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| Mt. Hamilton... the highest point on our ride... and in the bay for that matter. |
🌉⛰🚂🌉🐳🌲🏖🌳🍇🏍🔭🏘⛰😈🐖🐻🐱🎓
The emoji guide for this ride...
One of my goals this year was to ride a
Super 600. A 600k ride with 10K meters of climbing. For this extra vert you get a 60 hour time limit compared to the normal time limit of 40 hours.
Day 1 (Fri): Started at 7 pm, summit-ed Tam at 9 pm (30 min after sunset)... but no one seemed to care that it was "closed" as there were at least a dozen cars at the summit enjoying the rare warm summer evening. The summit was quite warm with an inversion layer and no breeze. After cooling off on our way down, we turned on to ridgecrest where we encountered a ranger who had just locked the gate, but he told us to just ride around. After some more rolling hills and thoroughly enjoying the warm evening ride, we made it back to my van where we took a 3 hr snooze to recharge for day 2 of riding... 55 miles down 315 to go.
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| Sigman started the ride off by crashing on our only single track section... on "pipeline" trail on our way up Mt. Tam. |
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| Barely catching sunrise |
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| Pic taken... done! |
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| Cruising back across the GG bridge. |
Day 2 (Sat): Got to enjoy some nice quiet riding on these usually busy roads. Took the Great Ocean Road down past Golden Gate Park, Fort Funston, and rode adjacent to Hwy 1 through Pacifica, Moss Beach, Half Moon Bay, until we hit Tunitas Creek Rd., where we stopped at the bike hut for a quick break. By this time it was getting hot and by the time we hit Old La Honda and Alpine Rd it hit 106F. The ice cream stop at Big Basin was a well needed break before cruising down to Santa Cruz and Aptos on our way back up to Mt. Madonna. That was probably the toughest climb on our ride and we were happy to see the old tree at the top. Sigman could care less at that point... After the descent, we caught a nice tailwind and cruised over to Stefan's house where we got a nice meal, including home-made sourdough, a shower, and a nice bed. We were asleep by 11 pm. 241 miles ridden total, (186 mi on day 2) 129 miles left. Easy peasy...
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| Sunrise... light traffic on Hwy 1. |
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| Bike Hut! We got some nice fruit here... |
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| Nice light, bad pic.. |
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| Somewhere in Woodside... replenishing our salt. |
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| WATER!!! |
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| Big Basin HQ. This was a great stop... |
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| Sigman cooling off... |
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| Don't worry... the temps rose 3 more degrees... |
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| Lunch in Santa Cruz... or maybe Aptos... |
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| Nice and flat for a change... |
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| At the top of Mt. Madonna... |
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| The Mother Tree |
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| Cruising during sunset... |
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| Sunset selfie... |
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| So nice to have a shower, food, and fresh clothing at Stefan's |
Day 3 (Sun): Up at 4:30, and started riding just after 5 am as we knew the heat would be the issue again today. We did an OK job beating the heat up Mt. Hamilton as we summitted by 8 am... which happens to be when they open the door for the vending machines... but too bad we didn't have any cash. Alas. Thankfully we made it to the Junction Bar, which was closed, but they have a spigot on the side which was on. We made it to a Safeway in Livermore where we could fuel up on coconut water and sushi to fuel up for our last mountain... Mt. Diablo. We felt OK at this point, but we certainly weren't breaking any speed records. We arrived at the summit 20 min after they closed the store (no ice cream 😥), but this last summit was especially sweet as we knew we could rest our thighs, butts, arms, wrists, and the rest of our body soon. The Diablo descent was my favorite on this ride and we never got stuck behind a car! 20 more casual miles through urban sprawl and we soon arrived at Lafeyette BART station at 6:30 pm (48 hours after we started). Jeff rode home (he live in Moraga) while I took BART to Embarcadero and rode back to my van. By 8:30 pm, I was home... just in time to give a big stinky hug to my family. Definitely pushed my limits as a "weekend warrior" and took advantage of my kid-free weekend.
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| Sigman... begrudgingly putting on his bike shoes. |
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| Nice and cool in the morning. Quite refreshing compared to yesterday. |
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| Making our way up above San Jose |
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| Encountering some wildlife... |
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| and roadkill |
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| getting a view of our destination... Mt. Diablo in the distance. |
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| made it! |
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The road is quite windy, as they had to keep the grade gentle so horses and carts could take astronomical equipment up to the observatory.
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| Looking alive... |
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| Note... bring cash next time... |
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| taking our ham cam selfie... |
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| it takes a pic every min or so... and has a delay, so we couldn't pose for too long... |
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| at the Junction Bar. |
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| Safeway Sushi. And toothbrush. Essentials for rando rides. |
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| at the top of Diablo... at 4:20 pm... |
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| Sigman disappointed he couldn't get his ice cream. The only reason he rides up Diablo. |
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| after forcing Sigman to cheer up... |
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| He's starting to lose it... but he only had a 10 mi ride home. |
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| Grabbed some dinner... |
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| while waiting for BART |
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| mmmm |
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| The route was supposed to finish at UC Berkeley's Campanille, but the ferry building will have to do... |
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| Back at Crissy Field... |
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| And no one stole my van! |
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| Due to an accident blocking the bay bridge, I ended up taking the Golden Gate Bridge home... |
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| And had this waiting for me! |
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| Not too bad. Got almost 8 hours of sleep. |
Read more about the route here:
https://sfbaysr600k.wordpress.com/ We did modify the route a bit as this wasn't an "official" ACP route and we could. But we did ride most of the route, within the allotted time-limit and we had a blast.
That Mon... I was a bit tired.
There were many SR600 options to choose from:
- East Bay SR600 (Kitty's) - route - we were torn between this one and Yogy's. But there was construction on a few sections. And I really like the fact that Yogy's did all 3 of the "big" peaks in the SF Bay (Tam, Ham, Blo). Plus we weren't going to be able to do the Alt Ride this year, so getting all 3 in one ride is always a bonus.
- Sequoia Kings SR600 (Eric Larsen's) - route - This one was at the top of my list. But having just started a new job, I couldn't take any time off... with the drive time required for this ride, we had to save it for next year...
- Usal SR600 - route - another of Eric's routes...
- Sierra 600 - route - fun looking route, around Tahoe and some of the passes to the south. I wasn't as intrigued with this one compared to the SEKI 600 as I've done most of these roads. And riding around Tahoe isn't as awesome as it sounds... especially on a busy weekend.
- Andrea's SR600s - these are point to point, so these would require some legwork... and has lots of dirt. Max called it, "without a doubt the hardest course I've ever attempted"... which says a LOT. Not sure if it'll ever get done.
- NorCal Traverse - route - the old one...
- Arcata to Truckee - route - this is her new route... if ever attempted this is the route to go for.
- There's also a few that are farther out that would be fun.
- And other thoughts... not "official" routes
- My Foothills SR600 - I think there's be some rough road sections here. But mostly on desolate roads so you'd get some nice stretches of riding in.
- Roland's around the bay SR600 - I like the idea of this one as well.
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