Beef

Once upon a time – shortly before I hung up my bike for 5 years – I went on this 212 mile ride that was the toughest thing I have ever done on two wheels. In those 212 miles, there are more than 20,000 ft of climbing, including something like 6 significant climbs. About 150 miles into the ordeal, the route took us over Mt. Hamilton, the tallest mountain in the Bay Area. We went up it "the back way," which means you take about 40 miles to get up it, with most of the climbing being gradual and civilized, followed by a kick in the teeth for the last 5 miles. Those last 5 miles were where I first got off my bike and started walking. It was shameful, but what came next was what broke my spirit.

After Mt. Hamilton, the route took us through about 3 miles of neighborhoods before turning back up the most evil road I have ever ridden in my entire life. The last cross street you pass before this road turns into a wall is called Fulbar, which I read as FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition), which is a good description of Sierra Rd. It starts with a ramp of about 16% grade, and hovers between about 12% and 15% for almost 4 miles, never getting less steep than 10%. It's not so much the killer grades that get you, but that it never lets up in between. I remember walking so much of this road that I was afraid that my cleats would wear down so badly that they wouldn't clip back into my pedals.  I have climbed some pretty fucked up mountains in my time, but this was the only time in my memory that I have had to get off my bike and walk. And on Sierra Road I remember walking as much as I rode.

So Sierra Rd. (and to a lesser extent the back side of Mt. Hamilton) has taken an almost mythical role in my mind. Sierra Rd and I have beef. In the intervening years I've wondered, was it really that bad, or was it just that I had already been riding all day, already had some 18,000 feet of climbing and 150 miles in my legs? When I first moved out here, I was a terrible climber and had no idea how to pace myself through the steep and ubiquitous mountains around here. I hadn't been doing that much riding at the time, was it possible that I was just tired?

As the years went by, my curiosity about The Legend of Sierra Rd took on another layer. Slowly, I became a little more mature. I also matured as an athlete, and something hardened in me that had been particularly soft during the Sierra Rd phase of my life. When I finally reconciled with my bike about a year ago, I had lost a lot of my speed, but I found that I was a much better climber than I used to be. Maybe the newer, more mature me would be equal to it.

But the time never seemed to be right for my rematch with my nemesis. First of all, it was a pain to get to. If I'm going to drive to a ride, I want it to be more than 8 miles (even if they are the most devious, miserable, torturous miles on earth). The way the roads through the hills are, there aren't many of them, so you're either committing yourself to a gigantic loop or one tiny out and back. I had considered tacking it on to a Mt Hamilton day, but after climbing the 18-mile, 4,000 ft climb, it always felt like "enough" without tacking on the worst road I have ever ridden in my entire life. The few times I rode Mt. Hamilton in the intervening years, I also considered continuing to ride over the summit, and revisiting the final 5 miles of the back side of the mountain, which had dealt the first blows before Sierra Rd shattered me, but I'd never made it past the observatory.

I had made a few deliberate attempts to go back. Last fall I rode 36 of the 40 miles up the back side of Hamilton before I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get back before doggie day care closed and had to turn around, exactly at the point where the mountain grew teeth. Then, last week I had planned to ride from a point 20 miles away, with Sierra Road as the destination before I rode back. However, 5 miles into my ride I found that the connecting road was closed and would be for the remainder of 2017. It seemed like I was never, ever going to have my rematch with Fucking Sierra Rd.

This morning I decided to take advantage of the weather to ride the front (easy) side of Mt. Hamilton to see how my climbing legs were doing after a long, rainy winter of almost no riding. When I parked at the base of the mountain, there was a big sign saying that the road was closed to through traffic. Well shit. There's been a lot of that lately, as many of the mountain roads are washed out or flooded from the awful winter we've had. I started up the mountain anyway, but after about 5 miles and 1200 ft of climbing, a mess of traffic cones, earth moving equipment and a whole lot of dirt made it clear that the road really was impassible. So I turned around. Now what? I could just ride back and forth on the bottom 1/4 of the mountain or... Sierra Rd was only about 3 miles away. So I followed the arrows still painted on the pavement back to my date with destiny.

Despite the first imposing grade, that looks like a vertical wall right into the sky, I was pleasantly surprised at how easily I got up the first ramp of the climb. Some roads are just like that. You get some point of reference where you can see it from the side, or you look at it head on, dwarfing some tree or house, and it just looks worse than it is. But after that ramp, the road started doing that twisting thing where it looks like it's going to flatten out just around the next bend, and then you round the bend and it's even more steep. The road quickly went from shitty suburbia to the kind of super conservative church that you always find on the edge of towns (like they need some sort of buffer from society), to Scarface mansions, to farm land, to the sort of empty landscape you see in the travel scenes in Lord of the Rings. I climbed until I was heaving for air in a way that usually leads to puking. When I could handle my lungs burning no longer, I pulled over and took a solid 1-2 minutes to get my breath back under control. But I did not walk. I rode the rest of the way to the top, tasting blood in my mouth and heaving like only TV characters ever do (because in real life nothing is compelling enough to push yourself that hard -- nothing, that is, but a quest). But I got to the top, having pedaled every inch. I had climbed just under 2000 feet, in about 3.5 miles.

When I got to the summit there was a roly-poly middle aged cyclist dude stopped in the middle of the road. He was the kind of guy who is slightly overweight, and all of his gear is a solid color and never with any race or team logos on it. You know, the Pearl Izumi type. The type of person who puts SPD pedals on a road bike. "Is... this... the... top?" I gasped.
"Yeah," he said. His tone was neither friendly nor unfriendly. Neither triumphant nor tired. "Where did you come from?"
I told him I'd tried to ride up Hamilton, but when it was closed I'd come over here instead. "God I hate this road," I finished.
"Yeah, it's much harder coming up it from this direction," he said, as if he were comparing sides on a freeway overpass, not the most diabolical road in North America, possibly the world.

I hated this slightly overweight "recreational rider." I am not in fantastic shape (it's been a rough winter), but I was willing to bet that I was in much better shape than this guy. This hill had handed me my ass 5 years ago, and my heart had threatened to burst to get me back up it this morning, and here he was talking like it was just some neighborhood hill, not the life-altering challenge that it really was. How had he even gotten his pudgy butt up here?! It would be like climbing Mt Everest, and finding Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons sitting at the summit, eating a microwave burrito under the Tibetan prayer flags and saying, "Of course, it's tougher without oxygen."

After I had thrown the pudgy guy off the side of the mountain to his death, just to hear him express some sort of strong emotion as he screamed on his way down, I had a new challenge: getting back down safely. I am neither the most confident descender, nor a total sissy pants. What I do NOT appreciate are descents so steep that I can't stop if I want to; the ones where when you release your brakes you feel like you're going into free fall, and if you feather them the moment the brake pads touch the rims it throws you off balance. Sierra Rd, of course, was like that the whole way down.

I descended that road like your nana. I hung onto the brakes so hard I thought that I would break something. While I only had to stop once on the way up, I had to stop twice on the way back down to give my arms a break because I thought my grip would fail. I'd said it on the way up, and I meant it even more on the way down. Fuck that road!

But I did it. I have set myself a list of 25 roads that I want to ride this season, and now that I've crossed off Sierra Rd and lived to tell about it, I do not plan to go back.