May 7th: The Mystery Ride Virtual Simulator

Flashblog author putting 2+2 together

Welcome to Flashblog. If it's morning, brew yourself a big cup of coffee. If it's evening, pour yourself a generous glass of wine and sit back for this extra length ride report, Flashblog style. Recently I've posted much about bikes, bike shops, trailers, bike parties and not so much about my actual riding. Originally, I got my inspiration for Flashblog writing ride reports, so this evening I return to my roots and attempt to bring you along on this ride, the ride I call the Mystery Ride.

This ride encompasses the elements I crave in a good ride: world class locale (San Francisco), varied terrain and visual transitions, good company, many people to observe along the way, gorgeous countryside scenery, historical artifacts, topographical and elemental challenges, unforseen surprises, and a day given over to the bike.

So let's begin at the beginning, in Alameda at our Team Alameda gathering place, where I found a good number of cyclists preparing to ride, but none of them takers on my ride, except for one.

8am, Kaiser steps. My stalwart companion on this adventure, Bruce Bothwell

some images will enlarge when clicked on

Check out Bruce's Team Alameda Shutterfly page for more original pics

Mystery #1: Why is this ride called the Mystery Ride? Team Alameda had a pizza and beer party back in January, and after everyone was sufficiently lubricated, some clever ride coordinators began taking advantage, er, enlisting us to lead rides. I had signed up for two already, and on this third round, I said, sure put me down. Zoraida, our ride coordinator, asked me "Where are you going Flash?" I replied in a hopsy-malty haze, "it's a mystery". I really didn't know yet.

As the ride weekend approached, I figured I should do something different to live up to the mystery promotion, so I conjured up a Marin Headlands ride, and wrote up a vague description for the TA website. Maybe too vague as it turned out, as Bruce was the only taker. Also had the bad timing of leading on the weekend of the Wine Country Century, a big favorite of the TA usual suspects.

But a Bruce in the hand is worth two or more in the bush, so to speak, and I was very pleased to have him along. Bruce and I have shared many bike adventures over the years, such as the Thanksgiving day Mt. Hamilton climb in '08 and '09, but none so epic as the 2008 Death Ride, where we got caught at the top of Ebbett's pass in a hail/ freezing rain storm. (Flashblog 2008, "Death Ride '08", has an in depth story about that) That was my Into The Valley of Death Ride, and I got to share it with the good Doctor. Plus, should a dental emergency arise, he is the man to have at your side.

Mystery #2: what of the hordes of Girl Scouts that were scheduled to walk across the GG bridge that morning? How would we ever get past 8,000 girls, their mothers, regular tourists, Blazing Saddles rental bikers, and the usual cadre of "Manx Missile" Wannabe road bikers? The emails came in early Sat. morning advising me to beware...Bah! Let the Girl Scouts beware!

We departed Kaiser steps a little after 8am, it was cloudy and breezy, and Bruce's thoughts turned to breakfast, which I think he skipped. He has the metabolism of a teenager, tall and thin as he is. He suggested Chinatown for some pastries. Sounded good to me, so along the Embarcadero we rode. I should add we had a tag along, an Alamedan named Kenny (?) whom I had met at a party for our exchange students last year. Kenny rode with us to the pastry shop, saying we were pretty fast for him. We were as Bruce was hungry and riding on a mission.

Oh, man, did it smell good in there! I scarfed a BBQ pork bun, as did Bruce and he got some other things to take along for lunch. Delicious. We said goodbye to Kenny and rode to Oakland West BART where we transited to SF Embarcadero station and detrained.

An obligatory BART photo. We spend a fair amount of time standing in BART trains, don't we, and BART just makes it so easy to get around. Notice his flash enhanced jersey that glows in light. Brilliant!

We popped out of BART onto Mission St, the Ferry terminal just ahead.

Tried to get both Bruce and Coit tower in the same image, not so easy when you are riding along, but by gosh, I did it. This is SF's Embarcadero district.

