64.5 – Hilly, Hot, and Heroic

 

64.5 – Hilly, Hot, and Heroic 

 

Ride: Saturday 8/19/2023

Distance: 64.5 Miles

Duration:  5 hours and 58 minutes

Elevation Gain: 2,592 feet

 

Saturday was just one of those rides that totally kick you in the pants and make you stop at some point in the ride and ask yourself why I am I doing this?  LOL!  Most likely because I am sadistic and a few sandwiches short of a picnic.  

 

We (David and I) decided to ride the outskirts last weekend and try to stay out of the flow of the traffic flow of Dublin, Pleasanton, and Livermore.  I say we, even though I want to blame it all on David for pushing back on my original planned mostly flat ride, at the end of the day I designed the route and put us on a collision course with lots of going up.  Going up is hard.  David reminded me that at the end of the day I could blame him but as I said I am the creator, and therefore it was I who tailor fitted our pain.  So, lets recap Saturday’s adventure.

 

As most rides from Casa de Burkle, we started out with a loop around the neighborhood.  I always like to get the first mile in around the house.  Plus, that way if I forgot anything, I could circle back home and grab it.  Plus, it is flat easy going.  So, we looped around one giant loop and then headed out to our old friend Manning to Highland.

 

Ever since the introduction of the detour around Manning on Highland, it is like we pulled the teeth out of the tiger.  Manning is good riding but not overly difficult because you do skirt the largest push upwards on Manning.  Don’t worry good readier, I have added plenty of other ups for us to take on.  

 

Saturday’s route had us take Highland past our old friend CCR.  It is hard bypassing my favorite place to ride around here, but I think it was for the greater good.  I think it is good to mix up the routes and keep them fresh as I can.  I don’t want us to the exact same set each time.  So, we were taking Highland until it ended at Camino Tassajara or CT as we will call it going forward because Camino Tassajara is misspelling just waiting to happen from me.  CT gives you to choices go left to Dublin or go right to Danville.  I decided let’s go left and go towards Dublin and that is what we did, and this is where my nightmares last week started. 

 

You see you take a left on CT and the only way to avoid going to Dublin and riding the crowded streets Dublin is to take a right on Windemere.   See going right here take you up.  It is not your everyday little up, rather it is a nice long up, that stretches on for a while.  It literally takes you up into San Ramon, which is a place I had never ridden too before.  So, I always try to drive our bike routes before we ride them.  When I drove this up, it terrified me.  I thought there would be no way I would ever make it to the top of this monster.  I think I drove it Thursday night and therefore, I had 48 hours to ruminate on it.  However, this is one road that I over hyped and was able to go right up it.  I mean it was slow, and steady, but up I went none the less.  I felt great when I got to the top and stopped at the San Ramon dog back for our first rest stop of the day.  I know that sounds weird having a rest stop at a dog park, but there were no dogs at said dog park.  There were water fountains and more importantly than that there were bathrooms, everything you could want in a rest stop.  

 

Issues started at the rest stop 1.  David lost one of his crowns.  I am not so sure what happens when David and I ride together but this is the second time in the last two years that he has lost a crown on one of our long hot rides.  It could be one of the items he is snacking on.  Could be like me he is grinding while riding.  Maybe it is just bad luck.  Either way it was not good.  

 

This is the part of the story where David shows you what a hero he is.  We were riding down Windemere after he lost his crown and after we had done our rest stop and as we are riding along and coming up on our turn onto East Branch Road, we passed a girl who was walking down the median.  She was probably about 14 years old, she was wearing pajamas, with no shoes on, and the look on her face told us that she wasn’t all there, that she had some type of handicap, not only that but she was walking alone.  

 

As we came up to the stop light on to turn on to East Branch, David asked what I was thinking, should we go back and try to help her?  So, that is what we did.  David is faster than I am on the bike, and he accelerated to the girl.  I road slight behind them as he tried to talk to her.  

