Industry Figure Tom Chappell

Click on the pictures to see larger images:

(A 54-mile loop from Tom’s house to the Rose Bowl and back, via Tujunga Canyon, Angeles Crest, and La Tuna)

(The same ride, in another view that shows mile markers and elevation per mile)

For our fifth big ride, we returned to the wilds of Sunland — my turn not to have to get up early and drive, yahoo!

Ron was really trying to be here in time for us to get started by 7:00am, but he forgot his wallet, and remembered it soon enough to turn around and go back for it, so we didn’t get going until 7:20am. Still plenty early, with temperatures in the area predicted to go no higher than 79 degrees.

As we started the first hour’s steady climb along the wash, things settled into their old rhythms: Ron horribly faster than I on the uphills, for one thing. About 45 minutes into the ride, around mile 8, I was trooping along by myself, trying to go fast enough to get my heart rate higher, when I was suddenly passed by James Coburn, wearing a Merrill Lynch cycling jersey. Of course, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him, especially since he died five years ago, but the resemblance was uncanny, and the age wasn’t that far off, either. Actually he was probably only 10 or 15 years older than I am, but it’s still kind of striking to have a craggy white-haired guy pass you without apparent effort, still just settling into his ride.

I made it to the second wash crossing around mile 10 (starting the climb to the dam overlook) by 8:28am, and I pulled in to the dam overlook proper around mile 12 at 8:45am. Ron beat me by almost two minutes; he was much faster than I was on this ride, on average. We made it to the Angeles Crest peak, around mile 17, by 10:00am.

I was having a few problems shifting; the chain tended to jump gears on the rear wheel, and several times careened into the spokes as I tried to shift into my lowest gear, but in general everything went pretty smoothly, up to Angeles Crest, down to Memorial Park in La Cañada, over past Descanso Gardens to the Rose Bowl, victory lap!, and back we started for home, no real issues.

And hey, geez, there’s James Coburn again, around mile 37, passing us one more time on the return trip, from whatever much farther place he’d gone to, just so we’ll know that we’ve been good and passed. You’ve got to admire that! I’d have caught up with him and quizzed him on his route, except that he made a quick right-angle turn just after passing us and took off up a hill.

There was some sort of street fair going on in Montrose — oh, yeah, it was Sunday…the Farmer’s Market is on Sunday! No problem, though, we just detoured around it, and were soon back on Honolulu heading West, out of Montrose, when my rear wheel broke a spoke: twang! Wobble wobble wobble.

Luckily, we were just a mile from the Montrose Bike Shop, and the wheel was still ridable, so we just rode back to the bike shop and they were happy to do an emergency repair and get me on my way. The repair was a little dicey, though; the guy didn’t have the exact kind of spoke that my bike wheel takes — they’re all much less standard nowadays — and had to bend another kind of spoke to make it fit. “How far do you still have to go? 15 miles? Hm. Go easy on it,” he advised, as he was handing it back. It didn’t give me any further trouble, but I’ll have to do something about it this week.

We zipped over the La Tuna pass, which is fun, but a little bumpy and ill-maintained. I took it easy, as advised, and Ron racked up some more delicious tenths of miles per hour.

I had plotted out a new return route that avoided Sunland Blvd. (a real high-traffic main drag), going instead through the residential horse country in Shadow Hills. It looked good in the car when I preflighted it, but there was this one hill that looked steep, and if a hill looks steep in a car, it’s scary steep on a bike. Sure enough, it was definitely the hardest hill on the whole ride, and sitting proudly at mile 53 or so. But we surmounted it all right, and we both agreed that this was a much better route than taking the horrible Sunland Blvd.

In the end, I spent 5:15:15 saddle time to go 56.28 miles and do about 4,100 feet of climbing, 10.7 mph. I was sore after the ride, but I didn’t have to go sleep it off like after ride #2. It’s a little daunting to think of doing that same ride, plus another 48 miles and 850 feet of climbing for Solvang, but at least we’ve got the bulk of the climbing accounted for, and more than five months left to train.

By the end of the ride, I had more energy left on the hills than Ron, but he can always point to the fact that he had a faster average time than I did, so he had been doing more work, which means that I just have to be quiet, sad and beaten. He was much faster than I was on the uphills in the early part of the ride, and he was faster on the downhills as well, which doesn’t seem fair. The old Ron, come roaring back.

Ride:
 total ascent:   4,100 feet
     distance:    56.3 miles

Ron:
average speed:    11.1 mph (not counting breaks)

Tom:
  saddle time: 5:15:15     (not counting rests)
average speed:    10.7 mph (not counting rests)

“Geez, there goes James Coburn again!”