A Thousand Potholes

Around 42 miles, somewhere in the 2100 calorie range.

I really do not recommend this route to anyone. This route was ridiculous! This route was EXTREEEME. This route deserves an energy drink named after it.

That long straight bar in the middle of the route is where I rode for a while but forgot to turn the GPS timer on. There’s a mile or two lost in there. My plan was to take Soquel/San Jose Road all the way down to the coast, but I was running very late and had almost gotten lost and had a low phone battery, so Pit Crew La drove up from Santa Cruz to meet me partway up the hill. I could have eventually added another ten or fifteen easy downhill miles to this route if I’d stayed on course, but oh well.

Though 5:00PM was late to begin such a long ride, Pit Crew La and Mira made sure I had a good start. I knew I’d spend at least some of the time riding at night; just the downhill part if I was lucky.

Along the Almaden Expressway I saw a new winner in the Trashiest Yard contest for San Jose. The anger I used to feel at seeing dumps like this has been slowly replaced by a creepy feeling of resignation. A heap of trash on a city street can’t just be a heap of trash to me any more. It’s become a reminder of socioeconomic injustice. A symptom. “Oh sure,” my mind whispers. “Go ahead. Clean it up today. It will simply reappear next week, when the same people who trashed it before trash it again.”

I still occasionally stop and pick up litter I pass in the street, but it’s more out of stubbornness than hope.

Out in the south foothills, where the “family compounds” and ranches are (often behind gates like the one in this picture), I saw this amazing plant specimen. Don’t know what it’s called. Anyone?

Right around here I also came across a duo of distance cyclers, and trailed just behind them in their draft for about half an hour. When I finally passed them I got a couple of very curious looks at the gadgetry mounted to my handlebars.

I dunno, maybe it does look strange. But there are definitely worse cases of festoonery out there. I’ve seen ’em in the bike forums!

I spent the next half hour or so listening to a biology lecture downloaded from ‘iTunes U’, and doggedly huffing up a twisty road. Then I arrived at a reservoir. The sun had dipped low on the hills, making that special dusk Magic Photograph Light, so I changed up the playlist to melancholy piano music, starting with ‘6 Banme No Eki’ from the Spirited Away soundtrack. Perfect for the scene.

The place was deserted. I was also surprised to discover that there weren’t heaps of litter around. I guess this is too far back in the hills to be The Cool Hangout that it appears to be.

No swimming or boating allowed… But the view is nice. That tiny island you see is actually a flotilla with several solar panels and some measuring instruments on it.

More of that Magic Hour sunlight. As I rode alongside the reservoir and the river that fed it, I kept the playlist on the piano music. This half hour was the part that made the whole journey worth it. (There’s been at least one so far in every bike trip, with the possible exception of the last one, where the Totally Worth It moment happened afterwards at the ice cream shop with The La.)

The last Magic Hour photo. After this, the sun was too low.

So. That body of water you see in the middle of the picture is the reservoir I just rode away from. A couple miles later the road forked and I turned right, and began ascending an extremely steep hill. Probably the steepest I’ve encountered. However, climbing it was not so bad, because it was almost completely deserted, and so I could ascend in zigs and zags, making a switchback motion. I’d only stick to the right shoulder when cars came by. About halfway up the hill, all the drivers passing me began to have comical, dumbfounded expressions. Like no one in the world could possibly ride a bike up this hill. Whatever, folks. It’s easy – just zig and zag!

You can see here the GPS data captured by all my zigging and zagging up that hill. When I got to the top of it (the junction at the middle-right of the above picture), it was nearing sunset. I phoned La and finished off my second bottle of water and a big wad of fresh green kale, then turned directly towards the mountain and began toiling up it. To amuse myself I listened to some creepy readings of Edgar Allan Poe. The Mask of the Red Death, and the one about the murderous alcoholic and his one-eyed cat. A small bat flew about five feet in front of me, over my headlight. At my next rest stop, 2/3 of the way up the mountain, the iPhone registered half empty.

A mile or so along, I stopped and ate a sandwich and called La again. Tried to get a picture of the moon with my old camera but it came out fuzzy.

The next picture was even worse. If I’d brought even a tiny tripod – something that would allow me to prop the camera in the middle of the road and take multiple exposures – I could have done a lot better. Oh well.