 

At this point the girl started to run away from David and started to zig-zag the median.  It was one of the craziest things I ever saw on or off the bike.  David started to wave down traffic on his side of the road.  Oh, did I tell you he was now on the other side of the road, riding in the wrong direction.  I could see him a little head of me waving his arms getting cars to stop and not run over this confused and scared girl. 

 

I took David’s lead and started to slow down cars on my side of the road.  The cars listened to me, where they seemed to ignore David, as I saw him giving a tesla the bird.  Although one car with an old guy driving it passed me and was like that is a good way to get killed.  I don’t know if he was talking to me or the girl.  Either way that is what David and I were trying to do was make sure this girl didn’t get killed.  Finally, a cop car pulled up.  Officer 149 or that was the car number.  He started on my side of the road, and I just kept flagging down traffic, and then he moved around to the side where David was.  

 

He told David he knew this girl.  There had been a couple other calls about her.  He finally got the girl to stop and sit down.  This made us happy.  I u-turned down by the dog park and headed back to David and the cop.  At this point two other cars had shown up and they were going to wait there with the girl until the parents arrived. David and I went on about our ride.  I was proud of David going out of his way like that for someone he didn’t even know.  I must tell you I sort of thought of him as a hero after that.  It was very heroic in my opinion because not everyone would have done that.  I can’t honestly say if it was just me out there if I would have turned around.  It is hard to say what you would have done in those times.  Anyway, we road on after doing our civic duty. A little later the ride Officer 149 would pull past us, and he stopped to tell David that the situation had turned out OK and that the girl had gotten home.  He thanked us again for our help.

 

Now this is the part of the ride I would like to tell you went smooth as jazz, but honestly, this is the part of the ride that I got us lost and we had to ride through some bad roads with way too much traffic.  At this point we were on Bollinger Canyon, and I was convinced it would lead us to Crow Canyon.  I had just drove this the other day.  I think I missed a turn in there, well I know I did, but we road Bollinger passed Bishop Ranch and let me tell you that was awful riding. I mean just terrible.  The traffic was bumper to bumper.  There was no bike lane.  We had little to no room to move.  There was barely a sidewalk and we had to cross a couple of lanes of Traffic and Highway 680.  It was bad juju MA gumbo for sure.  All I kept saying is that this was awful and kept peddling forward.  We crossed San Ramon Valley Parkway which we were supposed to get on eventually, but we were supposed to get on it off Crow Canyon.  So, I made us ride past, and me being stubborn refused to turn back to it when David said let’s turn back and go to San Ramon Valley Parkway.  

 

I googled Crow Canyon, and we were a mile and a half from it.  So, I had us ride on, but when we went left on Crow Canyon, I realized I had never seen any of these sites before and we were getting ready to do some more climbing, so I called ahead to David and told him to stop and when I got up to him, I googled the route again and we should have turned on San Ramon Valley Parkway, so that crow tasted really good that I had to eat while standing on Crow Canyon road.  So, we turned around.  In hindsight those three miles probably helped get us to our goal, because the three miles we were supposed to get later at Ruby Hill wasn’t available to us because they are rich snobs with gated communities but that is an issue 20 miles up the road to deal with.  

 

We turned on San Ramon Valley and started to head for Dublin.  It was about time for stop number too, as I had almost drained my water at this point, so we choose to stop at the Lucky’s there.  I went in to get the water and David stayed out in the shade.  I have shoes that are better for store walking than he does.  

 

When I came out David asked me if everything looked ok with his bike.  I looked and at first, I was like ya it seems fine.  Then I looked again, and his front tire was flat. I guess better to have a flat in the shade at Lucky’s than on the road in the sun.  So, while David did his fix a flat routine, which he is very good and quick at.  I ate my PBJ and refilled my water.  We took a nice long rest at the Lucky’s.  I wasn’t in a huge hurry, because I knew what was ahead of us and I didn’t want to do it. 

