Easter Ride
My natural and most stable state is to live week to week. Lately, this has been working in my favor. This strategy has the correct teeth to mesh with the gears of my current situation.
Life is sunny and fine and full here--a perfect respite from life in New England. I am very homesick, and become more so each day I spend here. It is just that the positive activities and people in my life right now deafen me to the homesick groans from the East. Life is good, indeed.
This past Sunday I rode with two fellow New Englanders, one of whom I met in a most random way. Nina and I met exactly 2 weeks earlier on Caltrain, on my way back from Santa Cruz. She got on the train somewhere near Palo Alto, sporting the instantly recognizable garb of the ALC6 participant: a orange logoed wind-breaker. At the end-of-the-line, San Francisco, I mentioned something about the AIDS Lifecycle to Dave and she perked up. Within a couple of seconds we were planning a ride together, so eager is the ALC6 participant for training opportunities.
Anyway, Sunday found me waiting at the predetermined spot, the Civic Center BART station. There I met Nina and Emilia (who was already on the train), and together we were whisked out of the city and into the East Bay.
I became acquainted with Emilia, and more so with Nina on the train ride out to Orinda. I love New Englanders, especially ones from Massachusetts. For the most part they are friendly, bookish, open, easy to talk to. Plus, I guess, we have somethings that are very visceral in
common, e.g. a slavish loyalty to Dunkin' Donuts...Nina found a great and initially easy route from Orinda to Martinez and back: 51.5 miles (total
from home and BART station) and 4,000ft of total climb. The ride was beautiful. The scenery was 
strangely European, or fairytale-esque: rolling green gumdrop hills with cows peppering the lower slopes and even, occasionally perched at their tops. I've said it before, I am always amazed with the natural beauty of this place. It is as verdant as Vermont (this time of year): totally unexpected by me.
We were in reservoir country in the beginning of the ride. Everywhere there were "protected watershed" signs hung on fences lining the roads. Down and down we when, for miles and miles. From looking at the cue sheet for this ride and seeing that we were doubling back, we would be climbing all this on the way back.
On the way into Crockett we were met with a great view of the Carquinez Bridge, a suspension bridge on which interstate 80 runs, the main artery from the Bay Area to Sacramento.
Climbing (on a bike) has become an interesting obsession of mine as of late. The physics of climbing are rather interesting. When riding a loop (which you almost always do), you have to come to terms with the downhills, for you know you will climb every foot on the way back. The question is, how quickly will you climb? If you do a total of 4,000ft climbing in 50 miles, that could be easy if it is spaced out over all those miles. But, as it was with this ride, it is usual crunched into, well, hills. This ride has almost ALL the climb in the last 20 miles, which made it especially challenging.So challenging, in fact, that I almost missed a dinner date I had with Jules, I was out there for so long! I actually left Nina and Emilia in the last 15 miles and rode as fast as I could to BART. Turns out, I did most of the climbing by myself...
