The only downside is that she then has to ride home by herself. It’s a shame there’s not a decent breakfast joint anywhere near work (Google cafes, being “free”, aren’t open to friends and family in the same way Caffé Macs is).

We happened upon the law school, which we both agreed was a travesty of architecture. Marisa has dubbed it the giant, used cat-scratcher. I’ll get a photo someday.

We stopped randomly by the California Cafe for a late lunch. Or in my case, breakfast.

And now I’m ready for a nap. Or to play Settlers 7. But we have things to do.

’twas my birthday weekend, you see, so I:

1. Had to do something other than crush the Rebellion and sleep.
2. Wanted real chocolate for a change.

Since I’m not really at fiscal liberty to splurge on say a new iMac, as last year, given I’m still stubbornly trying to pay off HECS, some decent chocolate was a compromise. And in all honesty, probably more satisfying. It was a good excuse for a ride; the 60km there and back would surely offset the large quantities of sweet, sweet candy I would surely purchase. And they probably did partly; though I suspect not nearly enough. I do love chocolate. :)

The chocolate lasted at most a week, for the record… three family blocks, and a Crunchie. And some assorted Freddo frogs and Caramello Koalas. All delicious and rekindling my craving for them. Damn it!

The ride itself was good – pretty easy, despite the considerable distance, as it’s largely flat all that way. But it was a lot to do in only three or four hours, with only three five-minute breaks all up, so it pretty much knocked me out for the rest of the weekend. Which was okay, because then I had copious amounts of chocolate to indulge in.

The next weekend, which is to say last weekend, I decided to step it up a notch and do some hills. The nearest ride in the card deck my parents got me for Christmas is the veritable Old La Honda. It, however, goes all the way to La Honda, the town, which is virtually all the way to the coast. In distance it’s not that much – only 60km or such, I think – but there’s two hill climbs of 500 or more metres involved – higher in fact than I’ve ever ridden before – so I was not confident.

Nonetheless, I set out on the way. Five minutes into Old La Honda and I was reminded that:

1. I am pathetically unfit.
2. See above.

After some hopeless time – two hours, maybe – I finally made it to Skyline, from where the idea of doing the same climb again seemed completely preposterous, so I cruised down to Alice’s instead, had a much-needed bite to eat… or three… I couldn’t resist the Apple pie, even though it nearly made me throw up from the resulting cramps… turns out the half-hour rule goes both ways.

And so I cruised down [new] La Honda and back home. Buggered, but reasonably happy that I’d at least done a decent ride. Old La Honda goes up another couple of hundred feet further than new La Honda, so it’s a slightly harder ride. Therefore I feel okay about having been so bad at it. I’ve finally returned to the gym in a vaguely regular fashion, as of two weeks ago – as soon as my ankle healed up after Vegas – and am thus holding onto the hope that come summer proper I’ll finally tame the full La Honda ride.

My shoulder still hurts a bit, sometimes, and is noticeably weak. When I lie on it at night it’s vaguely uncomfortable and it clicks and shifts abruptly, sometimes painfully. Yet it seems to be absolutely no burden when I’m riding, or at the gym… odd. I’m definitely leaning towards the actually-dislocated explanation, though; the symptoms just described are a classic symptom of that. Assuming that, I can only then be grateful that my tumbling inadvertently popped it back in, rather than leaving me to have to do it knowingly.

1. That’s cyclist-speak for “I’m a tosser”. 😜 ↩︎

But today turned out alright. Not particularly warm, but well warm enough for riding. So, after procrastinating for a while with the dubiously productive combination of Civilization IV and WWDC videos, I kicked my lazy arse out and went riding.

I’ve been meaning to check out La Honda for a while, and though I wasn’t really intending to do so today – I hadn’t properly prepared, i.e. drank five bajillion litres of water – when I got to the fork in the ride, something possessed me to try it.