Riding along just before the SportsBasement

Fast forward through Fisherman's Wharf, Fort Mason, Aquatic Park, Marina Green and Crissy Field, and here we are near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. I actually love getting from there to here, so much to see.

Surfers catching mild waves in front of Fort Point

Surfer with Alcatraz Island

Bruce took this lovely picture that captures the whole mood.

Fort Point looking South

Have you ever seen such a lack of tourists on rental bikes? Awesome!

Looking at our goal in the distance, the top of Conzelman Road, elev. 900

Bruce up ahead, Girl Scouts on the East side. We were thrilled to find the west side open, so the whole Girl Scout problem became a non-issue. It was very windy crossing, and chilly, riding around the towers was like entering a howling wind tunnel.

Flash approaches the Sausalito one way tunnel. Mystery #3: would we make it to the other end of the tunnel before the cars on that side came at us? There is dude standing behind the signs at the tunnel entrance, his counterpart is at the other end of the tunnel. I suspect they had something to do with the altered light timing, damn them. Normally, the light is green for 5 minutes in one direction, then it is green for 5 in the other direction. It's one lane in there with two shoulders. Not bad at all on the downhill leg, uphill, that's something else.

Minute 1 inside the tunnel, and the cars are passing us, lots of time left.

Half way through. The cars have all passed us. Ominous sign, as the dudes at the ends of the tunnel seemed to have forgotten about us, and sure enough, about 50 yards before the end of the tunnel, cars started coming at us. This is why I made front and rear lights mandatory on this ride. Long story short, they didn't hit us and we emerged gratefully into the daylight of Bunker Road. I was breathing hard and my heartrate was pretty high. It's all uphill in there, plus on this day, we were fighting a headwind blowing down the tube. Wow, this is a unique experience, not for the weak of constitution.

Bunker Road just out of the tunnel.

We took a left onto McCullough Road, and this is the view looking towards Rodeo Beach

Same location as the last pic, looking up the road. Very few cars, lovely

The intersection of Conzelman and McCullough, with the new roundabout. There was a gale wind up here and we needed to take cover for a rest stop. The lower part of Conzelman is closed for a second round of road reconstruction, therefore the almost total lack of cars. A very special unexpected bonus, this lack of hoards of encapsulated tourists.

Former ammo bunker shields us from the winds. Nice view

Flash in his foxhole

Riding through the first of two tunnels at the top of the hill, this one leads to a third, hidden tunnel, in which we found mysterious and arcane artworks inside pitch black rooms.

Flooded gun pit. There used to be Iowa class battleship cannons up here. Bruce disappeared into the tunnel darkness, an it was only the dim reflection of his bike headlight that led me into a pitch black concrete room filled with cavepaintings. Mystery #4: who painted these and did they work in the dark or by candlelight?

mandala

Bruce and the Gatekeeper.

There were two rooms like this. Very strange and unexpected.

This photo is the opposite of that earlier photo from the bridge looking to this exact spot.

Top of Conzelman's new parking area

These flowers caught Bruce's eye and he got down low, way low, to take this excellent shot with GG bridge in the background.

An observation post high atop the hill. Note the rocks affixed to the sides of the bunker to camouflage the prying eyes from other prying eyes

Inside the observation post, upper level. Lower level was filled with fetid, dark water

The usual and more expected level of artwork in here

Bruce managed to ride up here, but the Volmer-esque super steepness of the access road had me pushing the Miyata, and even that was hard work. After we explored the fortifications, Bruce took off down a dirt path into the trees. He was on his Gunnar cyclocross bike, so this unexpected maneuver had me pondering whether to follow him or not. After some time, I decided what the hell and just as I was about to push off down the hill, here he came back up the hill. He had gone down to get this magnificent photo of the walking path down to the road. Looking at Rodeo beach in the distance. Bonita lighthouse to the far left outcropping, some of you will remember that outing of 2 years ago.

Check out the one way road below, a world class descent normally, but it was so freaking windy it was almost hazardous this day.

