Well, I’d met some great folks the previous night, and it was on to my next adventure–the Cinderella Classic.  This ride, an event which was started 32 years ago, attracts 2500 women each year.  It’s a woman only ride, so it has a very different feel to it than any other ride.  A lot of the riders wear costumes, and everyone has fun.   

From the start at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, the Cinderella Classic circles through town, out through the vineyards of Livermore, then north and along the base of beautiful Mt. Diablo to Danville, where it turns south and winds back to the Fairgrounds.

I had arranged to try to meet a few more BikeForums members on the ride.  I got off to an earlier start than they did, which was good for me in the long run.  The day started off with some cloud cover, which made for a nice cool start.  Me being from the Pacific Northwest, the coolness of the morning did not bother me one bit, but I could tell that many of my fellow riders were more than a little bothered by the chill!  I registered, got my number for my bicycle, and got ready to head out.

Off we went, many of us rather more stylishly than I. I was adequately dressed for the weather though, and that was the important thing. I didn’t linger long at the first rest stop, about 20 miles into the ride. For one thing, the queues at the port-a-loos were enormously long, and I knew that I could manage to make it to the next rest stop without danger. I stopped just long enough to admire some of the costumes as they zoomed by, and I also took a photo of a different sort of ride occurring just on the other side of the road from the rest stop:

If you didn’t feel like riding a bicycle that day, ride a horse instead!

The next rest stop was the big one. That’s where the cold lunch was being served, and it’s also where I arranged to stop just long enough to meet up with my friends who had not made it early enough to the ride start. The queues at the loos were small, too!

Among the many costumes was Wonder Woman:

It’s impossible to describe the sight of that many women, riding that many bicycles! My friends caught up to me at this rest stop, and we managed to get a quick photo in:

Then it was back to the ride, heading to the finish. I got back to the Fairgrounds just before 2.00 pm, where I took just a short break before heading out on the road to my next destination.

My Sachs and I were rather tired at the end, but I had more miles to go (although, in the car). I drove to Walnut Creek, where I met another BikeForums member, Siu Blue Wind. We had a great lunch of pizza, and I gave her some of my now world famous macadamia nut shortbread…

After a great, but all too short couple of hours of talking, it was time for me to hit the road again. Sadly, all the miles I would accumulate from here on out were homeward bound. It was late in the day, so I drove to Santa Rosa, where I had lived so many years ago. I found a motel, and checked in. Naturally, I was not about to leave the Sachs in the car, so into the room she came. I’d stocked up on hard cider when in San Jose, and I decided that I would have a cider to celebrate my successful ride. Apparently the cheerfulness got into Bittersweet, and she decided to climb on the furniture!

(Actually, I found it terribly amusing that the table lamp in the room was as tall as I was, and put the Sachs up there to show exactly how tall the lamp was.)

The next day I went exploring the back roads of Sonoma County. I got some lovely photos of Bennett Valley, which backs up onto Annadel State Park.

A view of a very typical California hillside–California Live Oaks, in a field of mixed grass, California Poppies, and Lupins.

Had I been lucky, there would have been either deer, or perhaps a coyote to be seen on the hillside, but not today. I visited a few old familiar places, then off again I went. I spotted this Osprey nest just as I turned off Highway 101 onto Highway 128.

Finally I was starting to see some wildlife, and interesting plants. This is a very bad photo of Camas.

I was now entering prime territory for Sequoias–which is why I stopped and rode along a paved forest road and took a photo showing the size of some of the smaller ‘Big Trees’.

My plan for the day was to get at least to the city of Eureka, and perhaps even to Crescent City. Crescent City is just on the border of California and Oregon, so I knew that if I made it that far, I would be able to get home the following day without having to stop overnight again.

Hurrah, I made it to the Pacific Ocean. Naturally, I stopped and went for a short ride!
Highway 1 generally follows the California coastline, but it does go back inland in certain sections. I took this photo of a Trillium in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, along with a photo of an unidentified yellow violet…

Highway 1 also goes through Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, which contains the largest free roaming herd of Roosevelt Elk in California…

I reached my destination of Crescent City, and called it a day…

I had travelled down to California to ride in a bicycle ride, so, naturally, I wanted to meet some of the members of my favourite cycling forum (www.bikeforums.net) .  Well, member msincredible arranged a very nice meet and greet for some of the Northern California BF members on the Friday evening before the ride.