Long story short I’m not dead, although walking did feel rather awkward for a while after I got back. I’m beginning to regret moving into a house with stairs. ;)

So, I rode to Skyhonda, or whatever it’s called – the junction with 35 (Skyline), or perhaps best dubbed “Alice’s”, after the apparently famous little restaurant/cafe there. I had to pause three or four times on the way up, for a few minutes each; I had no real measure of progress while I was going, and I knew it was several miles to the top, so pacing seemed wise. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever actually ridden in the lowest gear.

I wasn’t sure how far up Alice’s was, but I decided it made a good waypoint, so I returned from there with the rationale that it’d be good to gauge the round-trip impact to that point, given it’s suitability for breaks. As it turns out, courtesy of mapmyride.com’s groovy and all-newly-colour-coded elevation charts, that actually is more or less the highest point on La Honda (which seemed odd, because Skyline went upwards in both directions).

Evidently I can make it to the top of La Honda without killing myself. And back, which may well have been the more dangerous – the roads were still damp from the morning’s rain, solidly wet in places, and the fact that the entire way back to Portola only one car overtook me probably gives a good indication of my speed. And it only overtook me ’cause I let it, although as it happened the point where I slowed down to let it passed was right before a big fallen tree branch, which just seemed guaranteed to cause an incident as comedically perfect as it would be painful, but luckily for me the driver of said car was not a jackarse and allowed for my branch dodging.

One driver on the way up wasn’t nearly so courtesy; some typical American truck, which slowed down as it approached, then floored it as it went past so as to produce a improbably huge cloud of thick, black sooty smoke. They also missed clipping me by half a foot at best. It could have been accidental, but it seems unlikely given it’s exactly the kind of sociopathic behaviour that’s so typical of people that drive such cars. I largely just found it amusing, though, from the novelty of it if nothing else.

I was very surprised generally by just how many big fugly trucks were traversing La Honda. It seemed like at least 50% of all the traffic there. Which really doesn’t seem like an intelligent choice of route nor residence, if they are indeed residents of the area… even in my car the fuel economy round-tripping the road every day would be brutal.

Anyway, I’m less certain now of the whole to-coast-and-back idea, for the moment… I think I could do it, physically, but I’d be making myself bedridden for a good while afterwards. By the time I reached Alice’s my leg muscles were almost grotesquely swollen, as if I’d had a lower-body swap with Hulk Hogan.

Nonetheless, I intend to at least repeat today’s efforts next weekend. Onwards and upwards!

It’s somewhat ‘interesting’ riding back at night… bike lights don’t really do much to actually illuminate your path – they’re really just for safety, I reckon – and especially not when you’ve got headlights in your face much of the time. So I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t going to end up face-planting the road at some point. But I didn’t. Which is encouraging me to do it again next week.

After Francisco recommended mapmyride.com, we checked out the elevation chart of La Honda, from my place to the coast. It’s pretty scary – it rises about 460 metres, with a total ascent of 2,245 metres (round trip), according to said website. And it’s nearly 100km (round trip). So, it will likely be a while before I attempt it. Though all going well this weekend I’ll at least try the start of it – the steepest part – to see exactly how completely implausible it is.

I am slowly working my way towards riding to the coast though, via La Honda. It’s supposedly one of the more challenging rides around here, which is the trade off I suppose with the coast being closer here; close enough to ride there and back in one day.

But before that, I intend to get into a habit of riding to work. Well, I’ve intended that for a while, but now I’m ready to do it – I bought the lights I need for the ride home, at night, so I’m all kitted up and ready to go. Hopefully the weather now doesn’t decide to actually suit the season and spoil all my plans; it’s be [apparently] uncharacteristically pleasant thus far. It has certainly not been as windy as I’d become accustomed to previously, which is a blessing.

Anyway… so weekend before last I did the Steven’s Canyon Road ride as per usual. And I felt pretty good – I’ve finally gotten past my bloody-minded stubbornness and conceded that using gears below the highest one is, in fact, advisable. And that has helped immensely, though it’s still a challenging ride.

