These last three months, from my last blog post until now, have been a hectic period dominated by my efforts to keep our organization from becoming road-kill during the economic crisis and punctuated by long trips to a series of generally disappointing climate change negotiations. One of the casualties of this period, due to my personal workload, has been my blog postings. (And for those of you reading this in Facebook,, which is linked into my blog at www.kimogoree.com, this posting originally was put up on the blog site.) Hopefully over this next week in the Coachella Valley, part of the Colorado Desert and south of the Mojave Desert, I’ll be able to catch up with some posts on some rides in September and October, travels to Bangkok, Bali, Barcelona and my time at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit.
Pam, Sam, Kai and I left NYC on Christmas morning and flew into LAX. What was supposed to be a fairly low stress jump across the US turned into a really awful experience, worthy of its own blog posting. However, before writing it up, I’m waiting to hear back from United Airlines to see if they are going to resolve the situation. In short, although I was flying on a Business Class ticket and using miles to upgrade to First Class, and traveling as a Global Services (top tier) traveler with United, the check-in counter staff insisted on charging me US$175 for my 25.5 pound bicycle and case. In my hundreds of thousands of miles and hundreds of flights with United flying with my bicycle, this was the first time that they have charged me. United has recognized that this was an error and noted in my file that I shouldn’t be charged for my lightweight bike bag but I am waiting for an email from the Supervisor of United Airlines at JFK to say that this has been resolved. If not, look to this space for a scathing post on how United Airlines has lost my business.
But, back to the holiday and the focus of this post… my ride into the San Jacinto mountains.
This is one of the classic climbs in the US and about as good a climb as you are going to find at the end of December in the United States. Almost anywhere else in the US where you climb more than a thousand meters, you are going to run into some pretty cold temperatures and probably snow and ice. But, here in the desert southwest, I was able to climb in shorts and without sleeves on 26 December, where the temps were 14-18 degrees. My kind of weather for cycling.
Here is the link to the ride http://connect.garmin.com/activity/21038853 on Garmin Connect. The profile is:
Nothing fancy about this climb, as it was flat out to the base of the mountain and then a two hour climb holding 200 watts and then a lovely technical descent back into Palm Springs.
Rocky, dry landscape with about an 8-10% grade climbing up the Palms to Pines Highway. Here is the look down from a vista point about half-way up the climb:
The boys are spending these days swimming in the multiple pools at the Westin Mission Hills Resort & Spa and Pam is soaking up sun. Tomorrow we are off to explore the Joshua Tree National Park, where I’ll probably get in a good ride. Pam’s brother and his wife, Dan and Andrea, are here with their two boys as well. So, it is a boy fest with all the cousins on the water slides. This morning Andrea and I got in a 8.5 km run at dawn http://connect.garmin.com/activity/21092590
More catch-up posts to come!
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