I hope I can remember everyone, but I know msincredible will let me know if I missed anyone!  There’s x136, spiningeer, BlastRadius, msincredible, Taxi777 (and his wife) and sweetnsourbkr (and wife Lisa).
Everyone who wanted to was able to ride the Sachs.  I got to ride msincredible’s Birdy, and also BlastRadius’ FG.  I had a wonderful time, and thanks to all who showed up!

My mother is a volunteer at the local museum, known as The Tech.  I’d never been, in all the times I’ve visited my mother, because I just never had time.  This seemed like a good day to check it out.  I got to go through an 8.8 earthquake, got to try to be just like an astronaut with my rocket lifter chair, and all sorts of other fun and wondrous things.

And, most importantly, in keeping with one of my favourite interests, I got to design a bicycle!

I noticed that there was a nice collection of bicycles hanging from the rafters:

Oh! Look, a computer for me to design my own bike.

Naturally, the bike I designed was ‘killer’!

My mother’s stint was over at 1.00 pm, so we went home so I could have a nap. Later I was going to be having dinner with several other BikeForums members, who all wanted to meet me, and admire the Sachs.
We met at a lovely little Italian restaurant in Burlingame, and had a couple of lovely hours wining and dine. Thanks to all those members who came and said hi!

Thursday,  April 3rd, I headed down to Monterey Bay, California.  Yes, home of world famous aquariums, and Monarch butterflies, but I was there to meet someone world famous in a different way–one of the members of http://www.bikeforums.net/. Yes, I was there to meet Dr.Deltron, aka known as Mark.  He is a bicycle paint extraordinary, and I was there to not only go for a ride on my bicycle, but to see his painting ability in person.  It’s impossible to accurately convey how beautiful the paint is on this frame, but rest assured, it’s beautiful!

Here’s a close up of the frame:

One of the most unusual plants I have ever seen, this is a Wheel Tree:

I had to tear myself away and head up to San Ramon, California. That’s where I was meeting up once again with a member I’d already met on the Tuesday–bigbossman, aka John.
He was going to re-wrap the handlebars of my Sachs, and wound up also putting on new brake hoods, and new cables all around.

Partially done…

John enjoying himself working on the Sachs. I had a very important date on Saturday, so I needed to get the Sachs as gorgeous as possible!

So, Tuesday I wound up in San Jose, and stayed with my mum.  I was quite tired that day, and headed in for an early night.  The following day, though, I explored the neighbourhood.  Now, I’d grown up in this neighbourhood, and I even owned a bicycle when I lived there, but I don’t really remember doing much riding.  So, off I went.  There have been a lot of bicycle paths and trails added since I left almost 30 years ago, and my first exploration spot was a place where I’d spent many a summer day as a child–Lake Vasona.

There’s a bicycle path which runs approximately 12 miles, from the lake to an old high school, running along side the Los Gatos Creek the entire way.  Strangely, I saw no interesting birds or mammals, and I was rather disappointed.  I had hoped that there would at least be egrets along the creek.  Oh well…nevertheless, I got some nice photos:

 
Some California poppies and lupins–a childhood favourite!

Lovely new leaves of California Live Oak.

The first year we lived in San Jose, I thought I had died and gone to heaven…because it rained all the time!  I remember the passenger deck of this bridge being UNDERWATER due to the flooding that occured.

I did see some birds–the fields at the lake were covered with Coots!

I turned around at the far end of the trail and headed back. The opposite end of the trail took me into the town of Los Gatos, a place very fondly remembered by me. Not so fondly remembered by the other members of my family is this plant:

This innocent looking plant is Poison Oak, which causes contact blisters on those who are susceptible to it. I was fortunate in that I never reacted to it.

