Summer is here

Saturday: Went for a solo creeper in Truckee for 2 hours and 25 minutes.

The weather was gorgeous and warm.

Went out past Northstar and over Brockway. Down to Kings Beach and along to Tahoe City, and back highway 89 past Squaw to Truckee. Rode moderately hard (250W) from old town Truckee to top of Brockway, again from Kings Beach to Tahoe City, and then after stoping for coke and choco milk in Tahoe City I wound it up one last time to come back Hwy 89 at 25-31 MPH.

I flatted once just before the light near the tunnel on Hwy 89. So I went

to the bike shop in Truckee to get another tube and CO2. Chatted up the shop guys for a bit. They know the Chico clan (Creswell, Trowbridge, et al).

After I nice chat, I started my climb back up the hill to the cabin but then I flatted again on Bull Pine, went back to the shop for another tube and CO2, and finally finished the climb back up to the Oz Cabin. 220 average Watts.

It was a great day and we finished up with an awesome meal with Colleen, Steve, Little Sam, BC, Brian Bruckner, Lori, Big Sam, and McKinley on the back deck of Oz's cabin.

Sunday: Went for another solo creeper in Truckee for 2 hours and 55 minutes.

The weather was gorgeous again but a little windy.

The Sunday ride was to be a tour of local climbs with a plan to do climb over Brockway to Kings Beach, then turn around and do Brockway again back to Truckee and then head over to do Donner Summit.

I started out from the Oz cabin and immediately headed over to Skislope and climbed that. Then onto my planned Brockway summit. I was pushing near my 3 hour target by the time I finished the Brockway climbs so I skipped Donner Summit.

I'll have to save that for another day.

Another great ride. 200 watt average with climbing at a moderate 240-280 watts.

Again, we polished the day off with a great BBQ with the Bruckners and Ouzounian's at Oz's cabin. This time feasting on fajitas and margaritas.

Monday: Finally persuaded Oz off his mountain bike and onto the road with me for a targetted 3 hours and 30 minutes.

We discussed our ride plans as we drifted out of Northwoods to Truckee.

We both wanted to keep the ride as flat as possible with some long moderate tempo sessions. So we planned to hump it out to Tahoe City on Hwy 89, take a breather, hump it again along 89 through Sunnyside to Backwood and into the canyon, then hump it back to Tahoe City. Take another breather and hump it back 89 to Truckee.

We did just that.

Getting in 30 minutes on 89, then another 34 minutes into Backwood and back to Tahoe City, and finally 22 minutes coming back 89 to Truckee.

We were far short of 3.30 so we humped it

around Donner lake and back for another 26 minutes of tempo before limping back up to the cabin with tired legs.

All told it was 3 hours with 1 hour and 52 minutes of tempo at 250-280 watts and 210 average for the whole ride.

We made a couple of stops along the way to fill up on cokes and candy bars.

After a quick shower at Oz's it was load up and head um back to the homestead. Tulip and I sailed down the hill in our volvos. I with Spence and her with Phoebe. We met up at the Mickey-Ds in Colfax for some burgers and the kids enjoyed vanilla softserves while Tuli enjoyed one of her favorite Oreo mcFlurry and I enjoyed watching them scarf their snacks and begging for scraps.

We made home in time to sip a beer or two with Marty and Jill and let the kids play with the triplets.

Even though I'm still pretty sore from crashing at Madera, and have one scrape that refuses to heal up, it was a great weekend of riding and hanging with the Ouzounians and Bruckners and capping it off with the Yarboroughs. I'm getting over my crash and getting back to my old self. It was a very good weekend indeed.