After we stowed out camera gear, we dropped into the dizzying descent to the valley. The gusting side winds were blowing me all over the road, so I didn't get to savor the new pavement, I was just trying to stay upright and not crash out on the upper section. It goes fast. We stopped midway down to step out onto the bluff to look south down upon a black sand beach. I didn't know this beach was even there. It can be accessed via trail from a newly built auto turnout. We continued down, and soon we reached our last feature on our tour, the only remaining Nike missile base in the United States. Talk about walking straight into the past and reliving Cold War angst. There is something chilling about this place, and it wasn't the wind.

Grabbing a bite to eat before the missile complex opened. Hard to see the stiff, cold wind in this photo, but it was there.

The gates opened, we were let in, and we set to locking our bikes to a chain link fence. Bruce had an easy to use cable lock, but I had my U lock, and in attempting to put it through the fence, I dropped it on the inside, a part flying off it as well. Doh!!! Then proceeded us trying to gingerly fish it out and get it back out through the fence. I was feeling inept for some reason, but finally we got it back together and I locked my bike to Bruce's. sheesh.

What the Ruskies feared most: a 40 kiloton nuke tipped, solid fueled, Mach 3 anti-aircraft missile, the Nike

Enlarge this pic to see what the buttons say. This was state of the art electronics in the early '60's.

As was this communcations board. We were told that a modern digital watch has more computing power than the entire base had back then. Mystery #5: How did they do it? How did they control these tools of Armeggedon with tubes, and knobs, and wires?

Fire control radar screen, lit by incandescent light bulbs no less.

Our zealous tour guide, who actually worked at a missile base like this one. He took inordinate pleasure telling us how many ways you could get shot for security breaches back then . Or worse, the dogs would rip your throat out when shooting you with bullets might harm the missiles. He told us they used to transport the nuke warheads in disguised milk trucks. Fascinating stuff, this glimpse into a tense and insane past many of us grew up in. The Cold War shaped us in ways hard to describe.

The Nikes are stored in a below ground garage of sorts. I never did figure out where they launched them from, but I assume from the lift once the bird is up at ground level.

This Ford Falcon perfectly sets the time in which all this took place. The concept behind the Nike was that it would fly out over the ocean to intercept the incoming Commie air force. It didn't need a direct hit, only come within a mile or so and detonate it's nuke. The shock wave would blow the wings off any plane within, well, quite a ways. One of these missiles packed 4 times the destruction of Hiroshima. Could you imagine the fallout over the Bay Area had they used one or more of these? Probably better to just get nuked and die quickly than to suffer horrible radiation sickness that would have ensued. Really, just insane to think about it, that we were just a hair trigger away from this being our reality.

Mystery #6: What prevented mankind from destroying the earth? MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. I guess it worked.

Suddenly, it was time to turn for home. We needed to get Bruce back to Alameda before 3pm, so we took advantage of the stiff tailwind to blow us back to the Sausalito Tunnel. Well, almost, it is rolling uphill, but the wind helped. Even returning at 30mph through the tunnel those damned dudes let the oncoming cars in early, so again, thank goodness we had lights on. Back on the Golden Gate, the sidewinds were even stronger than the morning, and when we slowed to turn around the first tower, the blast of wind nearly blew us off our bikes. We estimate it at 50mph.

Here's a photo of my glasses showing how some liquid, hopefully from me and not a tourist, dispersed across the lens.

We made our way back across the city via Bay St. to the Embarcadero, moving along at a good clip. Once we tromped down three flights of stairs with our bikes, ran to make the Fremont train, which I barely did, I found a seat and just closed my eyes. Man, I was tapped. The wind and chill had taken a lot of energy out of me. It felt so good just to sit there and listen to the train roll along beneath me. We exited Fruitvale at 3pm, I think Bruce was in a little trouble as he was supposed to make an Alameda party by 3:30 in clean condition. I hope he did. Upon arriving home, I finished my lunch sandwich, (seen being eaten in the photo at the missile base). Downed that with a cold beer. Took a hot shower. Fell asleep for two hours. Got up for an evening out which ended at Midnight. Man alive, what a full day!