This is Miner’s lettuce. Apparently edible, although I never tried it.
I headed over to the Los Gatos Library last. Many, many happy days were spent here in this library. There were even copies of Punch to be found here! It also had an unusual oak in the parking lot–Quercus suber, the Cork Oak.

The rest of the day consisted of simply riding around my old neighbourhood, looking at the changes that had occurred over the last few decades.

On March 31, I headed down to California from Kent, WA.  My goal–to ride in an amazing 65 mile bicycle ride.  What was so amazing about this ride?  Well, the only riders were women!  That’s right, no men at all riding, just women.

I left bright and early, making my way down Interstate 5.  I got through Washington state by noon, crossing over the bridge between Washington and Oregon at exactly 12.00 pm.  It took me another several hours to get through Oregon, and I crossed into California around 5.00 pm.  My first photo of the trip is of Mount Shasta, still snow-covered.

Mount Shasta is a volcano, and so it has a tiny sister, known as Shastina.  That’s Shastina right in front of Mount Shasta.

I stopped for the evening in Redding, CA. The next morning I headed to Sacramento, which is the capitol of the state of California. I was to meet up with a couple of cycling friends.

My friend Bill with his chrome Schwinn Paramount, and me with my Sachs.

My other friend, John, on a borrowed Lemond:

Spotted a California Live Oak with these magnificent oak galls:

We went for a short ride along the American River Trail, and then it was time for me to head down to San Jose, where my mother lives. I used to ramble all along a small creek there, Ross Creek. It was never much of a creek, but the frogs loved it!

I still don’t know what plant this is, but it was too pretty to ignore. This is what the creek actually looks like:

More adventures tomorrow!

In my last post I mentioned that I had briefly experienced snow.  Well, this morning I looked out on my back garden and found this:

It’s the latest snow I remember in all my years of living here (more than 25 years), and the local forecasters are predicting more tonight!

I will be heading to California in a few days, and I think I will be shocked at the difference in temperature. I don’t think we have gotten over 60 degrees F here, and where I am going could reach into the 80s!

Still, I think I will enjoy myself.

I have been working quite diligently on whipping the back garden into shape.  So the last few days I have been out digging around whenever there has been a stray bit of sun.  We’ve had days where it’s poured rain all day until just about time for me to go to bed–then the sun comes out!

Today, though, was odd.  I went out, starting digging.  Suddenly, I noticed white things floating down from the sky.  Could it be petals falling from the plum tree?  No…was a neighbour burning something that was generating ash?  No…

 It was SNOW!

Five minutes later it was completely gone.  If I had not been outside at the time, I would have never known it had happened.

Some current photos of my progress.

A volunteer fruiting Cherry. I’ve never tasted the fruit, but the birds like it.

I’ve managed to uncover my beautiful volunteer cyclamen, and disposed of assorted evil blackberry vines and a volunteer holly (hollies are not native here in the US, and displace native trees and shrubs).

More work tomorrow…

I spotted the first bee of this year today!  She was resting in the sun, on my front door.

This was in the brief period we’ve had the past week where it has not been pouring rain! I’ve been making do with working on cleaning up my bicycles for the spring, and trying to get out and mow grass whenever it’s been dry for more than a few minutes.

I’ve been busily working on the garden at the back of the house still.  It’s looking considerably better than when I started, too!

Nevertheless, I’ve had to get in some riding.  It poured rain today, so no getting out (although I still went out in the rain and did some gardening–mad, eh?), but I did get in some nice rides the past few days.

I also found out today that I am to be a product tester for a new Brooks saddle!  That may not mean a lot to some of you, but it is big news in the cycling community.  I am thrilled and excited to be a part of the testing.

The new saddle, to be called the Imperial, differs from the standard saddles made by Brooks in that it has a ‘cut out’.  Cut outs are one way of avoiding that ‘numbness’ which happens for many cyclists.  I have wanted to have a Brooks on several of my bikes for a long time, but I much prefer saddles with a cut out.  So, here’s my chance!  Brooks saddles are made in England, by the way.

http://www.brooksengland.com/shop/

The new saddle is not in the catalogue yet…