Santa Rosa Cycling Club Ride 1

As I announced previously, today I will take a ride with the SRCC (http://srcc.memberlodge.com/). The morning didn’t look very promising as the fog now arrived also at Santa Rosa. Sky was grey and the temperatures down to around 8 degrees. Quite frisky compared to the heat wave before. Actually, I learned that the high temperatures were really quite unusual and in some areas even reached record highs.

The ride started from the Ragle Park in Sebastopol. I had two options either join the B level riders (Touring pace) or the C level ones (fast pace). As I wanted to enjoy the ride and the scenery and also chat a bit with the people, instead of gasping for air, I choose the B riders and didn’t regret it.So here we were two handfuls of people of very mixed ages. To take off for a 38 Mile ride of which I lost the direction slip which now makes it hard for me to retrace the track, as we followed some really small roads.

For sure I would have had no chance to find these super nice tracks we rode this morning, so “stick with the locals”. 

The first serious climb did take us up the Graton Rd. Yesterday I was fiddling around with setting my gear shifters and never reached really a setting where I was happy with the smoothness of the shifts in all positions. On this climb looking and hearing at my fellow riders I need to reconsider my standards and may be lower them a bit. For some folks the scratching and unexpected gear changes were really painful to watch.

So we passed through woods and hidden wineries.

Next we rode down Green Valley Rd and May’s canyon Rd. Steep and very bumpy roads, but absolutely great. As there are not much occasions for tacking pictures on group rides here a few images from Googe Maps.

This decent lead us to the Russian River, where I paused yesterday in Jenner at the coast and I wrote that Russian River would be another ride on my list and today it already happened. 

After chatting and stopping for coffee and snacks back we rode to Sebastopol. In a week the SRCC will have a 100 Mile resp. 100 Km challenge to which I have been cordially invited. Well need to think about that one. 

For the next days I need to do a little bit of planning. Saturday or Sunday I will join the Mission Cycling Club of San Francisco (http://missioncycling.org/) for a ride. Monday I will be driving to Reno, Nevada and Tuesday ride around Lake Tahoe and give it a try to become a Millionaire in the Casino. For short or for long I will also need to take a recovery day (why not at the Beach) not to over crank it. 

Radroute 2079141 - powered by Bikemap