Messages from the Pale Blue Dot

Cycling in Harriman State Park

Yes, it is possible to find some really beautiful, low traffic and sufficiently hilly places to cycle just outside of New York City. Yesterday, the rain stopped, the skies cleared and I got in a lovely ride from the west side of the Hudson River at Haverstraw, up through Harriman State Park and back over Bear Mountain Bridge to Peakskill.

The MetroNorth Hudson line train from New York's Grand Central stops in Ossining, where the ferry goes across (reverse commute) to Haverstraw. At the end of the ride is the Peakskill station, where the 10:20 train makes a stop in Croton-Harmon and then runs non-stop to New York in a little more than forty minutes. So, this is one of those rides that is totally accessible from Manhattan and you can still be back in the office by noon.

1100 meters in vertical climbing over 42 km in less than two hours. Short, sharp and not loops of Central Park!

Bloomin Metric Bike Tour

The Bloomin Metric ride is one of the area's Spring cycling traditions. The event attracts both riders from the Connecticut/New York area, but since it is accessible by MetroNorth, there are a lot of cyclists who, like I did, take the train out and back from the city. There is no mass start, the route winds through some nice countryside mostly on lightly trafficked roads and the rest stops are well provisioned. It's not as fun as Glen Goldstein's North Fork or Montauk rides, which always have something sufficiently weird programmed in to make them special, but it is a solid day out of the city with a lot of cyclists and no hassles.

The weather was cool (15-17 degrees) and the rain held off until the last several blocks pedaling up First Avenue from Grand Central Station at the end of the afternoon. But, I was tired, beat down, worn out and just plain weary during today's ride. There is no complicated science needed to figure out why. Nine days ago I rode three huge mountain passes between 3500-4000 meters. Six days ago I rode up to the top of Mt. Tamalpais and then got on a plane and flew all night back to spend four days at the United Nations trapped in the Conference Room 4 and the smoke-filled Vienna Cafe in the basement. Then, on top of it all, went out to Central Park yesterday and raced a 10km. I worked until 11:00 pm last night, got up at 4:30 am this morning and took a train out to climb 2200 meters of hills over 103 km in just under four hours, averaging 144 bpm. Whew!

The best part of the day was that I ran into Paul Levine, the owner of Signature Cycles, who did my bike fit 27,000 km and no injuries ago. The Griffen that I ride fits me like a glove, perfectly aligned and ergometrically congruent with my riding style and the exact millimeters between knees, pedals, handlebars and seat. Paul's shops are, as it says in their advertisements and without exaggeration, the "world's premier custom bicycle studios." Paul's reputation, internationally, as the master of matching rider to machine, is second to no one.

I have had my eye on a new bike, made by Guru, called the Geneo. Carbon fiber, seamless design with nice lines.

I'm hoping to have Paul design my new bike, starting with my body measurements, which will be translated into the exact frame geometry by Guru, the manufacturer outside of Montreal.

So, I'm back home in Manhattan, slamming down a fruit smoothie and dreaming of a new bike after just having had a fairly miserable four hours in the saddle, so things aren't all that bad. But, it is time to take a day off and put my feet up tomorrow.

Climbing Mt. Tamalpais

I think it was Mark Twain who wrote that the coldest winter he ever remembered was a summer he spent in San Francisco. However, there are those remarkable days in The City when the fog has not crept in on cat's paws and everything is crisp, sunny and warm. Today was one of those days!

The meeting that I was in San Francisco for had evaporated and the other meeting with a software company had been scrapped when we decided to re-evaluate their platform for a new project, so my only work planned for the day was to meet with Chris, the Deputy Director of IISD Reporting Services at his home in Sausalito. Taking advantage of the free morning, I left the hotel at Mission and Third Street at dawn to pedal along the Embarcadero, through Fisherman's Wharf and across the Golden Gate Bridge, stopping off at the top of Mt. Tamalpais on my way to see Chris in Marin County.

Mt. Tamalpais rises almost 800 meters above San Francisco Bay, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge and east of the cold beaches along the Pacific Coast. It is the birthplace of mountain biking, but the lightly trafficked roads (on a Monday morning) that wind up through the eucalyptus and redwood trees are perfect for road biking.. if you like to climb. Most of the way up the mountain is 8-10% grade with some steeper spots near the top. I tried to throttle back, since I had planned for today's ride to be an easy spin after some tough rides last week, but for some reason I kept creeping up to 90% of max, hammering uphill at a furious pace. I'm not sure why, however I think that my body just appreciated the fact that these hills were not at 4,000 meters and there was enough oxygen to go around for everything to use.

This shot is looking down the south face of the mountain, past the switchbacks, with the tall buildings of San Franciso in the distance. San Francisco Bay is off to the left and you can see the tips of Tiburon along the left hand edge of the photo. To the right, above the tree line, is the entrance to the Bay, just outside the Golden Gate. The picture looks straight down on my route this morning, from San Francisco north to the top of Mt. Tam.

May in the Rockies is too unpredictable

On my way out of Vail today, I looked over at the wonderful bike path I had ridden up just two days before. It was totally impassable, covered with snow. Despite the short stretches where I had carried my bike through the drifts on Friday, I realized that I had really gotten in my ride on the best day possible. May is simply too unpredictable for cycling up this high in the mountains. After being here for two full days and two half days, I really only got in one good day of riding. Maybe I can head back in July or August to try this again.

