An interesting ride Saturday

Posted by Rachel

It's been almost two weeks since my first legit bike crash. I was going to make a post about it with a nice picture of my bloody leg, but decided against it. Luckily, other than scrapes and bruises, nothing was seriously injured and I only broke two bike parts, which cost a total of $35 to replace. Overall, a win for a fall that probably could've been worse. The worst outcome from the fall is probably constantly freaking out that it's going to happen again. I've been really really slow and super careful on downhills since (and if you ever rode with me before, you know I was already like that), which I really need to get over.

Anyway, this story was intended to be an interesting one about our ride Saturday. Sandi and I got on the BART at 7 am (after I saw her one block ahead of me looking very lost despite the fact that the BART station was right in front of her). Luckily, she managed to find the door just in time and we were off. We rode from the station ~6 miles to the start of the California Sprint Triathlon (with a pit stop at Peet's, which finally has coconut iced lattes!! which conveniently fit perfectly into my back water bottle cage), which was fellow blogger Brandon's first tri!

We were there in time to cheer for all 3 sports. Brandon did great and a lot of the athletes seemed really appreciative that we were out there cheering. We had to have Chen tone it down a little when she started yelling at the runners "you're on the best sport!", since I'm pretty sure the non-runners were shooting her some dirty looks :p By 9:00 am we were already sweating just standing there cheering, so we knew we had a long ride in front of us (not to mention the poor people who were running!).

After Brandon finished, Sandi and I headed out for our bike ride. We went east through Livermore, over part of the Altamont pass, and back through Livermore. At first, after we got through the town of Livermore, the roads were really awesome for biking: long, flat, and very little traffic. The only downside was that it was starting to get a little bit windy. Then we started heading up the pass- the climbing wasn't too bad but it was strange that there was NOBODY else around. No cars, no other cyclists. We crossed over 580 and that's when it got really windy. There were a bunch of wind farms (yay alternative energy) that were making a creepy whistling sound. I was riding really cautiously due to my fear of falling, so Sandi pulled ahead a little bit (it was curvy and hilly). At some point, we passed a lone house called the "Windy As$ Ranch" which had grills going and 4th of July decorations out, but still NO sign of life (very bizarre). Finally, we saw a few other cyclists, and then eventually a lone runner (where the hell did he come from??). The downhill was terrifying due to the wind and I took it REALLY slow, but finally it flattened out toward the bottom and my mind began to wander. I thought "wow, this kind of reminds me of our Bodega Bay run* minus the guns." Well I  got to the bottom a few min later where Sandi was waiting for me, and we made our left turn to continue our ride and heard a gun shot. We looked over just in time to see a man standing 5 feet from a cow and the cow fall over. Since I had all these horror movies in my head thanks to the seemingly out of place "party" ranch, I was worried that the man would subsequently try to shoot us, even if just out of boredom, so we started riding more quickly and got out of there. 10 or so miles later, we rode into Livermore and stopped and enjoyed lunch and a wine tasting. I obviously didn't want to try to carry any wine (what would be worse if I fell carrying wine- the shards of glass, or the fact that I wasted wine?), but Sandi bought a bottle and put it into her bike jersey. Three women from the triathlon were there and were very impressed/amused with Sandi's dedication to getting wine, so they took a picture of the wine in her jersey and we talked with them for a bit before heading out.

(*Bodega Bay run: We unintentionally found something we shouldn't have on a deserted trail run, which we suspect was a "farm" related to drug production. We encountered two people holding guns running in our direction. We got out of there as quickly as possible.)

Overall, it was a fun bike ride on a new route, and my first long-ish ride since my fall. Other notable training-related news: I hit 4000 yards in my swim this morning going strong the whole way (yay!), but then had a miserable track workout (boo). Also- where's the marathon, Malibu??