Postscript: I didn't ride at all Sunday. After an intense week I just needed to veg, but that didn't even happen as all the to do items needed attending to. But even while doing those, I had the great afterglow of a day well spent on the bike. I hope you enjoyed this photo tour of the day and were able to relive it vicariously. If so, I did my job.

Ride On My Friends

Flash

The New is Old Again

I'm stoked that I finally figured out a way (reverse engineering at its finest) to put the old iconic Flashblog header on the new blog. It was pointed out to me that there is no link back to the original blog, so I installed that over on the right side under the ads that are going to make me rich, rich, rich. So please click on one of those so I can make one eighth of a cent---my best guesstimate, because, like, the checks are not rolling in from Google.

I got to bed late last night, having spent a gustatory day in Santa Rosa with our friend Gaylyn, who treated us to gourmet dining after a lazy day at the Russian River. I bagged the 7am start time today for the Team ride. Come to think of it, I bagged the 9am Team ride as well. Just wasn't ready yet, and besides, the sun doesn't come out until 10. Is this Flash's new banker's hours? Perhaps for the time being. It works. It works well.

As is the case on these solo rides, I had no firm destination in mind, other than Tunnel Road, because Tunnel has the most cyclists on it per mile, therefore the most potential for Flashblog fodder. However, it was in Montclair that the synergy started to hum. The sun was out, it was warming up, and as I passed Peet's and glanced over to see if anyone I knew was out front, a cyclist pulled away into the street and was soon alongside me, and glancing over, I saw it was Mike, a regular at Peet's. He's a young guy from Berkeley, rides a fixie or an Orbea, and is often sipping a java at Peet's. I guess today he wanted some company because we rode together all the way to Sibley, and along the way we picked up a guy in the yellow jersey, and a guy in a red jersey, and we had our own little gruppetto, although the other two just tagged along and didn't speak. Mike seemed to be cruising effortlessly in his Rock Racing outfit, while I had to reality check my heartrate because I knew I was over my recommended max. pulse of 120 (shaking head) prescribed by my Kaiser specialists. Considerably more than that, but I felt fine, and that is what I needed to go that pace, which I can't say was fast, but indeed faster than my usual, and fast enough to stay in visual contact with a faster group of six that passed us. Riding with Mike made my reference points all hazy, and I was, just riding.

I pulled into Sibley and noticed eight women standing in a circle chatting, and immediately got a hit off their jerseys which boldly stated "Girls with Alti-2-ude". I told them how cool I thought that name was and one of them suavely mentioned they thought of it after a long drinking session. I proclaimed them all aspiring Death Riders, then asked them where they were going, and they said the Pinehurst loop, so I rode with them. We went the long way, Skyline to Redwood. down and up the back of Pinehurst, then they turned toward Moraga for their homes in Walnut Creek, while I made my way back up Pinehurst. They were good, C pace, good form and group skills, yeah, and good climbers. All of them prime TA material. Perhaps in the adjacent parallel universe they are. So I did my ambassador thing and invited them to this blog, so maybe we will see them in the future.
I took a favorite Flashcut down to Montclair, pulled in for a coffee, black, and listened to the bluegrass duo at Peet's. The sun was warming, the vibe was mellow and a sense of an electrical pulse surged subliminally along the meridians of my body. I felt nostalgic for the moment even though I was living in it. There's the Oneness. Right there. That's why I cycle.

Ride on my friends.