Yesterday, the day after my long loop over the three mountain passes, it was snowy and cold. I put my feet up in front of the fire, ran on the treadmill in the Sheraton Mountain Vista rooftop gym and soaked in the outdoor hot tub overlooking the snow-dusted mountains. This morning, although it was sunny and bright, the temperature came close to breaking records for this time in May... it was -2 degrees and only about 4 degrees when I tried to ride up towards Vail Pass into a stiff wind. With frozen fingers, I retreated to Starbucks in Avon to thaw and throw back some caffeine. Cutting my losses, I rode some steep hills around Avon and packed for my trip to San Francisco. Tomorrow is another day and with luck it will be 17 degrees going across the Golden Gate and up into the mountains of Marin County.

The Leadville Loop

As soon as the morning warmed up to nine degrees at nine o'clock, I took off from Avon for a nine hour ride high in the Colorado Rockies. The weather had cleared just long enough yesterday to get in a very early-season loop around one of cycling's greatest set of mountain passes, climbing over Vail Pass, Fremont Pass and Tennessee Pass.

My derailleur had taken a knocking in the case on the trip from Canada and needed adjustment, so I pulled into Vail Bike Tech, where a mechanic named "Tooth" stopped it from skipping gears and popping out of my 27-tooth cog in the back (a very necessary gear during 1000 meter climbs.)

The owner of Vail Bike Tech said that the bike path from Vail to Copper Mountain had been plowed, all but several short sections. This is a shot of the trail, which is the old Highway 70 that runs parallel to the Interstate and is now closed to cars. This is the same stretch of road that I raced on in 1986, doing an uphill time trial as part of the local bike club's summer racing series. It is also the place where I fell later that summer, doing about 75 kph down the hill and ending my cycling and triathlon season. This is one of the greatest bike paths in the world and today it was empty, but for good reason as I would discover as I climbed further along the trail. Mid-May is just too early in the year to plan a trip up into the Rockies for cycling. Last year I was here three weeks later and those three weeks make all the difference.

 

The trail started in Avon just east of my hotel at 2282 meters and topped out on Vail Pass at 3235 meters. However, some of the portions of the path were pretty precarious. Luckily, I'd packed a small toolkit that included a sharp metal file that I used to clean the ice out of my cleats following the cycle-cross traverses of the snow and ice sections. Just past the pass, where the path usually goes in a tunnel under the Interstate, I had to carry my bike up a snowy cliff and cross the freeway to pick up the trail again on the other side. Why the State of Colorado had plowed more than thirty miles of the bike path and then left these sections was beyond me, but it sure made for an exciting trip.

In hindsight, I should have stopped in Copper Mountain to have some lunch, refill my water bottles and take a break. There were no services for the 35 km from there to Leadville and the climb from 2965 to the top of Fremont Pass at 3447 meters was really tough, riding into a 40 kph headwind. A couple of times I stopped to rest and felt light-headed, which isn't all that unexpected after four hours of climbing at that altitude. By the time I got to Leadville in the late afternoon the weather had turned threatening and there was snow falling in the distance and the temperature had dropped down to about 5 degrees. At a gas station outside of Leadville I filled my water bottles, had some coffee, candy bars and a Red Bull and felt marginally better. However, given the late hour, the deteriorating conditions and my tired legs, I pulled to the side of the road outside of town and hitched a ride part of the way towards Minturn. A cyclist who worked for the Department of Transportation picked me up and I threw my bike in the back of the pickup truck. He dropped me about 20 km down the road, from where I rode the final 35 km to Avon, mostly downhill. 

Today is an enforced day off the bike since that threatening weather yesterday afternoon turned into a spring storm, dropping a covering of snow over the entire region overnight. Hopefully, the blue skies and warming weather later today will melt the snow and tomorrow morning I'll get in a ride before flying off to San Francisco in the late afternoon. In the meantime, I'm going to hang out in Avon, feeding a caloric deficit from yesterday (3978 calories burned in the climbs) and put my feet up in front of the fireplace.

Not in Winnipeg Anymore

This is the view at 6:00 am from my hotel room in Avon, Colorado (about 10 km from Vail and at the base of the Beaver Creek Ski Resort.) Although the ski season is over, there are still patches of snow and it is still a bit cold up at 4,000 meters.

Two days ago, I was riding in Winnipeg. Flat, flat and more flat! The toughest climb was the 20 meter ascent over the railroad overpass.

However today, to paraphrase a movie title, THERE WILL BE HILLS.

The weather above 3000 meters during May in the Colorado Rockies can be a minute-to-minute event. My plan for the day is to ride east from Avon, starting at 2270 meters and heading up one of the world's finest bicycle routes over Vail pass (about 4,000 meters.) The bike route has been plowed but there is a lot of gravel and debris on the path and there may be some icy spots and lots of pooled water. I'm hoping to get to Copper Mountain and then ride through Wheeler Junction and south to Leadville, before heading back to Dowds Junction on Highway 24. Some of this depends on the weather but also on how well the road has been plowed. If there is no shoulder and too many big trucks past the Vail Pass, I'll head back to Avon and tackle the route from Vail up to Leadville tomorrow. However, with luck I'll be able to ride the entire Leadville Loop today.

The weather forecast is for a partly cloudy day, with temperatures starting out at 3 degrees, climbing to 16 (however it may not get above 10 at 4,000 meters.) I'm going to hold off starting this morning until around 9:00 am so that I'm not carrying too many clothes later in the day. Should be adventure road biking at its best!