Postman Ride

From Blog Pictures

US Post Office Creed: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat of day nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"

With Vision Quest on the horizon, the rides have taken on a postman quality. Doesn't matter if it's raining, or hot, day, night ... all of it is up for grabs.

I was sort of hoping on Saturday morning that someone would make the call. The call that says "Ride is off. It's too wet." But the call never came and so Matt, Andrew, Mark and I ended up riding in the rain and mud.

The trip up Holy Jim wasn't too bad. Andrew and Matt ended up fixing my drive train problems and that was pretty awesome. We ran into a large group of hikers going to Saddleback and a couple girls in the back of the group made some comment about liking the view as we rode by. Too bad they weren't all that attractive.

The top of Holy Jim was not fun. It was cold and wet and almost everything I was wearing was soaking wet. I had brought another pair of dry gloves that I was saving for later in the ride, but opted for using them at the top of Holy Jim because my hands were too cold.

Riding over to Indian wasn't eventful and the descent was similar. Nothing really exciting.

Going back up Indian was ok. It was sunny in Corona and the ascent was kind of a disappointment because we went from dry and sunny to cold and wet. The bottom of Indian is always a bit of a struggle for me, but by the time I hit the upper part I start to feel good. No different on Saturday.

At the top of Indian Mark had gone back to Holy Jim and I ended up waiting for Matt and Andrew to finish the climb. It was raining at the top and it took a little bit of convincing, but I managed to persuade Matt and Andrew to do Trabuco with me.

The ride over to Trabuco was kind of miserable. Cold, wet and hard to see on every descent. No point using glasses because my warm breath and the mud made it very difficult to see.

We saw a few hikers out which was surprising. The trip down Trabuco was not the best. I had started to shiver and my front brake completely died about a quarter of the way down.

Finishing at the cars I realized that this was probably the muddiest and dirtiest I had ever been after a ride. It took about 6 hours to finish and it took me almost two hours to clean the bike after the ride. Ugh.

I'm happy though that my cold didn't get worse on the ride. Not sure that it added a lot to my fitness, but at least we rode a little more rather than a little less.

After the ride I was stoked to try a new Italian place near my house. I went in and got a small pizza for 8 bucks. It was _SO GOOD_. Also while I waited for the pizza, the hostess went into the back and brought out a free meatball for me while I waited. That was pretty awesome.