lazy sunday

ride report sunday, september 9

met chad and mindy at the page mill park & ride at 9am. for future reference, the time to meet there on a sunday is 8:45. we must have sat on our bikes, ready to go, for fifteen minutes just deciding on a route over to the coast and back. no excess ambition in this group. finally we decided to take old la honda and CA 84 to san gregorio, then turn left on stage to get over to duarte's in pescadero for lunch. so that's what we did...

took a while to warm up. had plenty of cardio capacity but no legs. couldn't stay with the two of them on the way up old la honda at mile 5. the last i saw of them was mindy's blinky taillight disappearing around a turn up ahead. no worries, it's a nice road. there was a chill, probably high 50s, perfect climbing weather. the sun cut through the redwoods and the patchy fog in places. hard to be hatin' life in those surroundings, even if your legs are screaming at you.

they waited for me at skyline, even though the temperature had dropped and heavier fog rolled in. i was cold in my three layers, chad must have been borderline hypothermic in his one. our original plan was to take the west old la honda shortcut down to 84, but mindy needed a stop, so we turned right on skyline for the quick (and c-c-cold) descent to alice's restaurant in skylonda. stood there in the sun for a few minutes before heading down 84 toward la honda.

no traffic at all for several miles, so we just danced down that smooth winding road through the coastal redwoods. that's one of my favorite descents. it's not steep enough to go stupid fast, there are a couple stretches where you can hit 40 mph, but most of it is between 25 and 35 mph, and you have to work some. there aren't any real technical turns, and the road is cambered nicely. just sail...

got to la honda too soon, because from there to san gregorio the grade moderates and the descent requires more work. we traded leads and pulled into the general store at the corner of 84 and stage, a mile up from the pch. mile 25, time for a good stop.

it was a pretty laid-back time. we just hung out there at the store, nobody really itching to get going. chad said he felt like just a lazy sunday, and mindy laughed at him, 'your idea of a lazy sunday...' finally we decided we were getting hungry, so pescadero beckoned. stage road is the route, and i'd never ridden it south from san gregorio. off we went. we knew about the two small climbs, and they gave us the excellent views. road cuts above, then from either of the two summits, ocean away to the right, and several loops of the road below. the second descent rolls through the pasture where you'll sometimes see the sheepdogs working the flocks. and the long avenue lined by the huge eucalyptus on both sides. try to ignore the farmhouse gate with the twenty-foot rusted rebar skeleton wielding the machine gun...

by pescadero, the sun had cleared off the fog, so we nixed duarte's restaurant in favor of a picnic in the shady orchard behind arcangeli's bakery and deli. we had to let the garlic herb artichoke bread cool so it didn't melt the flower-petal goat cheese into a gooey mess. tough duty we pulled today, but somebody's gotta do it...

there's not much for services between pescadero and palo alto, so we had to plan our water stops. filled up at the deli, then turned left on pescadero road and started up the west side of haskin's hill. that road busts out of the woods for the last mile, the steepest part of the climb, and by then it was quite warm. over the crest, slip on the vest, and wheel down the winding forest road. try not to miss the turn into sam macdonald park on the left. another water stop, then the last half-mile down to the junction with west alpine road. it's over 2000' up to the page mill gap from there, in two four-mile segments, one shady, one not. the fresh gravel has been mostly worked into the now much-improved road surface. no sign of sweatpants man today.

mindy left chad and me at the skyline junction to head home. the two of us then skated down page mill like she had done before we met in the morning. at the parking lot, chad's altimeter read 5700' vertical for the 61 miles. just a lazy sunday...