Industry Figure Tom Chappell

We finished the ride, and we both did great, and what’s more, no one was killed,
which is super neat.

Details and photos to come — right now I’m trying to catch up with being really, really tired, which I didn’t have time to do properly during the ride itself.

Click on the picture to see a larger image:

(A 100 km. loop from Tom’s house to Mount Wilson Observatory and back)

This morning, Ron Traver and I embarked on our most ambitious ride yet — a round-trip from my house in Sunland to the Mount Wilson Observatory at the summit of…Mount Wilson, you know, where the famous observatory is. It’s near Mount Disappointment, by the way, which has its own story.

Spectacular views, of course: it’s an observatory!

We left my house, went clockwise around the loop, southeast to Mt. Wilson, back to Angeles Crest, continued the rest of the loop, and returned the way we came: 35 miles, basically up, 27 miles, basically down. Yes, weirdly, we elected to take the less-steep leg up, rather than down.

We were both a little keyed up about it, because it’s without a doubt a big ride, but it turned out to be totally doable: it’s only 1,000 feet, or about 24%, more elevation than we did in our last Sunland ride. And, from another angle, this gets us even with the Solvang Century: Solvang is 5,000 feet of climbing, and this ride is 5,000 feet of climbing. Wow, 5,000 feet! Do that 6 times and you’re past Mount Everest!

“September 30, 2007: The Mile-High Club.”

Ooh, might have to work on that name a bit.