I decided, when I reached Pierce Road, that it’d be nice to go south for a change to 9, and down to the very bottom of Saratoga that way. I’ve done it a couple of times before, but recently have always been cutting north from there… usually because it’s all downhill. :)

In fact, probably key to my casual change of route was that I’d forgotten entirely that there’s a bloody sodding great big hill on that part of the Pierce road. D’oh.

Still, my newfound love of lower gears got me over that without too much stress, and I was just starting to enjoy flying down the hill – my beautiful, relaxing reward – when I reached the junction with 9 and found it blocked by a police car, with the officer standing in the middle of the road diverting people who otherwise might wish to go east on 9. Great. As it turned out they’d had three accidents on that section of 9 already that day – this was mid afternoon – and the most recent was still being cleaned up. Quite bad, apparently – not a fatality, everyone involved would be fine, but, more than just some yokel side-swipping a signpost. I can’t recall what it was exactly, though at least one of the accidents that morning had involved a motorcyclist. There are apparently a lot of very serious motorbike accidents along 9, and it’s quite understandable – it’s a beautiful road to cruise along, not less than half because it’s winding and mountainous. Ah, humans; what other species would so closely entangle beauty and danger?

So I had no real bloody choice, short of sitting it out for some indeterminate length of time, but to ride back over the damn hill and go my completely unoriginal route. Gah! :)

It was quite easy, surprisingly, and by the time I got home I was feeling good and happy.

Fast forward to the weekend gone most recently, where I decided I’d test out how long it took to ride between work and my new place. It’s about 25km, so I was figuring somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour. As it turns out, it’s a good hour, though it’s not a difficult ride; indeed it’s quite pleasant – just up Foothill Expressway and whatnot. I stayed at the house for about two hoursish, taking a break, drinking some water, and evaluating the place for the third time. I felt more positive about it this time. When we’d first seen it, I’d been in an above-average mood, evidently, and had thought it quite smashing. The second time, mid last week I think, when we picked up the keys and received it formally, I was less excited… it seemed so much smaller then than I’d remembered, and darker, and suddenly I was not nearly so sure it was a good idea.

But, this third time I went in somewhat pessimistic and converted myself to somewhat optimistic. The room it seems I’m fated to isn’t great, and I fear may be a little noisy; it faces an apartment complex right behind, but nonetheless – the universe hates me – there’s a clear path to a major road, which has a lot of truck traffic…. but then again I always remember staying with Lee that summer and becoming completely used to the noise of trucks along Glenhuntly road – it was almost comforting after a while. So perhaps it’ll turn out fine, whether because it’s not too loud or I grow fond of it.

It’s not a big room – perhaps two thirds the size of my current one, and without the ensuite bathroom of course. :( And it’s more expensive, so, I’m really banking on other benefits – many of which are still fuzzy and intangible at this point, alas – to balance out the value equation. :/

Nonetheless it has room for a bed, shelves, a desk – all the fundamentals. I think I shall commandeer some portion of one of the living/dining/whatever-the-heck-they-are rooms for some of my crap, though, rather than squish it all into my bedroom.

It has no ceiling lights though. I hate American houses; they are so incredibly stupidly designed. This place is especially befuddling because the kitchen has something like a full dozen ceiling lights, in no real pattern, which just defies explanation. I hate places without ceiling lights.

I still have the however-many bright LEDs that I bought years back with the intent of lighting my room then, so… perhaps this would be an opportunity to actually make good on that intent. It’d mean buying a soldering iron, though, which I cannot possibly do with a straight face since these crazy Americans insist on calling them “sod ‘er” irons, which, well… call me juvenile, but it still makes me laugh as hard as it did when I first encountered it in the bad electronics eduction videos we watched at uni. :)

I can think of only llama and salmon as words with silent ‘l’s. No American has ever been able to justify losing it from solder. Presumably it’s an important pillar of Freedom, Justice and Democracy.

