A little catching up

Hey, y'all. I finally have a chance to fill you in with the goings on here in my neck of the woods. First I have been sidelined by a little patellar tendinitis for a week+. I have just resumed some riding. The issue seems to have developed with a rather hard ride day followed the next day with an easy but hilly hike. Last week we had three seasons in one week. All summer has been cool, then we had three days 100+ followed by a day of autumn like cool windy dry conditions. The vineyard managers are tearing their hair. Grapes are slow to ripen and the morning fog lingers so rot has been an issue. then a heat blast burned some. We have lost 10% of the crop and if rain comes even a little early a late ripening crop is at grave risk. This area is an amazing place for music and other festivities, quite a few are free. Every week there are a couple free music shows, movie nights on the town green, then add food, farm, arts, etc. Then of course for a ticket price you can quadruple the offerings, for all tastes too. My work schedule limits a great many, buy last week I went to a local tavern/music hall to see Cracker/Camper VanBeethoven (an indie group dating back a ways) They did a fantastic show I was about fifteen feet back and the place only holds about 200. Sometimes some loud RnR does a person good. The next night we drove to Napa to see a double bill with Chrissie Hynde and Lucinda Williams. It was in a just restored Art Deco movie house that holds 800 and is quite a beautiful sight on its own. A fine show. We drove home with the top down on a starry night through Napa County and home. It is a fine life! Its our anniversary and we celebrated with a helicopter tour up through the wine country we've gotten to know. It was interesting to see it from 500' up. The copter was a Raven II and has a cabin smaller than my VW so the views were great. Coming up on Lake Sonoma The county Board of Supervisors just approved a 250Million plan that will add 203 miles of bike paths to the existing 40+, along with 406 miles of bike lanes. The aim is to increase non-motorized travel from the current 3% to 5% and trips of less than five miles to non-motorized use to 10%. You see a lot of bikes here as I've said before. People here a typically oriented to community preservation;environmentally, economically,socially. Almost no one accepts a shopping bag for small retail purchases. Many people take bags, reused or other, to the grocery, lots of restaurants feature local produce, dairy and meats. I guess its obvious I like it here. Its been an amazing, but an occasionally trying year. Its been renewing to launch out someplace new. We do miss y'all though. Be well and enjoy your rides Howard

Hello readers, I like many of you have my post Tour life back in order. For now, maybe for good, I'll leave the race in the past. Sort of like a three week addiction, I can't go back. One brief comment on the weather, its been a cooler than normal summer, I started my 10 o'clock Monday regular ride with a base layer, arm warmers and "my secret weapon". You gotta be here! Last week I got to add another of the famous rides out here to my checklist. It may be hard to imagine but I have scarcely left Sonoma Cty, there are so many rides here. Of course it is four times larger than Catawba Cty my former home. King Ridge sits along the Pacific coast. It is sparsely populated mostly cattle ranches and Redwood groves. The climb up along the ridge has eleven miles of climbing totaling 1900' gain. An amazing sight at the top is a gold domed Buddhist temple in the near distance. It gleams in the cool clear coastal air in the midst of dark green tree tops. The descent from there is steep, it ought to have steps, not pavement! more climbing 'til finally the fast drop down through the cloud bank to the Pacific Coast Highway. 50 miles and 5000' feet of climbing. This is part of the namesake route in Levi's King Ridge Gran Fondo. Speaking of Levi, he was at the short track mtb race I've been doing, but I was held up at work and missed watching him race. Yes, he won by over a minute. I am seeing some previews of the 2011 bikes and parts, speaking of such, I am going to Interbike (industry trade show) this year. I haven't been in ages. It is grueling fun. Speaking of parts, what tires are you running this year and pressure? post some reply comments. Anybody out there? HH

Road Kill

Huh, The Possum became road kill or road rash at least. Amazing! When was the last time Lance "caught a pedal"? And did I read the 5km (or 8 whatever) chase with two teammates wore him out! I can think of many solo breakaways that last longer than that. At least we haven't had to deal with drug busts and such. I hope that continues. Too much happened in the first week for me to write about for now. So much to go what!? about. How about the weak Astana Team everyone wrote about? Who is that David Navarro who pounded the peloton to pieces for Contador two days in a row. Lately I have competed in some short track mountain bike races. One more tonight. I did a 89 mile ride with a 2.5 mile, steep climb and some headwinds later. It went pretty successful. Weather here is..... ya'll in NC don't want to know, sorry. I would love to see Levi do something courageous -besides finishing, that is courageous I know - He has two Euskatel riders that can knock him out of a possible third on GC. In the Pyrenees they will have throngs of orange wearing fans. Go Levi. I am amazed at the speeds these guys do. The chases before the end of sprint stages last for maybe an hour. At 30 miles per hour! I don't care what kind of draft you have that is killer. Think about what it feels like when you have to close a small gap at 23 or 25 mph. I hope your riding is going well. HH

