Here are some professional photos of the event, featuring some of the key players.
Yes, the pictures are large, but these men are larger-than-life.
Note also that I do not have copyright to these photos, even though I have purchased them. I’m free to use them for my personal use, though, whatever that means.
In any [...]
The weekend started well. We avoided sliding into a ravine at the Gaviota pass, where half of the road was washed out, and had a delicious night-before dinner at Mattei’s Tavern. Wined and dined, sleek and satisfied, we were ready to ride 100 miles on our trusty bicycles.
The next morning, Ron and I [...]
T-minus 6 days:
Egad, look at that thing. Especially that Wacky, Wacky Foxen Canyon Road — that’s the 1,100-foot climb from mile 75 to mile 85. It just keeps getting steeper the higher you climb! It took me 75 minutes to climb it in 2002, my best performance ever: I was fatter, but younger. [...]
With one week to go before the Solvang Century, we wanted to get one last big training ride under our belts before entering the week-before training-embargo period (and even so, we were encroaching it, since we rode on a Saturday, and Solvang is the next Saturday).
Click on the picture to see a larger image:
(A 92-mile [...]
It’s two weeks until we have to ride 100 miles, with about 5,000 feet of accumulated climbing, at the Solvang Century. Our training rides had been thwarted, again and again, often by the weather, which has picked this year to rain and rain. This week’s forecast: rain, Thursday-Sunday.
Egads, and we’d only done 55 [...]
Ron and I have been trying to have a big mountain bike ride for weeks now, and it has just been one thing after another. Rain, injury, you name it. I almost had to cancel this one, because I was sick as could be on Friday and Saturday mornings, but always seemed to [...]
Now with five times more Martians! See it now!
After a nine-week hiatus, Ron and I hit the road again, reprising the ‘easy 50 miles‘ near Ron’s house.
We were supposed to get started by 10:00am, but when I went out to get my bike, it was honked, with a flat rear tire, the same tire that had gone flat on each of the last [...]
The plan:
I’m repeating the 100-kilometer long, 5,000-foot ascent Mt. Wilson ride, with new riding partners this time — Ron is temporarily out of the running, recovering from minor surgery, so I’m riding with a couple of other guys from Alcatel-Lucent, who I’ve never ridden with before.
Both are almost certainly younger than I am, and both [...]
What a ride! The climb up past the Big Tujunga Canyon Dam overlook was almost routine by now: no wondering if we can do it, just the thrill of having done it, again, and, by now, comparatively easily.
Tom at the Big Tujunga Canyon Dam overlook.
Ron at the Big Tujunga Canyon Dam overlook.
So it was with [...]