But when I dropped off Oscar, his "aunt" said, "Oh, have they opened up the coast road yet?" Apparently all of last winter's rain had caused half of the road to wash away in one spot, and the road had been closed ever since.
As I rode around the skirt of the mountain, sign after sign told me that no, the coast road wasn't open yet. My friends from Marin said that one lane still went through and it shouldn't be dangerous for a bicycle. So I decided to try it.
The ride from Mill Valley over to Stinson Beach on the coast is not flat, but it's gorgeous. You have to climb the lower slopes of Mt. Tam with all of the tourist traffic trying to get to Muir Woods crawling up behind you, but eventually you pass the Muir Woods parking lot and have some 10 miles of a steep, rolling road with absolutely nothing on it but the occasional turn-out. The road clings to the sides of the mountains before they drop straight into the sea. I had driven it many times but had never ridden it, and was looking forward to that ride more than I was to climbing the mountain.
As I rode the first few miles to Muir Woods over the twisting, steep road with no shoulder, cars were passing me constantly. Some people have no problem occupying the whole lane and riding three feet from the edge of the road, but I've never felt comfortable being the kind of rider that inspires road rage and hate for cyclists in general, so when there's traffic and no shoulder I try to balance on the white line on the outside of the road. Do you know how hard it is to maintain your line with that degree of accuracy on a double-digit grade for minutes and miles at a time? You need to keep your cadence high enough that there isn't so much resistance that you're swerving right to left a few inches with every pedal stroke. You need to engage your core to keep your hips totally motionless against the churning of your legs. You need to engage your lats, traps, and even pecs and triceps to hold your handlebars totally still to within a teency margin of error. And you have to keep your mind from wandering so that you don't forget and drift off your line just when that retired librarian from Iowa that's been crawling behind you for WAY too long finally gets the guts to pass.
The retired librarians from Iowa were bad enough, but the tour busses?! I thought for sure that there was no way that a tour bus would find space to pass I was going to be riding with its engine growling over my shoulder for the rest of my life. With the huge (and justified) stink that the local press has been making about traffic and the need to update infrastructure lately, I couldn't believe that cyclists on the Coast Highway weren't getting just as much press as bridge traffic. But in Marin, so many busses and cyclists were able to coexist peacefully on such a tiny road without incident. Must be all the organic groceries and yoga.
By the time I finally got to Muir Woods, all of the librarians and busses and mental focus had burned up any good mood I'd come with, and I was irredemably grumpy. And that was BEFORE I found out that they were running the Double Dipsea race that day: one of the best known bucket list races on one of the most famous trails in the Mecca of trail running, and I had chosen this day to ride the road that the course crosses a handful of times, stopping all traffic for minutes at a time. Great.
Finally I found my way beyond all the neighborhoods, through all the librarians and tour busses, past Muir Woods and the hundreds of cars parked on the street overflowing the parking lot, through the Dipsea traffic, past that weird intersection where all roads on and off the front of Mt. Tam converge, and I was headed out toward the coast. Short minutes later I hit a traffic light.
This wasn't an intersection traffic light, it was one of those lights that they put on either end of single lane road work segments. The kind where you always wonder if you're supposed to be waiting this long or if the damned thing is malfunctioning... But if you go out of turn and run the light, will some asshole in a luxury car come ripping around the corner a moment later to cream you? A sign next to this light said,
Light cycle is 10 minutes. Stay where you are, there's an asshole in a Tesla just around the bend waiting to cream you.
(Okay, I added that last part.) Of course I came up to the line just after it had turned red.
Waiting with me were a few other cyclists (and a couple of Audis and Teslas). One of them was talking in a strong accent about "exactly how closed" the road was up ahead. "So you can get through?" Asked one of his American companions.
"Oh yes. I was able to get sru," said the intrepid foreigner. "But eet was my first egsperience with poison oak. I really had to hike sru the bushes, I almost got stuck."
I wasn't as worried about the poison oak as I was about having to deal with uncertain footing in cycling shoes with my bike on my shoulder. I could deal with poison oak on my ankles. I was pretty sure that I would die if I slipped and fell and rolled around in it.
"And sometimes you can't even hike around zee barriers," he went on. "Because zey post a ranger up there."