After that I rode back, via work to test my suspicion that it was more down hill than up going that direction – which turned out, perplexingly, to not appear to be the case, which defies logic since it was most definitely uphill getting there… Alas, 60km in one day, in the heat of a high-20’s afternoon, got the better of me and I ended up dehydrated and sick by midnight. That put me in bed or moping about wishing my head would implode already on Sunday… I finally recovered my energy and motivation, having drunk roughly 5 litres of water in 12 hours by my own measure, at around midnight… on Sunday… eight hours before work. Frickin’ awesome… it took nearly three hours to fall asleep.

*rolls eyes*

Clearly with proper preparation and sufficient care I can make the ride without undue difficulty, so it’s my hope that I’ll do so at least one day a week, at least while the weather still permits me to do so. It may be worth investing in some ridiculous fluorescent, pansy bike shorts and shirt, I suppose. Though I really do think they look so poncy, honestly.

Thank you, Mac OS X dictionary, yes I really did think they looked pony, that’s exactly right. *smacks forehead*

We’ll see. I’m also hoping I can telecommute one day or so a week, too… anything to minimise use of my car. Maybe I’ll just start sleeping under my desk. ;)

Lastly, since I’m about to turn into a pumpkin, I have no update on travel plans, other than to say I’m considering my options for exploring more of Oz – particularly W.A. and/or N.T. – and probably will be happily coerced into doing so if Bobo makes good her somewhat airy intention to save up and join me in such an adventure. Presumably because her continent-spanning romance with The Pot Tosser of Cairns has come to an unfortunate end, and she’s relying on me making it an annual thing to unintentionally hook her up with dashing, rich foreign men. :P

P.S. She’s still scared shitless of Jens, thanks to his little yellow-raincoat-in-a-thunderstorm routine. I will never in this lifetime be able to repay him for the joy he brought to my life with that. :)

The ride back was cool, because I finally got to use up all that gravitational potential energy, and it’s all downhill from there ’till you hit civilisation again. Though it was a bit cold, in just shorts and sleeveless shirt. And I became acutely aware, while keeping pace with the cars, how little there was protecting me from the rather rapidly moving bitumen.

So all in all I covered about 35km (of which 2km was walking, as noted). Reasonable. Still a bajillion miles short of my aim, to make it to the coast. Still, it didn’t take all that long this time… I seem to remember the first few rides I did, up into the western hills, taking three hours or more… this whole circuit, even with rests and the walking and whatnot, didn’t take more than two and a half. Probably less… my casual timing got screwed by the daylight savings change.

And that peeves me… I was promised an extra hour, but that was a lie… now it’s 1:13am, and I do indeed have work today, but I’m not tired yet. Grr.

My plan was to do the circuit – keep going south and come back into civilisation on Saratoga, and then follow that, basically, back home. But that plan went a bit pear-shaped when I ended up going the wrong way – since I couldn’t remember the route and my phone had no reception. I did discover that the maps on the iPhone are cached a little, but sadly I hadn’t happened to look far enough west before, so although I had a very low-zoom overview, it was too far out to have street names, making it pretty useless.

I ended up going down Stevens Canyon Road, but after a while I became certain I’d never been down here before. Plus I got to a t-intersection where the continuation had “No Through Road” posted, and the street that met had all it’s letterboxes on the main road. So I presumed both went nowhere. As it turns out, the street off – Redwood Gulch Road – actually goes through to highway 9, which I could have taken back. D’oh.

So instead I just retraced my steps all the way back to Stevens Creek Boulevard and home from there. All up it was about 32km, which isn’t half bad… I wanted to do at least 20km, and had forgotten exactly how far everything was… I want to work up to being able to do about 60km comfortably, which will give me the range and stamina to tackle the roads through the western hills all the way to the coast (but probably not back… could be a problem.. :) )

Unfortunately, despite stopping at the shop just before Stevens Creek Boulevard for a litre of Powerade/Gatorade, by the time I got home I was feeling a bit crap, and just continued deteriorating from there. I ended up lying on my bed, dozing, for most of the afternoon… last I recall it was still daylight, when I fell asleep. I was mostly fine by the morning, though.