Beyond this point, the road became a closed road, part of the nature preserve that was off limits after sunset. A half mile further up and the preserve ended, with the borders marked by large emphatic signs along the shoulder. Forty yards beyond that, a bunch of confused college students had painted two messages side-by-side in huge red letters on a whitewash backdrop across the road: “FREE TIBET”, and “FUCK YOU”. Way to stay on-message, fellas.

So eventually I got to the top of the range. After a short break, I began to follow along it (that red line along the top of the Google Earth screen you saw above). What I quickly discovered (and what wasn’t obvious from the maps or even Google Earth) was that the road was not paved, but actually rocks and dirt. I spent every bone-jarring descent leaning on the brakes, and then had to weave all over the road to avoid potholes and large rocks on the way back up. The road also split and joined from many hiking trails, forcing me to stop every five minutes and use the satellite maps on the iPhone to find my way. And of course the signal drifted in and out. If I had the phone with GPS, this would have been completely unnecessary.

Eventually I found my way out of this tangle and reached the Loma Prieta outpost at the far peak, then turned south again. The road became paved, but was also in brutal condition. Easily the worst road I have ever ridden; worse than the dirt and rocks. Deep, gaping potholes cratered the road from edge to edge like dents on a golf ball, most half a foot deep, many deeper. Their edges were unforgivingly sharp, appearing as black crescents in the beam of my headlight. If I had a piece of chalk, I could not draw a straight line longer than ten feet in any orientation, anywhere on the road, without encountering a pothole. Oh and did I mention that this was all on a steep downhill grade? And that it was 1:00 in the morning?

I managed to avoid all but one of them, and luckily I was prepared for impact when I hit that one, but it still nearly knocked the wind out of me. If my saddlebags hadn’t been snapped shut I would have probably tossed water bottles and food wrappers all over the road.

Anyway, the road leveled out after a while and the potholes faded away. I then became worried that I’d missed a turn somewhere and was descending in the wrong direction, headed towards Highway 101 instead of Soquel and the coast. I stopped at a mailbox and entered the address that had been painted onto it into Google Maps. That dropped a marker in Mount Madonna Road, the road I didn’t want to be on. This was bad. Then the iPhone flashed a “20% battery” warning, which was worse.

I called La and tried to explain to her where I was headed. She said she’d look at her maps and call me back. I said I’d call her back in half an hour, then turned off the phone. The road was far too steep to ascend, so I continued down it. Presently I encountered a four-way intersection with a confusing sign posted on it. It was a street sign with two labels pointing in opposite directions. One read, “Loma Prieta Road”, the other “Loma Prieta Way”. I tried to suppress the feeling that I’d ridden into Wonderland, and biked around the area to get my bearings. Only a few yards along, Loma Prieta Road fanned out into FIVE ROADS. Two went around in a loop, two went downhill, and one went uphill and then dissolved into gravel and dirt. I turned on the iPhone and tried to call up a map, but got no signal. A cluster of mailboxes set back from the intersection was no help either – it was festooned with numbers, but no street names. And the boxes were all empty. Devoid even of junk mail.

Eventually I gave up and rode downhill again on the fourth branch of the intersection, directly away from the confusing street sign. Half a mile along I saw a real-estate signpost, with a box of flyers nailed to it. I drew out a flyer, and entered the address – 797-something Highland Lane – into Google Maps. “DID YOU MEAN HINDLAND LANE?” it asked me. “NO,” I responded. Then it dropped a map marker on Highland Lane, and hey whaddaya know, it was right next to Loma Prieta Way. Turns out I was on the right road after all. The confusing street sign half a mile back had been turned the wrong way, and the address painted on the mailbox several miles back had been the wrong address. Faaan-tastic.

I rode a bit farther and encountered Highland Way, just like I’d been expecting on the map. I was right on course. Excellent. I called La to tell her the good news, and got most of the way through my description when the signal dropped out and the call disconnected. So I shut off the phone to conserve battery, and rode on.

Eventually I found San Jose/Soquel Road and turned onto it. I had to stop and put on the sweater La gave me, since the coastal air was becoming evident. I coasted downhill for what seemed like an eternity. I got so bored with coasting, in fact, that I began to bellow songs out loud to myself as I descended. I got through “Women And Men”, “Yeh Yeh”, “New York City”, and half of “Birdhouse In Your Soul”, and then stopped to turn on my phone and call La. But the phone didn’t power up.

