Stretching the knee before the North Gate downhill. Yeah, its a mountain bike on the road.
We'll all get over it.
Schweickert - (aka, Tree Legs)
As my wife so noted in her addition to my list of missives, last week was slammed.
We arrived at the church each night around 6:30 and typically were leaving around 9:30.
This took a huge chunk out of the schedule, and the cycling didn't happen.
The week prior was full of preparation for backpacking, and then the 4 days in the wilderness. All said and done, it's been nearly 2 weeks off the bike.
I did ride this morning with Schweickert, and our ride was worth the time spent. (Is it ever not?)
I started in Martinez at my house, and he in Walnut Creek at his. Rendezvous was Shell Ridge open space at the end of Marshall. We took off from the staging area around 7:45am and followed what I believe to be mostly the Briones to Mt. Diablo trail. I'm not good at following trail markers, or even looking at them for that matter. We just kept taking the trails that went up. What I do know is that we finally came out on South Gate Road, near Rock City. We rode the rest of the way to the Mt. Diablo Ranger Station on the road, and then descended on North Gate Road. We took a detour 2/3 of the way down along another nameless trail that follows North Gate Rd. along the West side of the road. (Ends within a mile of the entrance at the trail marker bulletin board.) That is a great downhill, and a bomb downhill for a 1/4 mile or so. Much more suited for my bike than ANYTHING else we rode today. We then followed the road straight to Noah's Bagels on Bancroft. From Noah's we split and each made our way home.
As you noticed in the picture, my knee was giving me problems all day, and actually caused a good deal of discomfort during the final few miles.
Schweickert got a kick out of my "Cycling Ballet".
Will survive.
