Bike ride

This morning I arose at the crack of dawn (really! -- 6am) to go for a bike ride. I wanted to go up Alpine Road to the dirt road that connects to Page Mill. On the way, though, I saw a turnoff for Los Trancos Rd, and, having seen that they eventually meet up on a map somewhere or another, decided to go up it. Well, Los Trancos is not nearly as nice a climb as Alpine (see an earlier post), as it is steeper and has more traffic. Near the top I asked a guy running if I was getting near Alpine Rd. He said, well, you don't want old alpine road because that's dirt, so do X, Y, Z. I followed his instructions to the letter and the result was a wild ride down Joaquin Road. They put roads in really sick, sick places around here. If you don't believe me, believe this image from Google Earth. Alpine Road is in the foreground; Los Trancos is the squiggly stuff on the other side of the hill. Joaquin is in the left foreground.

Anyway, it took so long to get up there that I didn't do the dirt. Once again I underestimated the scale of things around here, and in particular the climb to get up there via Los Trancos was much more time-consuming that I remembered the climb up Alpine (not surprising considering the extra elevation gained). So I plan to try the Alpine-Page Mill loop some other morning this week. Haven't decided if it should be tomorow or if I should wait for Thursday.

I congratulated myself on eating a small breakfast (yogurt, granola, fruit) and riding instead of going to work and eating a big breakfast. I thought, hmm, I'm probably starting the day with a net caloric intake of zero (or even negative), rather than the 500 or so calories in eggs, canadian bacon, french toast, etc.

Of course, by the time I got to work I was starving (after all, I had eaten 3 hours ago and I had done a pretty good ride), and when I noticed that it was only 9:20 (cafe's close at 9:30), I congratulated myself on doing my ride so quickly that I still had time for breakfast. So I ended up eating eggs, canadian bacon, and french toast anyway!