I cursed and ranted for a while, then began pedaling again. Not 30 seconds later, Pit Crew La came around a curve ahead of me and stopped! She is magical!!

We agreed that I was not allowed to go on treks like this again until I got my phone battery pack built, and unless I left much earlier in the day.

Then we went to the Saturn and ate burgers and salad! Whohoo!!

Things I learned on this trip:

• Sometimes it’s good to have calm, even beatless, music on the player. For rest stops and photo taking, and rides in quiet areas.
• When the phone goes dead it’s like losing a lifeline. On crazy adventures like these, I need that battery pack.
• Rides along unpopulated roads are superior to rides along busy ones — except when those roads are in piss-poor condition and look like the surface of Mercury. Something you just can’t tell from even the most accurate satellite photo.
• The Garmin Forerunner has a damn good battery life. It lasted over eight hours on this ride. I shouldn’t even bother pausing the timer on it. (And that way I won’t mess up and forget to restart it.)
• GPS on the iPhone is not just a good thing for trips like these, it’s essential. R.A.M. better come out with their 3G style mount soon.
• No matter how bright your light is or how tall you appear on your bike, your fear of mountain lions will make you crane your neck at every snapping branch.

Playlist:

Metropole	5 of 15	5:31	In The Nursery	Asphalt	8/3/08 4:10 PM
Castlevania – Belmont’s Revenge (GB) – Ripe Seedes	22 of 35	2:29	Konami Kukeiha Club	Akumajo Dracula Best 2	8/3/08 4:35 PM
Castlevania – Belmont’s Revenge (GB) – Praying Hands	24 of 35	3:12	Konami Kukeiha Club	Akumajo Dracula Best 2	8/3/08 4:38 PM
Thread-Dead (was 8:41)	2	6:51	Pro-Tech	Cathedrals In Orbit Tweaked	8/3/08 4:45 PM
One of Us	11 of 17	5:01	Niko	Fixed Techie Mix I	8/3/08 4:50 PM
Peace on Earth	12 of 17	4:42	Niko	Fixed Techie Mix I	8/3/08 4:54 PM
Halo (12”)	1	6:42	Severed Heads	Stretcher	8/3/08 5:07 PM
Spectre	9	5:46	Various Artists	Ghost In The Shell Megatech Body OST CD	8/3/08 5:13 PM
Dead Eyes Opened Re Opened	2	9:37	Severed Heads	Dead Eyes Opened	8/3/08 5:23 PM
Dead Eyes Opened The Love Expr	3	6:19	Severed Heads	Dead Eyes Opened	8/3/08 5:29 PM
Dead Eyes Opened Spooked	4	9:04	Severed Heads	Dead Eyes Opened	8/3/08 5:38 PM
Heart of the Party	1 of 14	3:45	Severed Heads	Gigapus	8/3/08 5:42 PM
Better Harms and Heartbreaks	4	4:15	Severed Heads	Haul Ass	8/3/08 5:46 PM
Interstate	6	4:13	Severed Heads	Haul Ass	8/3/08 6:00 PM
6 Banme No Eki	16 of 21	3:37	Joe Hisaishi	Sen To Chihiro No Kamikakushi	8/3/08 6:09 PM
the room obscured	8	1:00	Harold Budd	the room	8/3/08 6:10 PM
the room of ancillary dreams	1	6:05	Harold Budd	the room	8/3/08 6:16 PM
the room of oracles	2	4:43	Harold Budd	the room	8/3/08 6:30 PM
The Haunted Palace	5	2:20	edgar allan poe ( cd 1 )	edgar allan poe ( cd 1 )	8/3/08 7:06 PM
The City in the Sea	3	3:06	edgar allan poe ( cd 1 )	edgar allan poe ( cd 1 )	8/3/08 7:09 PM
Track 01	1	16:18	edgar allen poe ( cd 2 )	edgar allen poe ( cd 2 )	8/3/08 7:25 PM
Earth Floor	7	4:50	Michael Brook + Others	Hybrid	8/3/08 7:33 PM
Little Fishes	9 of 14	1:35	Brian Eno	Another Green World	8/3/08 7:34 PM
Nightstalker	7 of 11	1:45	Kenji Kawai	Ghost In The Shell OST	8/3/08 7:36 PM
35.7c	14 of 17	1:47	Yoko Kanno	Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex OST 3	8/3/08 7:38 PM
Silhouette	3	4:05	Robert Rich	Gaudi	8/3/08 7:42 PM
The Abyss	6	14:02	Mathias Grassow	Himavai	8/3/08 7:57 PM
Track 03	3	25:58	edgar allen poe ( cd 2 )	edgar allen poe ( cd 2 )	8/3/08 8:32 PM
Bergen’s	3 of 15	4:50	In The Nursery	Asphalt	8/3/08 8:38 PM
Precious	4 of 15	5:34	In The Nursery	Asphalt	8/3/08 8:43 PM
Lipstick	6 of 20	2:22	In The Nursery	An Ambush of Ghosts OST	8/3/08 8:46 PM
White Robe	7 of 20	3:58	In The Nursery	An Ambush of Ghosts OST	8/3/08 8:50 PM
Funeral Part 1 Edit	14 of 20	3:20	In The Nursery	An Ambush of Ghosts OST	8/3/08 8:53 PM
Mars Rain	5 of 9	6:46	James Bernard	Atmospherics	8/3/08 9:10 PM

