Bare Chested Birthday Bono Loses at Horse

Wow! What a title for a post eh? The logic behind the title:

1. It was super hot this Labor Day weekend and so I had my Fox jersey unzipped all the way. That makes me bare chested.

2. It was my birthday Monday (Labor Day), so that's easy.

3. My new Specialized sunglasses apparently make me look like Bono from U2.

4. I lost at HORSE on Monday. I'll explain this later in the post.


The first ride this weekend was on Saturday. A group of us went up San Juan and then took "new" San Juan to Viejo Tie. We jumped back on Old San Juan to finish the trip back to the cars.

A few interesting notes from the ride:

- I ran out of water and had to borrow some from John Colvin. I feel like an idiot every time I need help on the trail. I need to bring more water.

- Some jerk slammed his bike on mine at Cocktail Rock. You know who you are you Orange-Santa Cruz-Nomad-riding punk. Not sure what the deal with that guy was, but he wasn't cool at all.

- Cramped going up Old San Juan. Not enough water I guess.

- Slammed my pedal into my right shin right on the spot that had just healed from a crash on Coyote in Aliso. Man, it hurt _really_ bad.

- Cleared all lower switchbacks before Cocktail except for the last one. Well, what I mean is all switchbacks before you "cross over" to the other side of San Juan. Hard to explain, but it was awesome that I cleaned so many on the way up.

I will say the trip from Cocktail up new San Juan is 100x more enjoyable than the trip _down_ new San Juan. There were some fun challenging sections on the climb to Viejo Tie. I made some and missed others, but it's always fun to make stuff you didn't think you could make. I cleared two really high steps going to Viejo Tie that pleased me considerably.


The second ride of the weekend was in San Clemente. Like an idiot I thought that since the trail was only worth 20 something points on GeoLadders that our one lap on Monday morning would be super easy. With that in mind I didn't bring a lot of water. Big mistake.

The first lap took a lot longer than I thought it would. The trend this summer seems to be to do rides where I average 6-7mph. It was really hard to get cranking on the bike because of the constant turns and short steep climbs or descents. Frustrating at first, but more and more fun as the day went on.

The second lap was a good pace and allowed me to cross off the "official" San Clemente route from my GeoList. The first ride was some personal route where Troy led us around.

I'm not sure I'm going to be going back to the area a lot since it's not close and I prefer trails where I can get some momentum built up. But it might be a nice diversion if I get too tired of the Santa Ana's etc.

Riding over a bridge in San Clemente: