Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Road Biking: A Super “Terrible” Ride

Long Title: A ride in the beautiful wine country on a sunny winter day that covers a section of Terrible Two bicycling race on Superbowl Sunday. (Whew, that was a mouthful.)

Since we were already in the wine country for our friend’s birthday, we decided to do a bike ride in the area. Erik wanted to check out a section of Terrible Two, so I mapped a loop out that would take us over Trinity Grade. We ended up doing two slightly different rides.

My ride:

Erik’s ride:

Here is what happened.

Erik got a flat 10 miles before the end. We were climbing Trinity Road. I kept going. Once at the summit, it was really close to the end, so I still kept going. When I got to the car, I realized that I did not have the key. I stretched, stretched, and stretched. At that point, I knew Erik must have made a wrong turn. I wasn’t worried because we still had plenty of day light. There was very light traffic in the area, although the roads were not completed deserted either. He would make it back one way or another. So, I took a pleasant nap in a quiet alley way near our car like a homeless person.

We each had a hand-written (by me) note like this one below for directions. It was clear to me: L for left, R for right, and arrow for continue on. He mistook the arrow for a right turn and did not look back to check the road signs, so where he should have continued on Oakville Grade, he made a right on Dry Creek Rd. It kept going until it deadended somewhere in Napa. Oops.

Each of us did the ride on one water bottle. I guess it was harder on Erik since his ride was almost 20 miles longer.

Erik learned his lesson. Here is what he has to say about it. It pays to actually read the piece of paper versus looking at it seeing a road name then riding until you see that road name, turning, riding for a while looking at the paper again, stuffing the paper back into your shorts and riding. Then after a bit going Hmmmm, why isn’t there an Oakville on this here map that is pasted on the side of this gas station.

While waiting by the car, I had all the time to kill, so I took a self portrait.
cheesy self portrait at Oakville Cross Rd & CA-29

Here is our ride mapped out in mapmyride.com:
mapmyride