biking: June 2008 Archives

This past Sunday Timber and I finally did the Mount Hamilton road biking trip. It is something she has wanted to do for a long time, and we had been doing some pretty serious (for us) training to get ready for it. We trained because it is a 19 mile (mostly uphill), 5000 feet or so elevation gain bike ride. If you don't train for it you probably won't make it to the top. I was aiming to have us do it in about 3 hours. We moved the ride from Saturday to Sunday because it was going to be significantly cooler on Sunday. So we started out at 6 AM on Sunday, and an hour into the ride I got 2 flat tires. I knew after the first flat that the day was not going my way, but after the second flat I decided to not tempt fate and aborted my summit attempt. After I fixed my second flat I turned around and headed downhill to where I had parked my truck, and I told Timber to go on without me. My plan was to put my bike on the rack and then drive up the road to be her support crew. I did exactly that, and stopped in 3 spots along the way to make sure she had enough water, food, and motivation. I was also a great opportunity for me to document her feat with pictures. She did eventually make it to the top in 2 hours, 55 minutes. I was (and am) very proud of her for making it because it is not an easy ride. I will have to try it another time and hope that I have better luck.

On Monday Timber dropped me off at work so I could ride my bike home because her car was in the shop.  As the afternoon wore on I was feeling the urge to ride more than just the 5 miles home that I was slated to do after work.  So when the work day was over I went for a 20 mile loop near work, and then after that loop I rode the 5 miles home.  Later in the evening I had a soccer game with my co-ed team.  My team won that game 2-1 when the other team scored on themselves with about 30 seconds to go.  After the game I found out that we were actually playing in the playoffs, and since we won we had to hand around and play the winner of the game right after ours.  then I started to wonder why the other team scored on themselves.  :-)  I was not too happy about that since we were really low on subs, and I didn't know how we would handle playing another game with basically no subs.  So we hung out and watched the game and then we played the winning team.  We ended up winning that game, which apparently was the championship game, 3-1.  And as a result each person on my team gets a t-shirt.  So at least we ended up getting something for hanging out and playing an extra game.