Originally the plan was to only spend Memorial Day weekend up here, but the weather was too darn nice to head back to the San Francisco fog. So I decided to stick around the whole week. A good portion of this week was spent in the saddle. Some where in the neighborhood of 10 hours…
The big bike ride was on Wednesday when I headed out on my own to do Luther Pass – Kingsbury Grade Loop. Apparently this typically doesn’t include Diamond Valley road, but I threw it in there for kicks. Well I felt really good for the first 3 hours of the ride. At that point I was at the base of Kingsbury Grade and had only about 12 miles to go to get back to Christopher’s house. It started off good, just a typical slow and steady climb. Right about 30 minutes into the climb I started to notice my heart rate peg to a steady 170-175 bpm. This is not good I tried to control it but couldn’t get it below 170. After a few minutes of this, I decide to take a breather to bring my HR back down to Earth.
The issue was I started to overheat and was running low on water. Kingsbury not like other passes out here, this road is completely exposed to the sun. The higher I climbed the hotter it got, by the time I was only 1000 feet from the top my watch said it was 92F. At this point I had only a few squirts of water left and I hit a wall. So it took a little longer to complete the climb. The whole climb took 80 minutes in total. I’m not going to make the record books with that one, but I made it none the less…
All in all the ride took me 4:38, where 3:57 of that was actually riding. Total distance was 58.04 miles with 4560′ of elevation. Not too shabby.
The real fun was on Saturday when Christopher and I went out to climb Monitor Pass. That climb was nice and long, but so worth it. That had to be one of best descents I have ridden ever. I clocked 50mph on my bike! Talk about a serious rush. Seeing the ground fly by you at that speed is a great way to get the adrenaline pumping. I’m pretty sure you could clearly hear us yelling “YaHooooooo!!!” a few passes over.
Actually going 110mph in Christopher’s Porsche the other night was rather thrilling as well. But I think the words coming out of my mouth were more along the lines of, “HOLY CRAP!!!”
Well back to the city tonight. I’m actually looking forward to getting back to the fog. This sunny and 80 degree weather is for the birds. 
Now playing: Arcade Fire – No Cars Go – Neon Bible