Flash

My 4th Incarnation

My house smells like the pungent, smoky aroma of the Dalai Lama. Or maybe I should say, if I ever meet the Dalai Lama, I think this is what he would smell like. The music I am listening to is “Reise, Reise” by Rammstein, the seminal German sturm und drang metal band. Somewhere in the house, most likely in the incense room downstairs, is my 19 year old college student entertaining our new 16 year old exchange student Zhoa, from China, and soon enough there will be another student, Lorenze, and he IS from Germany. “Weeeee’re all living in Amerika, its Vunderbar!” is the next song up by the Germans, and it’s all too appropriate. This conflux of EurAsian smells and sounds is where I am at right now. “Weeeee’re all living in Amerika, Coca Cola, Wonderbra”. It’s a brave new world around here, the last year and a half kind of feeling like the force-blended French/German/Swedish/Italian/Chinese cultural mishmash depicted in Bladerunner. (Yes, I’m the Replicant element with my new high tech nano heart parts.) A large part of the angst is the undermining of not only the national economy, but my own personal economies, economies of new realities, grappling with quests unknown, economies of white-knuckled sailing around rocky, storm blown shoals. But at the same time, the ball and chain around my ankles has been loosed and I find myself sometimes effected not unlike a prisoner paroled after a long stretch in the can, standing outside the front gate of the prison, small suitcase in hand, just wondering what in the hell he is going to do now. No way is that freedom.

The heady mixture of German rock and Tibetan incense is not unlike where I am at with my cycling of late. I have the urge to go hard, tempered with the desire to slow down and meditate on all that transpires around me. I can go hard but I have been strongly advised not to. I have bent the rules lately, I have let the horses run the hillsides. I essentially have a new turbo pump and it works wonderfully, it wants me to put the pedal down. I love my heart more than the family dog, I absolutely admire what it has done for me, and I want to go easy on it. I want to take it out, gently massage it, and lay it down on a satiny pillow to rest peacefully. But at the same time, it has its own desires that make it difficult to tame. It remembers. It feeds on adrenaline and wants to taste the wind, it snarls and drools and chases cars. So like a blind man groping for stairs in a subway station, I try to find the place between the untamed ride and the lotus position.

There is a place that is between training and not-training, in which I mount my bike with no purpose or destination in mind other than to ride, and I let whatever happens unfold. I guess you could call it working out. Not training. Especially not compulsive, self-flagellating type of training of which I am guilty of in the past, and as well, encouraging others to do the same. Working out, in my mind, is done for its own sake, whereas training is done for some higher purpose, to meet some sort of goal or personal achievement, to attain a benchmark, to push the boundaries ever further out. I’ve done that and I’ve met my goals, crossed big events off my bucket list, which is so ironic as how my biggest bucket list event last year might have put me six feet under. Now it’s time to just workout.

It has taken me a long time to figure out that a good workout results in a feeling of potency. Potency is the feeling of being able to physically do what you want to do without undue suffering involved. Potency is a heady thing, to experience it is to literally be full of yourself to feel potential, optimism, self-assuredness. Potency also means ending the workout feeling energized instead of exhausted, ready to take on the rest of the day instead of having to crash horizontal on the nearest soft thing. So I have found the optimal workout ride for me to be 2-3 hours of pedal time. I can do this two days in a row and feel good. I really don’t need to do more than this anymore. My opponent will probably say that I’m saying this because I can’t do more anymore. The Big training for the Big Events thing. He can think what he wants to think.

Five years ago, after a ride up Mt. Diablo with my cycling buddy from the ‘80s, he startled me by saying that he thought any fitness beyond what you need is vanity fitness. I really had a hard time with this…I mean, how do you define “need”? I almost wrote a whole Flashblog about it, but I couldn’t because… I wanted to refute it but in the black cellar of my mind, locked away in a box was a voice saying “yeah, he’s right”. At the time I couldn’t accept that. I thought you can’t have enough fitness, you can’t ever be as good as you can be unless you keep training hard. Wait…maybe he was talking about bodybuilders? I didn’t get it. Now I do. His idea of vanity fitness is what I’ve come to see as compulsive training or, what some people are now calling exercise addiction. If you spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about all things cycling or how great you could be if only you could spend a few more hours training then you are probably in this place.