So, at 11am on Saturday, which was way too early for any sane person to be awake let alone vertical and staggering, I headed off to the Sunnyvale Caltrain station to meet with everyone else. I thought it might take as long as an hour, depending my stamina and the traffic, but it took no more than half, so I got there around 11:30 and then had to kill time waiting for everyone else. Another guy, Jason Medeiros, also got there early, but being so early and without any particularly distinguishing features, neither of us presumed the other was there for the ride, so we blissfully ignored each other ’till everyone else arrived. :D

We piled onto the train and headed up to the city, picking up another one or two people at Mountain View. We arrived in the city with a group of ten, not too long after 1pm, and after a bit of a pause while people grabbed food and whatnot, we head off. Jason – different Jason, surname unknown at this point – led us, being the experienced rider. Only two people brought road bikes (as opposed to mountain bikes), of which he was one, plus he was kited out in all the bike gear. And he works at a bike shop. And races on velodromes. So we elected him leader. :D

Our vague plan had been to avoid the hills of San Francisco by riding around the coast along the Embarcadero, but he took us instead through the city on a route that was relatively flat. And when we reached the coast at the start of Crissy field, we appreciated that – the wind really howled westerly all along there, and would have been a real pain to ride into.

There we stopped yet again for another food break, for those who hadn’t grabbed something earlier – such as myself – before heading up to the bridge.

While there we paused a few times for photos, and I had Jason take a look at the gears on my bike. Since getting here they’ve been dodgy – they change sporadically of their own accord, and don’t line up at all in some cases. When I had the derailer fixed in the bike shop they adjusted them so that they were arguably better, but they still weren’t that great. Jason managed to improve them substantially, such that now I actually mostly expect the gears to change when I tell them to, that sort of thing.

They’ll need some fine tuning, which I now know how to do – plus they probably really need the cable refixed a bit tighter, as the adjustment knob thing doesn’t have much travel left.

Anyway, that made riding over the bridge much easier. I knew the bridge was quite long, but was still slightly surprised at the length. It wasn’t a hard ride at all though. And there are so many bicyclists going back and forth all the time – the western sidewalk is bikes only, and was consistently busy. We stopped of course – like good tourists – take photos, and just appreciate the view.

It’d be so awesome to bungy jump from the bridge, if only you could get a day where the wind was howling. :)

After the bridge our intrepid leader turned back as he had dinner arrangements, while the rest of us continued on down into Sausalito. At that point it looked to be too late to go to Muir Woods – we’d get there after the last bus left, meaning we’d have to ride back, like it or not. And it’s quite a distance, and apparently a reasonably challenging ride, so none of us were too excited at that prospect. Thus, we decided to merely check out Sausalito.

‘course, we didn’t realise it was only just down the hill from the bridge. A really fun ride – fast downhill – but quick. So then suddenly we were in Sausalito and had three hours to kill before the last ferry back to San Francisco.

So we wandered around, found some ice cream, checked out some random guy stacking rocks on the foreshore bit… kinda cool.

At one point I went off to the toilet, and I told one of the guys where I was going and that I’d be back shortly. ‘course, when I got back, everyone was gone. Bah.

So, after waiting fifteen or twenty minutes in case they returned, I shrugged and went off to check out the place. I just wandered north a bit, past one of the big marinas and whatnot. I ran into a couple of the other guys, and wandered back with them. We decided then to go for a ride further north, see what we could find.

And I was just peachy with that idea, and ready to go, when I realised that my back tire was dead flat. #@%@!#%!@#$%#@$@!!@!#

So there weren’t that idea, for me. The others eventually went off without me (with my blessing, of course, this time :P ) while I stayed back to try and find a way to pump up the tire. Nicolas lent me his puncture repair kit, and after a brief inspection I found the likely culprit – a little metal staple-like shard that was quite thin, sharp, and very roughly just the right length to have punctured the inner tube. Great.

