Once again, it was quite a day. I woke up tired and in my "Tom isn't very nice in the morning” mood. Perhaps today would be the day the bubble pops. Seeing the guy in the parking lot scraping the frost off his window didn’t make me feel any better. But then we got out on the road. The sun rose over the mountains in the East (as it usually does), and we were riding in a line of 20 cyclists going north. So the macadam held a string of cycling shadows. If only I could have taken out my camera and captured it in one of those one hand shots. But that's not a smart thing to do in a line of 20 cyclists.
It's been a little disappointing that it's been hard to stop and take pictures or just stand and look; the cycling groups just didn’t stop. If you did, you were dropped. Today was different, perhaps because yesterday was so hard. I was fortunate enough to ride with Sue, an ER nurse from Denver (who has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro), and the oldest member of our group, John, who is 69 and will be getting married in the Spring. Charlie is retired military and led us to a microbrewery for lunch. It was a real “stop and smell the roses” (or stop and go to the bathroom) group.
At any rate, after the shadow pace line, we passed Squaw Valley and slipped onto that black ribbon that cut through the green velvet forest alongside Spring run off cascading down from the Sierras. (Not a bad sentence, eh?). We then hugged the shore of Lake Tahoe. The sun flicked off the wind whipped waves of Tahoe reflecting a thousand diamonds in a setting of green forest and platinum capped mountains. Then there was the inevitable climb. The grade was 8%, eight miles long, we traveled at the blinding speed of 4 mph. How long did that take? Do the math. It got colder and colder as we went higher and higher. The tour company van carried our extra clothes and met us half way up so we could add more layers. The snow wasn’t up on those distant mountains, we were! And the snow was there with us. Pretty cool for June. (Can you find the bad pun?) The reward for that 8 mile climb was a !! 16 !! mile down hill. That was, if you’ll excuse the expression, “kick ass.” Exhilarating. Brake scorching. I kept it below that 35 mph speed limit.
We’re in Nevada. There are lots of casinos in Nevada. We had dinner at the buffet. It was really good.
Now, a kind request for my friends. The idea of a blog is to get some two way conversation going. There hasn’t been much activity in the comments section. I feel like I’m throwing that bottle out into the ocean. Clicking on that “comment” link or sending me e-mail (t.montville@yahoo.com) every couple or three days would help keep my seat on the saddle. (Thanks for those messages, Bob.)
1 comment:
Post a Comment