HeartMath and Felton

This was an amazing ride … Tougher than I thought it was going to be. But worth it.

San Jose to Santa Cruz, via Highway 9. 47 miles, from sea level to 2700 feet to sea level. According to my GPS unit I burned seven thousand calories, but I think that thing must be lying. My Mac tracking software claims a more believable 2400 calories. The truth is probably somewhere between.

Starting out. Photograph by Pit-Crew La.

This is the road I had to climb to get up over the mountain. Highway 9, southwest of Saratoga. It’s in decent shape and only a few parts are scary, but for someone “in training” like me, it is extremely long. If I had a full compliment of gear and more time I would have probably tried to camp halfway up it instead of doing it all at once.

I was passed twice by more in-shape cyclists. Both had lightweight bikes and skin-tight clothing, but I’m sure that with all factors being equal, they’d leave me in the dust. I also saw a lot of cyclists passing the other way. Either they started out early in the morning, or they trucked their bikes to the top (the cheaters!) and were only going down. Most likely they just started earlier.

Passing through Saratoga made me feel slightly nervous that I might run into an ex-girlfriend, but the chances were vanishingly small. I did end up speaking to one person, though: A jogger who was trudging up towards the base of the mountain. I kept pace with him and then said “6.5 miles per hour. Not bad!” He grinned back.

Here’s the Google Earth view of the whole route. You can see how indirect it is, compared to Highway 17.

My lunch stop, about a quarter of the way up the hill. I propped the camera against a rock on the opposite side of the road. The sandwich and chocolate soymilk that La packed for me disappeared instantly. About this time I noticed an increase in joyriding motorcyclists zooming up or down the hill. Many more than I’d seen back in town. I’m not one to judge about the relative safety of travel … I just wish they would install proper goddamn mufflers. The noise they made was deafening.

A couple turnouts further along, I found a phone that must have crapped out on its owner one too many times.

A pleasant bridge about halfway up. While stopped for this picture I began to worry about my remaining daylight time.

A couple dozen turns later. You only get this sort of light around sunset. I was not looking forward to a ride through Boulder Creek, Ben Lomond, and Felton (the connective towns along Highway 9 between me and Santa Cruz) in the dark.

About this time a carload of girls (and one embarrassed guy who hid his head under a jacket) stopped and asked me if I knew where Skyline Boulevard was. I replied, “I’ve got a map thing here I can look it up on, but it takes a while to load, so you might want to pull over.” It took less than a minute to locate it on the iPhone map, which I held out for the girl driving the car to inspect. “Thank you!” she said. “Good luck!” I said. “Have a nice ride!” squealed the girl crammed in the middle seat. “Thanks, it’s been good so far!” I replied.

About a mile later I rolled to a turnout and just stood there, breathing hard. My brain began swimming around in my head. I think I might have hyperventilated a bit from all the oxygen. “Is this what they call ‘The Wall’?” I asked myself. “Have I hit the point where I just can’t go any more?”