I wandered through Sausalito, heading north, for ages, stopping occcasionally at various stores to ask if they had a bike pump, or knew where I might find a bike shop. No luck. Eventually I noticed that time was passing me by and I had to get back if I was to catch the ferry, so I turned around and headed back. And of course, on the way back walked right past a bike shop. So I was able to get a bike pump in the end – and a rather nice one, too.

On the ferry I pulled the back wheel off, then the tire of the rim, and then tried to find the puncture in the inner tube. No such luck… so, all I could do was hope that it was a slow leak, and reassembled the tire and blew it back up.

In San Francisco, it seemed to be slow enough that I could get back to the Caltrain station, and so we did. I blew it up a few extra times whenever we happened to stop – for whatever reason everyone absolutely had to check out every bloody shiny rock or interesting blade of grass along the Embarcadero – but had no real problems getting back.

Of course, it was by then somewhere in the vicinity of 8pm, and I was quite hungry, so I’d been asking the question of dinner since we hopped off the ferry. But everyone was just saying “oh, we’ll get something near the Caltrain”… right…. so of course once we got to the Caltrain station they all realised what I already knew, which was that there was nothing near the Caltrain station. In the end, thanks to Nicolas’ mapping app on his little Pocket PC thing, we found a relatively close McDonalds and had that. It was the best we could do, sadly. :/

And we caught the train back, which went fine, and from Sunnyvale Nicolas & I rode back to our respective homes – his being only a couple of blocks west of mine.

All in all it was a good day… I’m not sure how far we rode – about 16 or 17km for the city part, at a rough guess using Google Earth. Plus about 9 or 10km from Sunnyvale Caltrain station to my place… which I did twice, so, I actually rode more just getting to the train station than on our actual ride. Ha. :)

I think we should have gone for Muir Woods…. ‘course, if I’d still gotten a flat tire, that would have really sucked, but, who knows.

I’m hoping to have another go at getting to Muir Woods sometime soonish… the next few weekends I’m hoping to get a bit of paintballing happening, and maybe some gokarting… there was also talk of a trip up to Lake Tahoe, which would be really cool, but I haven’t seen anything concrete organised for that yet.

Also, as I mentioned previously, photos are available. Some came out surprisingly well, actually, although I didn’t take too many as my focus was on riding (and getting a bit of exercise), not touristing.

As noted, no leak could be found, and as far as I could tell the valve was fine. I still have the old tube, and it’s presently mostly inflated, so we’ll see if it goes down on it’s own. And/or I’ll dunk it in some water and search for a leak that way.

On the up side, I did watch how they removed the tire and whatnot, so in future I should be able to have a go at repairing it myself.

And thus I was able to ride to work again, which is great because it saves me a good hour each day.

Unfortunately, when I went to ride my bike Friday morning, I found that the front tire was completely flat. As in, making squishy fart noises and spread like a pancake. Figures.

And I was in a real hurry at the time, so it just seemed the perfect example of the universe conspiring against me.

I haven’t taken it back to the bike shop yet… probably will tomorrow. I don’t think it’s anything more than a simple puncture, so hopefully they can fix it on the spot and it’ll all be good again.

And then to top it off, I noticed as I was close to work that the left pedal seemed to be a bit funny… at a particular point in it’s rotation it seemed to be, I dunno, on an odd angle, or shifting, or something. When I stopped and looked, I discovered that it was indeed loose, having worked it’s way out visibly. It was still attached, and not about to fall off, but clearly not in a good state. Not wanting to damage it [further], I rode with only the right pedal all the way home, alternating between actual riding – with a very haphazard one-pedal technique – walking, and coasting along on one pedal (which probably isn’t good for that pedal either, but, it’s survived thus far).