Playing Possum

This is an audience participation entry. With the build-up to the Tour and all the coverage available to us in this electronic era how will the media frenzy effect you dear reader? Do you find yourself missing sleep watching the days stage or reading about it online in your "Cave of Tour Isolation" computer room? Or do you risk termination from that most important of duties - earning the coin to fund you wheel life or is it real life or is there a difference, because you are caught on cyclingnews.com when you're supposed to be drafting a document at said work? Are your family, spouse or significant other at peace with your upcoming Tour of Duty? How have you prepped them or are you just suddenly going to be missing in action as the lawn goes unmowed, garbage piles up, car goes unwashed? How about that important pass time, your training, will it suffer? We have been besieged with the center of the "Mobile Universe" He's been on the cover of "Mens Health" or some other such grocery store checkout decorations. Print ads such as Bontrager's remind us that "It is Good to be" Him, while Oakley has "Perfection Gets Personal. How about the tender "real men don't use emoticons" from The Shack? But what do you think, what has he done this year? crashes, illness, field finishes, a DNF. But then there is The Tour de Suisse, a second place GC thanks to a TT final stage. But then his TT was bested (11th) by - yeah I know - Cancellara, but also Maxime Monfort, Jacob Fugelsang, Wouter Pouls and Gustav Larrson. Not to disparage these fine athletes but were talkin' Lance here. Or is he just playing possum. He does the psych game better than anybody. Did he go just hard enough to get a podium place and not draw too much attention. He did a faster second half split. What do you think, and more importantly, how will your life fare during the month of July? Use the comment box below the post. Keep rollin' HH

new adventures

I think I've mentioned the parks (yes plural) across the street from our apartment. There is a city park with tennis courts, great playground, baseball, a good size lake and walking paths/trails. This links to a county park with a bigger lake, more nature stuff, then into a huge state park of 5000 acres w/30+ miles of hike/bike/equestrian trails. We had to get mountain bikes. I finally got mine a week ago. I have been into the park several time on my cyclocross bike, but a lot of the terrain is steep and rocky, not really CX territory. Annadel Park has a history in mountain biking as the site of the first(?) national championship mtb race, it was won by John Tomac, I believe. Today I ventured into some new areas. It's been 14 years since I had a mountainbike, so I have some skills to reacquaint myself with, but it was fun. The lake in the photo is Lake Ilsanjo 750', home is 165' and only 4 miles away. Lots of wildlife, deer and turkey are seen regularly but also bobcats and mountain lion, so far not seen! The area is volcanic in origin, all this area is - and makes good soil for grapes! It has been mined for Obsidian by ancient native americans and into the 1900's for cobblestone. So you guessed it, it is rocky but heavily wooded as well. Lots of exploring to do. panoramic shot of typical norcal hillside Mt. Hood in the distance, see previous blog 9/23/09 the lake is clear and good for fishing and swimming.

Still here!

Been a while, sorry to leave you without my occasional entertainments, but nothing has really jumped up in my mind to rant, brag or ruminate about. The Giro had me occupied for three weeks, especially since Universal Sports covered it more than once daily beginning at 6:30 AM that made it possible to see nearly everyday before work. If you didn't get to see it, it was the best stage racing I've seen. Lots of genuine drama as the lead changed numerous times and the usual quaint Italian back country scenery and gravel! roads. I venture to say that we are seeing a leveling of the playing field in some sense with regards to PEDs (performance enhancing drugs)Either few/none are doing them or all/most are doing just a little so as to stay undetected. There were no super dominating performances, it just looked like real racing. Same in CA. The ToC just didn't seem to catch my attention though, Versus TV didn't help with only one show a day at 2PM Pacific time. I don't see how they can continue with cycling if they don't think there is enough interest to rerun their expensive programing. But the HD was nice. Oh well we'll see what THE Tour brings. Weather here has been weird, still rain some, a sprinkle this AM. June rain just isn't right here. Thunder and lightning last week, also a rareity in Sonoma County. But spring is still here. Lots of wildflowers remain. Below are a few recent photos for your enjoyment. I hope your riding is going well. HH

Tour of CAtastrophe

Been busy lately, getting miles in pretty well, and I've done some new modest routes. Big ones yet to come.

The Tour has come through, ToC of course, I had planned to ride up to the small climb about 10K out with food, and beverage to watch the leaders (maybe a break!) grind over slow enough to see their faces. Then ride downtown to partake in the festivities, complete w/free valet bike parking. Funny how cold rain changed all that. We drove down with a friend, strolled through the festival, watched the Big Screen show the last 300 meters. You saw nothing less than I did, plus you were dry. Oh, I did see Coop.

We then walked down the course to the team bus area. the corner, a block out had several soigners trying to tend to riders. We stood and watched a grim looking bunch come in. The most famous was Mark Cavendish (dang, I didn't have the camera ready) also Popovich.

grim guy from Team Spidertech

team Bissell Pinarellos

second guy is Mike Friedman

one of the Jaques-Maynes bros

cool Mavic Carbone Ultimate wheel

The week before we saw BMC guys training numerous times and one Liquigas guy as well. For all the build up it was disappointing that TV coverage was non existent. I watched the days live coverage from the Giro broadcast in similar conditions, what gives with hi-tech USA? Don't let them fool you, its about egos and poor planning, not weather. It seems as long as advertisers are ponying up bucks the management doesn't care what goes on TV. They only hired ASO for prestige, plenty of US talent could get the job done. One moto camera guy was only to be there for the first hour, but when rain came the ASO guys weren't prepared for rain, so they the local guy had to stay out (with the wrong clothes) he got plenty of video tape. But production had no back up plan to get it from the field to production. I have a friend in cycle video production, who went through this with me. You can tell I'm rather let down after all the build up to the event. Now my rant continues to Versus.... I watched Tuesdays coverage rebroadcast, the schedule showed 9:30 PM. Well hockey was on, then the post game show dawdled on, I know its the playoffs and all, but they don't hesitate to cut cycling short. I just read the live broadcast earlier cut the last exciting mile for the damn PRE game show of "mullets on ice". Even Lance was pissed. I guess he'll have to be in all the sprints to guarantee final coverage. Cycling gets no respect

Oh well, lets go ride.