Well that was that. I hate rangers. I mean, they're wonderful people, which is why I hate lying to them and telling them that "I'm lost, I had no idea that this was a no dogs trail. And, no, that's not my dog's poop... Could it be from a mountain lion? And this trail is closed from dusk till dawn? You don't say! And it's only open to Palo Alto residents, not people who just work in Palo Alto. Well I'm real sorry sir, but I'm out of cash to pay the parking fee, and I don't run with my driver's license, so I'll just be on my way now..." I turned around.
"Wait! Where are you going?" One of the Americans asked. "There may not be a ranger there on a holiday weekend." Fat chance. "The road closure is just right after the traffic light... You don't have to climb much further to check."
"I have no problem climbing," I told him. "I just don't want to get up there to find it's closed and have to wait another 10 minutes at this same traffic light to come back!" So it was back to Muir Woods to follow the detour.
The detour turned out to be the Same Damned Road that the librarians, douchy SF riders and Korean tourist pedestrians all take to the top. The same one that is so well marked with helpful signs that tell you and half of the rest of the world who happens to be on this mountain today where to go at each intersection. The same one that always brings me to the top of Mt. Tam when I've gotten lost on a well intentioned but unsuccessful alternative route. It was a perfect day for riding, with just enough wispy clouds to frame the sun and no fog over the ocean or haze in the city, and it was a shame that I was so grouchy.
All roads converge on the main summit, but there is also an east peak a few miles beyond that few people go to, and even fewer drive to. I had never been and I needed to get away from everything to collect myself before ending my 3-mountain adventure.
While Mt. Diablo climbs gradually (until the mule-kick to the forehead at the end), and Hamilton is a grind followed by a boa constrictor of a peak, Tam climbs in fits. There are be stretches with grades in the mid-teens, followed by mild-to-flat sections and they follow each other in random order. It's like a quilt of every type of climb you've ever done in no particular pattern: here's a minute from that ride you did back in June, and here's a minute from that ride where you locked your keys in your car, and this one is from that ride where that guy wouldn't shut up...
As I labored up to the second peak in a ride that I really just wanted to be over, I noticed that some of those stretches really were quite steep. Was it absolutely necessary to build the road quite so faithful to the topography on a mountain where they flattened the entire summit -- the most tippy-top of the mountain -- by some 25 feet just to put an observatory there? I would not say that I was "challenged," but I was "annoyed." Then again, I was still only about 25 miles into this ride. I probably would have been having a raging temper tantrum if this had fallen after mile 60 of a theoretical ride that I was never going to take. In fact, I was never coming back to this mountain! I meant it this time!
As I oozed into the parking lot at the east peak I looked around to realize: I had been here before. Once, when lost. Earlier this year I had parked in a random spot in Mill Valley (literally random: outside cell signals, I circled for miles looking for a spot I thought would be legal to park and just found the nearest trailhead), and followed fire trails, single track and stone steps for 5 miles, always uphill, until much to my surprise I popped out at an observation tower that I strongly suspected might be a summit of something. That had been a good day, and Oscar and I had had fun. Maybe roads were the problem with Mt. Tam.
The next day a heavy rainstorm was predicted, so Mt. Tam was the end of my adventure. I was not disappointed that I didn't get to climb the fourth and final mountain. When I got home, I left my bike in my back seat overnight. The fact that I can't stand to look at it enough to walk it across the yard to its home is usually a sign that we need a break from each other. I ate obscene amounts of food without guilt, and I did all the chores that I hadn't done all weekend instead.
It felt good to spend so much time in nature, to be able to conquer such imposing mountains and not worry about the imposing amount of cake that I had also conquered. It also felt good to know that my dog was taken care of, and not spend my entire ride wondering if he was okay and feeling guilty that I wasn't with him. But responsibilities never really go away, and eventually you have to turn around and face the music. There is a kind of peace in facing your responsibilities, and not dreading the consequences of ducking them. And Oscar is the person, place and thing that gives me the most pleasure in this world, even more than my bike (even though I'm glad that I don't really have to choose).
Throughout this tough year I had been entertaining escapist fantasies of finding a job where I can telecommute, living in an RV and spending my life traveling from one fantastic running or riding spot to another, exploring in the morning and working next to my dog in the afternoon. But how quickly would I come to dread those tough days in those beautiful places? How long would it take for the gratitude to wear off and it to be replaced by road rage, routine and judging strangers. If I spend every ride now worried that my dog is lonely or in danger, then how would I feel in a constantly changing series of RV parks and campgrounds?
I decided that 3 days of beautiful riding and one day of doing laundry and grocery shopping so that I wouldn't be stressed out all week was the perfect balance for my Thanksgiving weekend.