My mouth wanted salt, so I ate a bunch of Tings (vegan equivalent of Cheetos). That was a mistake, because then I got very thirsty, and I’d run out of water a few turns ago. But I pulled out the tupperware of soup La cooked earlier in the week, and slurped the thinnest layer of liquid off the top of that. It tasted fantastic. Things always taste great after vigorous exercise, and this soup was great already.

I sat still for a long while, propped against a mailbox, breathing and listening to music. I contemplated calling La and asking for a pickup. After almost half an hour, I felt alright again, and decided to keep going.

Finally I made it to the top, just a few turns after I began yelling out loud, “I am so damn tired of hills!!!”

Stopped at the lookout point just west of the 9 – 35 intersection. At this point I’d only gone about 22 miles total. The downhill trip to Boulder Creek heaped another ten miles onto that in half an hour. On the west side of the mountain, the sun hadn’t finished setting, and the light coming through the trees drew reddish stripes across the road.

Somewhere before Boulder Creek I began passing signage for summer camps. The trees got really big and became proper redwoods. The sunlight faded away. The air got cooler and wetter than I’d felt in San Jose for months. I turned my headlamp on.

As I coasted silently down the road I became aware of the smell of the trees. I realized that I’d become so accustomed to the smell of the city that the smell of the forest was novel again. It’s a wet, dusty, earthen smell, with a highlight of mint or menthol, somewhere between the smell of the pine trees up in the mountains and the smell of crushed clay. I breathed huge gulps of it as I descended. Eventually the daylight left entirely, and the forest canopy merged overhead, enclosing the road in a darkness so complete that the columns of trees on either side became the columns of a cave, and I was riding my bike deep into the silent core of the earth.

I suppose that to many people this effect is a little frightening. But it fills me instead with a deep nostalgia for the years I spent growing up here. This vast, dark, space becomes a barrier that blocks out the noise, rush, confusion, and even most of the pollution, of the outside world. Each of the houses set back from the road becomes a tiny universe of warmth, broadcasting squares of yellow light which flicker amongst the trees as you pass. If I was wealthy enough to retire I would probably keep a cabin here. But nowadays I am too interested in travel.

Anyway, it was pitch dark by the time I arrived in Felton. A guy behind the counter of a liquor store was kind enough to refill my water bottle. I called La on the phone and gulped water, and once again considered asking for a pickup. I couldn’t remember the distance between Felton and Santa Cruz. I assumed it was all downhill, but I was worried that La and I wouldn’t make it to our movie on time. “Ah well, what the heck, I’ve come this far. I should finish the run.”

Actually I’d misremembered… There was almost a whole mile of uphill climbing between me and Santa Cruz. By the time I arrived at the 7-11 at the end of Ocean street we had only ten minutes to spare. I devoured the chocolate soymilk La brought me, as well as half a bottle of carrot juice and an entire bottle of tea. Then I chomped down half a bag of chips. That set my stomach a little off balance, so a few hours later when we sat down at the Saturn I listened very carefully to what my stomach was telling me, and ordered a big salad with some tahini dressing. That hit the spot.

Next day I was pretty sore, but not unmanageably so. If I ever do this ride again, I’ll start MUCH earlier in the day.

Things I learned on this trip:

• My bike doesn’t have a good enough gear for hills. Most of the difficulty I had with this ride was because I was pedaling too hard. Perhaps there’s a way to add a really low gear (a “granny gear”) to the drivetrain.
• Once again, the iPhone really does need a battery pack. At the end of my six+ hour ride it flashed a low battery warning. This shouldn’t surprise me … I used it heavily the entire time.
• Having a headlight powered by a hub is great for city driving because the only place I tend to stop is at crosswalks, which are usually lit. But out in the country, on a steep hill, the situation gets scary. Between Felton and Santa Cruz I had to pedal up a large hill at night, and though I was tiring, I couldn’t drop below about 3 miles per hour or my headlight would die and leave me in total darkness.
• People in cars like to ask people on bikes for directions. I was flagged down twice today by lost drivers. One wanted to know where some hostel was. What do I look like, an internet kiosk? Oh wait. I am one.
• Half a gallon of water for four hours of hills is a fair ratio. Too bad I only had a quarter.