Anyway, I was a bit peeved… I think it’s a fairly obvious connection that the movers that reassembled it after shipping didn’t tighten the pedal enough (or, tightened it too much..). I figured, given it didn’t seem all that bad – just a bit loose – that I could just tighten it. So, this morning when I wanted to go out for a bit of a ride, I pulled out my toolkit – which is the third or fourth time in the last two weeks, so it was definitely worth bringing it over – and set about to fix it.

As it turns out, I tightened it first by accident, when I intended to take it off and check the thread. But I quickly discovered by doing that that it was stuffed – it was slipping in the thread quite easily. Long story short, when I did pull it out, it pulled half the thread with it.

Now, I’d expected the pedal to have been stripped. But, after cleaning away the grease and crap, it proved to be in perfect condition. No, it was the arm that was stuffed, and it was stuffed – almost completely stripped. It has the appearance of some nice shiny steel alloy, but apparently looks are deceiving.

So, I left the pedal off and rode down to the Evolution Bike Shop, the nearest shop, just down Stevens Creek a bit. They guys there were pretty good – all young, all running about fixing & tuning bikes and doing their thing. I was dreading how much it would cost, and how much would need to be replaced, but the arm costs all of about $7 (wholesale; $12 to me) and it’s apparently quite trivial to replace, so the labour’s $10 or so.

While I was there though I had them check out the gears, explaining the problems I’d had, and they quickly noticed that the “hanger” – the small metal bracket that connects the derailer to the frame – was bent inwards. Possibly during shipping, but I’ve had the same sort of problem (albeit to a significantly lesser degree) prior to shipping. I guess shipping just made it worse.

Anyway, as it turns out, that is the real problem – they cannot get a replacement; none of their U.S. suppliers sell them. Whether that means I just need to find one that does, or that there aren’t any in the U.S., I’m not sure, but either way it’s a real pain. So, they’re going to try to gently bend it back a bit, enough that they can adjust the derailer back into position. If it breaks, however, then the only solution – other than finding a hanger that fits – is to buy a new frame. Ah, no thanks.

So… fun & games. On the upside, the whole thing’s going to cost all of $40 or whatever to repair, so it’s not a big deal. On the downside, the arm they had to order probably won’t arrive before Friday, which allowing for time to fit means I won’t be seeing my bike again for at least a week. :/ And that’s assuming their supplier has it in stock…

So I guess I might start looking a bit more seriously at getting a car.

So, the photos are here. They’re more of the same for the most part, from what I’ve previously taken from that area. The weather was a little clearer than my last set, but that’s about all.

I couldn’t convince Brett or Ashley to come with me. I don’t think they got up to much today – they did go shopping, although they didn’t buy much. Other than that, I think Brett’s added a few levels to some of his World of Warcraft characters, and Ashley…. well, he’s done more of whatever it is he does. Added some new exceptions to his latest program or somesuch.

And sorry, no traced map this time… it’d be a nightmare to try and follow the winding paths I took through the park. Suffice to say, I rode up to the reservoir via the normal route, and ended up popping out just east of the reservoir, on Prospect Road, which leads back up to Stelling road. It wasn’t an especially long ride – maybe 20km at the most – but as mentioned it was a relatively tough one. Still, it was a lot easier than last time… my time at the gym is definitely paying off, slowly.

So, I’ve always wondered in a way what would happen if one of the pedals did hit something immovable… like, say, a gutter. Well, today my curiosity was satisfied… riding back from work I clipped the gutter going up onto the footpath and went flying.

Falling off a bike hurts. A lot. Not as much as falling off a motorbike, granted, but enough. And it’s those two or three seconds of flight through the air that really give you far too much time to realise what’s about to happen… I think I actually felt pain before I even hit the ground. Which was concrete, too, so it softened my fall admirably.

