Up a mountain, down a beer!

Well I spent the week stretching with no running and no biking, just some quality time with my foam roller. The forecast for the weekend was for 90+ both days, Saturday certainly was and it was warm enough to wear only shorts and a short sleeve short at 7:30am this morning. I was feeling a bit ho hum, I had managed to finally go to bed in the wee hours and little ‘un had had a rough night resulting in a broken 4 hours sleep, but Robin’s comment about finding the time kicked my arse into gear. I had been thinking about a different ride during the week and decided to let me front wheel take me where it wanted to go. So instead of cutting through from the valley to the ocean on the first canyon turning I rode along the valley further and decided to take Kanan Road.

The first climb wasn’t so bad with a gain of about 300’ over a couple of miles, this resulted in a nice downhill and this was where the fun began. Opening it up on the downhill I go over a bridge and it’s where the two road surfaces meet that there is a bump or a pothole or something, I had my Gorilla tripod (eBay $2.50!) on my handlebars and you can see if you look at the video that at around 1:30 there’s a bump, well unknown to me I buckled my back wheel. It’s mile 21 on the MotionBased data. After the downhill there was of course the compulsory uphill! 1000’ of climbing over three miles. It was a nice steady pace and the views were stunning. At the top I braced myself for what I knew was the downhill to Pacific Coast Highway.

I opened up and we were off, seven miles of downhill dropping 1800’, it was when I reached about 30mph that I noticed the wobble, and 38mph it felt like my back wheel was coming off, I slowed down and finally came to a halt. I looked at the back wheel and placed my fingers on the spokes to spin it and immediately burnt them! A couple of minutes later it was cool enough to touch and I tried again, the wheel was completely off true, hitting one brake pad then the other finally coming to rest wedged against the first, it was bent in three places! Bugger! I reached inside my pack for my Alien, thinking I would just loosen the tension on the cables to accomodate the wobble, and realized I left it in my other pack on my mountain bike. Double bugger!! I flicked open the brake calipers and decided that all I could do was ride with no back brake! I gingerly made my way down the rest of the hill to the relative flat of PCH.

The sun was glinting on the ocean and despite PCH being a busy road, it is Highway 1, it’s plenty wide and you get a great view from Malibu beachfront all the way to Santa Monica pier. Here I picked up some company and played tag with another rider for 10 miles or so until I turned left into Topanga Canyon. An uneventful 10 miles later I was at the top and dropped back into the San Fernando Valley taking it easy on the downs and getting home after 4:23 saddle time, 52.78 miles and a little over 6500’ of climbing.

This afternoon we had some friends over for a BBQ and talked some more about the Vlog/WebTV thing and it's looking very positive. We had a great time with grilled chicken, ribs, some yummy salads; one of our friends is a personal chef so her food is always great and of course a beer…or two. This evening I am hitting up eBay for a new wheelset!

Here’s the Motion based data: