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| GPC: Healdsburg–Jimtown, 10/29/08 |
This was entirely inadvertent: I must’ve hit a button funny as I was trying to down load this foto. But okay. Souvenir of a recent Wednesday Ride with the Grizzly Peak Cyclists to the Alexander Valley in Sonoma County. As a Yellow Jacket I was of course interested in the honey bee jersey.
I’ve been riding a lot with this group recently after not seeing them for a couple of years. It has helped to carpool with some locals from here: Carla (who takes Wednesdays off from her dental practice) and Paul (a fellow Post Office retiree), because many of the rides are in Marin. We also see Rich and occasionally Laurie, also Yellow Jackets. An interesting group, both tight-knit and fluid, many of them older citizens (in September we celebrated the eightieth birthday of one of the Pats) but remarkably durable and strong. Many of them go on bicycle vacations, in New Zealand, in the Pyrenees. Hard core cyclists. We’ve ridden out to Inverness and Point Reyes; to Novato and the Cheese Factory and back over Lucas Valley Rd.; from San Francisco over the Marin Headlands and out to Larkspur; over Mount Tam to Bolinas and then back over the ridge to Alpine Lake and Fairfax (this was the ride which nearly finished me!); from Healdsburg out to “Jimtown” (mostly flat, for the fall colors in the vineyards); most recently from Oakland up to Skyline Dr. and out Redwood Rd. to the golf course. I’ve also ridden a couple of times in the South Bay with the Fremont Freewheelers and my friend and comrade Valdez Hill: across the Dumbarton Bridge and out the bicycle trail to Lakeside Park (real nice café), and through the streets of Fremont to another coffee stop.
I’ve also managed several rides with the Oakland Yellow Jackets, my home club. In August the breast cancer ride: Bike Against the Odds, which we sponsor and host (I elected to ride an extra twenty miles in order to avoid the hill on Pinehurst!) In September a long, hot loop from Oakland, over Fairmont and Dublin Canyon to Calaveras (right at the limit of my endurance—fortunately we rode back on BART from Fremont). Diana and I missed the annual club overnight ride to Monterey when we travelled to Maine for my son’s wedding. In October a longish (but flat) run to the park at Point Pinole. All this must be pretty boring, but I wanted to give a brief report of my riding/training this fall. The point is I’m riding a lot and, even with the setbacks noted, I am stronger and fitter than last year and than I was in June. I’ve been working hard, and it seems to be paying off.
I should also add I’ve been serving as an unofficial/official fotografer on all these rides, have been getting some quite gratifying results (and a lot of compliments). Which brings this page full circle; maybe it was not sheer inadvertence which brought me here, because I certainly intend to use this space to post pictures. I’m starting to feel as if I know what I am doing with a camera, as if I have a real viewpoint and an actual style. Learning by doing. I’m trying things, becoming more confident, am finding a lot of enjoyment in it.