Having said that, I frequently call upon my past exploits and achievements performed in my Third Incarnation, to inform my current riding. I know what I can do and what I can’t do, because I’ve already done it. That’s a firm foundation of mental strength to draw upon. But then I've just described a conundrum, because you have to do the hard training to achieve your highest goal, to know exactly what you are capable of. Maybe what I am trying to describe is an evolution, a philosophy of riding. There are phases and incarnations for each of us, I see myself in my fourth.

It’s liberating to let go of forever wanting achieve More. To finally let go of personal records and bests, to let go of the compulsion to ride ever further and longer. I’m almost to the point of riding without a computer. Just needing to get over stats completely. It took a near heart attack for me to get this needed perspective. I could have died training over the winter for…. I don’t know what…most likely something I’ve already done before just to say I did it again. To think of all the things I might have missed.

That’s the current zeitgeist here in Flashland. Thanks for reading.

Flash

Athena....A Goddess of Poetry

As I have been wont to do recently, I eschewed the group ride this morning for the simple pleasure of sleeping in, leisurely enjoying my morning cup of coffee while getting updated on the Tour De France, and just waiting for the fog to burn off and the glorious sun to appear to warm my impending ride.

I set off with no goal in mind other than to use 4 hours on the bike, but Lake Merritt seemed a destination with merit, so off I rode, watching the battle between gray fog and blue sky playing out above me. Soon enough I found myself at the lake and passing under the 580 Autobahn, noticing that the Farmer's market was in full bloom there in that park in front of the Grand Lake Theater.

Now, normally I just whisk by or around the Roti Chicken truck, or the other various vendor vehicles unloading there, but today the captivating sound of Blues harmonica caught my attention and made me swerve to the curb, where I saw a duo playing the aforementioned harp and also an acoustic guitar. These guys were good---simple tunes but very well done, and having taken some blues guitar lessons way back in a previous life, I could appreciate it all the more. I took in the scene---many people walking about in the warm glorious sun, naked tots joyfully playing in a shallow fountain, and a wistful, somewhat Bohemian woman sitting on a concrete wall, a typewriter in front of her and a case behind her with a hand painted sign that simply stated " Poems for Sale."

I let that sink in. Now, Cathy, aka Flashette, is quite involved in poetry. This must be prime poetry season because not a day goes by without her pounding out a new poem, and it is all good, I mean, where does she get it all from? So I thought I'd mention that to the young woman on the wall, this mutual poetry jones that they must have in common, and I approached her as I approach many of the people in FlashWorld. I was enthralled by my interaction with her.

I felt a connection with her like she is the proverbial old soul trapped in a 21st century body. I told her things I don't normally tell strangers, but she did ask and I felt primed to tell. She then offered to write me a poem. I was taken aback, really. I've never had this offered to me before, and in a way, it seemed too personal at one level, but on the other hand I saw this as a gift, one of many gifts that have come my way lately. So I stepped aside while she pecked away at the vintage portable typewriter---I mean, when was the last time you heard one of these in operation? It was a reassuring sound, a sound from the past, a sound my mother used to make. A typewriter is the sound of commitment---you make errors, you live with them, there is no instant pixal erasure. As well, it's the sound of creativity, deliberately tapping out each letter, the space between each revealing the mind in thought. After a while, here is what the typewriter produced:

today I met

the world's strongest

man he

single handedly succeeded

in stopping

the river's liquid

song, the music

of his soul

gone, erased

why bother

to taste life

when you can

waste life crunching

through dry crispy shells

where joy was rumored to

be seen by eyes bound

tight by sleep.

but even the strong man

could not compete

with Love's plan

and one day

his heart screeched

and broke free

in a sweet flush

of holy heat

this strong man

took his sacred seat

on the throne

of Eternal Now.

Amen.

I love it. I was blown away by its resonant wave. I carefully folded the typewritten piece of paper and put it into my cell phone baggie, and all during my ride I thought about it and how I couldn't wait to get home to read it again. The ride itself took on a gossamer quality, lighter, ephemeral. The wind blew right through me.

athenagrace.wordpress.com

Ride on my friends,

Flash