 

Bernhell or Bernal as it is known to most people is a great road to ride if you are coming from Livermore to Pleasanton.  However, going the other way, it is hilly, and it is not nice.  Not even a little bit.  I have avoided Bernhell like the plague this year for this very reason.  When I was driving the route the other night it didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy like I can do this, instead it gave me the omg what are you doing.  Bernhell from Foothill is just one long slow up.  I got it in my head on Thursday it was going to be miserable, and I wasn’t going to make it up and that is just what happened.  Now, I want to blame David for this because he suggested Bernhell as part of the ride.  However, again, I planned the route, and more importantly, I got in my own head about it. So as we were plugging up the long and slow accent up the hill and I had to swerve around a parked truck who had a lot of crap in the back of it, I was pissed off, annoyed and feeling like I was never going to make it up and instead of being the little engine that could, I was the little engine that stopped and walked the rest of the way up.  I was pissed at myself.  As I walked my right hip hurt bad.   I could have just sat down right there and quit.  I also knew that there was another shorter steeper up at the end of this road and I handed even gotten there and I was already walking.  I was so mad out of nowhere I just stopped and screamed “FUCK” at the top of my lungs.  Then I kept walking.  When I got to a safe spot to get back on the bike, I did.  I waved David on because I was pissed and rationally, I was not going to speak to him until we got off Bernhell.  Somethings in my head just don’t make sense, do they?  

 

We road on and I took the last little up on Bernal like a champ.  It was nothing.  Really, I shouldn’t have stressed about it.  However, I was mad at myself for stopping and walking and even until right now I am not fully over it.  I could make it up that hill, I know I can.  I just must get out of my head and put in work.  My legs are strong like bull.  I just need to keep peddling and going.  

 

Bernal took us to East Vineyard, and we were supposed to take that to Ruby Hill but as I said those snobs have a gated community so, there was not riding in there for us.  So, we turned right and headed for our final planned stop at Sycamore Grove and one more potty break and one more refill of all my waters.  It was still cool in my mind when we were at Sycamore Grove, however, that would change as soon as we got going. The heat of the day finally started to set in, and we had over ten miles still to go.  

 

We pushed out Mines Road until it split with Del Valle.  I like to think of this as riding to see a mad angry god.  That god being the climb up Del Valle.  We had to stop as we approached the turn because my feet started killing me again and I had to loosen them up.  There is something about my left foot on hot days swelling up and hurting in the shoe, that I don’t like.  It was at this point that I asked David, why do we do this?  Knowing full well we do it because it is awesome and not everyone will do it.  Once we turned around, we were greeted by a nice wind in our face that kept us cool in the hot August sun.  

 

We turned off Mines and David took off down Tesla heading for Greenville.  I just stayed where I was pushing the peddles along.  Climbing Tesla to Vasco seemed almost impossible in the heat and after all the climbing we had done.  The worst part about it though was you don’t get much of a downhill on Tesla between Vasco and Greenville and when you are tired, hot, and ready to be done, you just want to start crying.  

 

There was one more push up Greenville.  However, before I could do that I had to stop and adjust my shoe again, I had gone from too tight to not tight enough and had to make a change.  Then I pushed up the Greenville hill and it honestly was probably the easiest climb of the day.  I might have just been mentally it was easy.  My legs were shot, but I know it was all downhill from this point and home was on the horizon.  On the way back down Grenville to home, I played a game I called Reel in the Beaverfish.  One because I was going to try and reel David in like a fish, he was quite far in front of me.  This was no easy task though.  I was beat.  However, I had gravity and just enough umph left, that I finally did catch up to him before we made the final turns for home.  We pulled into my driveway at 64.5 miles, I was satisfied with this, but the Beaver was not, and he went out for another 0.5 miles.  Good for him, but I was happy with what I had accomplished.  

 

It was a long hot day out there on Saturday.  I am hoping this Saturday brings us cooler weather.  I have also been told to avoid Bernhell by the Beav while I map out our ride because there is a car show, and it will be heavy traffic.  So, Bernhell is off the hook for this week, but I still have time to try to go back out there and take it down and I will try.  Even with all the drama we seemed to have out there we still an overall good ride and I am looking forward to getting out their next weekend!