So while the bike’s more or less okay – the seat was bent a bit and the pedal reflector was smashed off – I’m a little sore still. Despite landing on my side, I managed to bruise every single limb. And my hip. I’ve decided I carry far too many sharp objects in my wallet. Which, sadly, didn’t survive.. it burst wide open, dumping it’s contents – luckily – safely into my pocket. It’s a shame… sure, it was badgered, wolved and possible beared as well, but it was a good wallet. And while I have two others, they’re both in Australia. D’oh.

Ironically, my head was the only part of me that didn’t hit anything, and of course was the only part wearing a helmet. Fat lot of good those things do, obviously. ;)

So, I don’t think I’ll be visiting the gym tonight. Maybe tomorrow… the weather”s supposed to be pretty miserable anyway.

The weather was pretty atrocious this morning, but it cleared up enough for me to gamble on it. So I set out to head south on DeAnza, at least to the end of it. I ended up following on into the hills a little bit, since it seemed like a nice neighbourhood, but I didn’t get too far – it’s very hilly through there. Another time, perhaps.

I took a few photos, although – while pleasant – there wasn’t much photoworthy along the way. At a rough guess, going by Google Maps, it’s about a 20km round trip. It was a pretty cruisy ride down DeAnza, so it wasn’t too hard – it took less than two hours.

So, I rode back, and convinced Ashley to come on a ride with me. I wanted to get back up to the Rancho San Antonio area, and the Cement Factory, now that I had my camera. I also wanted to check out the reservoir Myke had mentioned in the area. Thus began our little afternoon diversion.

As always, a map:

The resulting photos are here.

I’m quite jealous… wish I had a golf cart.

Quite a long road, all in all. We didn’t know exactly where we were going, just that it was east… so, we went east. After the bazillions of car yards and a few shops, things went a bit down hill… rather crappy neighbourhood. Then we came across a sign promising downtown San Jose south, so, we turned south, not particularly wanting to continue even further into the dump. Of course, we should have known – this is America – the crappier it gets the closer you are to a city.

So, we worked our way back. There’s very few useful signs off the freeways, which we obviously can’t ride along, so it’s very hard to figure out where you are, where you’re going, or where anything else is. So, we went west until we couldn’t go any further. Then we go to the Lawrence Expressway, and couldn’t go any further. So we went north, and wound up back on Stevens Creek.

It wasn’t a particularly scenic ride, unless you’re really into crappy commercial areas and rundown suburbia. But at least now, that I’m back and can figure out where we went, I know how to get to San Jose proper.

For reference, A is the “HP Pavillion” – the ice hockey arena, where we were last Thursday. Just east of that, going off the map above, is downtown San Jose (not south as that evil sign promised). B is San Jose City College, and C is the Santa Clara Valley Medical Centre, which is the only hospital-like place I’ve seen here so far.

’twas a nice little way to kill an afternoon. We rode about 20km, all up.

Let’s start with a map.

So, my attempts to get up into the hills dashed, I backtracked down to what I assume is Monta Vista (going by the sign on the fire station), then headed north. I wound my way up to Rancho San Antonio, marked as A (more or less). It’s quite disturbing, really… an entire town that’s a retirement village. It does have some nice houses though, and is in a pretty spot, with some view over the valley and towards the bay. There’s a few benches in the area C from which there’s quite a view.

I then decided to head back, but got sidetracked along the way by the opportunity to climb the big fat hill that had previously blocked my view (D on the map). The view from there was fantastic – a full 180 degrees north to south, out across the valley.

It’s very odd that the mountains to the east of the valley are largely bare, bar only grass, while the ones west are quite wooded.

And so anyway, long story short I returned home, via a few other minor detours – I got completely lost in the area near the electrical substation (the grey square southwest of D). Eventually I found the train track which led me back to a road, and from there it was smooth sailing back home.

What the map doesn’t show is just how hilly the area is. It’s all over the place. It was quite a tough ride. I’ll look for another way into the mountains, but I’m having mixed feelings about the ride into them. :)