Haleakala

Haleakala Ride

Iao Needle

Keawanaku Beach Hike

Rain

Looks like the chill of fall has given way to the rain of winter. It has been dark and cloudy all week, now, and I stopped riding to work entirely for the moment. Who knows when it’ll get nice again.

I am leaving work and will be commuting twice as far, now. Instead of a half hour, it’s going to be more like a full hour to get there. I won’t be able to do that every day; there must be a life besides work and biking somewhere!

Completed Spectrum

Finally, I made it all the way through Spectrum!

Well, kinda… I was getting cold at the meeting point, so I decided to start on my own and to let me get caught up. I had started to doubt they keep to the route, so it was to no surprise that I hadn’t seen them all the way to Canada. But I was pretty sure that I had taken the usual route:

YAF - Yet Another Flat

Guess what? On Saturday morning, of all days, I get hit by a tack on the bike lane. She was hiding on the smooth surface of Foothill while I was riding back to catch up (or down?) with Spectrum.

At first, it didn’t sound bad: she hit me while I was staring to the side, and all I heard was a repeated whacking, as if a leaf had been caught in the brakes. Then I saw the whitish grey think stare at me on each revolution of the wheel. Conscientiously, I slowed down (after making sure nobody was around) and look at her: big, fat, painted white, she must have jumped out of a piece of plywood on the bed of a truck.

Fall in Full Swing - New Clothes Needed!

Today we had an annual rite in this little humble abode: we turned on the furnace for the first time this year. It is officially cold!

Gone are the days of easy slumber and bare feet on the stone floors, gone are the lazy evenings at the pool, and gone are the bike rides in nothing but skinsuit. Now it’s time for new gear!

Slow Sunday

I am so embarrassed! I made it all the way to the end of Canada and back, passing the Stanford group twice – but I was tired all the way. Maybe it was yesterday’s chasing after the Spectrum ride, maybe I am turning sick – I barely made the 19 average on my way home! I even had to stop at Stanford to just eat something. I was so starved that I needed a kick of sorts.

Spectrum Again!!!

This time I joined them for real! I even waited for a good twenty minutes at Edith, with two guys that couldn’t have been frostier.

It was officially the first fall ride. In the sense that I had to don the longjohns, which made me quite unhappy. But I rode with them all the way to Alpine and Arastradero. I had decided not to push it and ride behind, which was quite a stupid idea, because all the catastrophes ended up having only two witnesses: me and my brakes.