The Birds and the Bees (and the Bikes)

Back in March, I wrote a series of posts looking at each leg of the Gold Rush Randonnee route, from the start in Davis to the turn around point in Davis Creek. Now that we are only 8 days from the start, I realize that I never finished looking at the rest of the route. [...]

[Read more →]

One of the members of the Randon mailing list, Tom (don’t know the last name) is riding the Gold Rush Randonnee next month, and he did a ride this past weekend from Susanville to Taylorville and back, and then from Susanville to Adin. That section is the part of the GRR route with most of [...]

[Read more →]

I read all the ride reports that I could find from the 2005 Gold Rush Randonnee, which was held at the end of July. I also talked with a few riders who completed that ride. All of them remember vividly the brutal heat. It was scorching hot, over 100F, in the Central Valley between Davis [...]

[Read more →]

The crank that came standard with my bike has always been trouble. On the last day of my first 1000 km brevet three years ago, after crossing the northern Cascades, I started to panic when the left crank arm started getting loose. It’s been a pain ever since, and on the 600k brevet last month [...]

[Read more →]

A couple of days ago I was riding along Washington County farmland towards the hills, for a training ride, when suddenly I was overwhelmed by a wonderful scent. Ripe strawberries. I looked to my left, and across the street was a field covered in strawberry plants, and I could see the bright red dots of [...]

[Read more →]

I carry a cell phone on my rides. But fairly often, I end up in areas where T-Mobile has no reception. The staffed control in Vernonia on our spring Birkie 200 brevet is one of them. You can call if you have ATT or Verizon, but not T-Mobile. Same story along the coast on the [...]

[Read more →]

I have not done as much night riding this year as I hoped. With three nights of riding coming up at the Gold Rush in just four weeks, I decided to ride one of my permanents, Hillsboro-Dallas 200k, starting at sunset. So on Saturday night, I was joined by two other riders, Ray and Bill, [...]

[Read more →]

Eating enough on a long ride (400k and above) has always been a problem for me. I get tired, and my brain gets less interested in food. Having small town convenience stores as control location does not work for me, there is very little that I find appealing in those places. Slightly better are controls [...]

[Read more →]

In my last post I touched briefly on the past month of riding, but there are a couple of things I forgot.
On the night loops at the Davis 24 hour, I noticed a young rider stopped with a flat tire. It was his second flat, and since he was not carrying a pump, he did [...]

[Read more →]

After much deliberation, I sent in the registration forms for the Gold Rush Randonnee this week. I am still not quite sure it is a good idea, but the past month I did a lot of long rides, and I am somewhat happy with how my training is going.

[Read more →]