We’re almost out of weekends before we ride Seattle to Portland, so we thought about doing a big ride today. Unfortunately, we didn’t really plan the ride until late last night, which meant nobody was ready to go early this morning. We rolled out of bed around 10 and finally hit the road around 11:15. That’s pretty late to get started, and we’re in the middle of a heat wave, so we decided to keep the ride under 100 miles.

It’s the final week of the San Diego Fair, so traffic is insane. We decided to avoid the whole area around the fair grounds and cut up through Rancho Sante Fe and then back to Encinitas and up the 101. When we hit Oceanside, the wind was starting to pick up, so we had a bit of a tail wind as we cruised up the trail. Of course, by the time we hit the top and turned around, the wind was really blowing. We took turns pulling through the wind on the way back and we made pretty good time.

We stopped in Oceanside for about 45 minutes and had some lunch at Subway. I sucked down 40 ounces of fruit punch in no time. I think that means I wasn’t drinking enough, but I sure drank a lot after that. We had a good time heading south with a bit of a cross wind coming from the ocean. We blasted across the bottom of Carmel Valley road and then took it easy heading up the 56 bike trail a couple stops. Then we headed home to hook up with Julie and ride with Sam and Ben along the bike trail.

My right ear started ringing shortly after I got up this morning. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t have any excess or negative pressure. It was just annoying. I used that as an excuse not to swim, bike, or run at lunch. But today is Monday, and that’s Charmaine’s early day. So when 5:00 rolled around, we jumped on our bikes for a nice easy ride along the 56 bike trail. It was just what the doctor ordered. I’m feeling really good now.

We had this great idea to get up early and ride to Huntington Beach and back. I could put up with the issues my bike was having for one more ride. How many chances for long rides do we have left before STP? Not that many. How many rides will I get next week while I’m out of town. None. So it made sense to seize the opportunity to get in a long ride while we could. Unfortunately, my bike had other plans.

We got up around 6 and started getting ready. I was having a hard time getting going, but it eventually came together. Charmaine picked up some McDonald’s while I took my time getting ready. We finally hit the road about 6:45. My bike was up to its usual tricks of phantom shifting, slipping the chain sometimes, dropping the chain other times, etc. But we were taking it easy and just enjoying the perfect biking weather.

We cruised up through Oceanside and across Camp Pendelton with no problems. We zoomed through the neighborhoods in San Clemente and stopped at the 7-11 to pick up some drinks, bananas, and a few Tiger’s Milk bars (basically a small candy bar with slightly higher nutrition, but I like them a lot). From there we cruised through Dana Point and up into Laguna Beach.

There’s no good way to ride through Laguna Beach. We were on the PCH, which had been great through Dana Point, but as soon as you get to Laguna Beach there is no bike lane or even shoulder for bikers. I’m not sure any streets in Laguna Beach have bike lanes or shoulders. It’s pretty rough. We stopped to talk about if it was worth it to continue or to just turn around and head home. We decided we would ride up to Newport Beach, then head inland to Irvine and Mission Viejo to avoid having to deal with Laguna Beach on the way back.

As soon as we tried to start riding again, I was dead in the water. At first I thought I had a flat tire. No. My back wheel would not turn at all. Then I saw why. It was no longer “true”. Instead of being a flat disc, it looked a little like a ‘C’. That’s not how you want your wheel to look. I had broken a spoke and the wheel had changed shapes. My ride was over. I pulled up Google Maps to find the nearest bike shop. The only bike shop within 8 miles was right around the corner from where we were standing… maybe 200 feet away. I carried my bike in and they stopped what they were working on to fix my bike.

I highly recommend Laguna Beach Cyclery. They were great. The mechanic didn’t have any spokes that were an exact match for my wheels, since my wheels are pretty old, but he found something that would work long enough to get us home. He showed me how much damage my wheels have, probably from some of my recent crashes, and explained that if my bike were a car it is out of oil and the pinging the engine. I have 3 or 4 other spokes that are bent and need to be replaced soon. If I am able to find the right spokes and get them replaced I could probably continue using these wheels as spares, but he said he wouldn’t take them on any long rides again. Hmmm. I guess I need to figure something out before we ride Seattle to Portland next month.

It was time to ride to the nearest MetrokLink station and take the train home. The closest station to Laguna Beach is back in Dana Point, but it’s almost the same distance to the station in Irvine. We decided to ride on to Irvine, since it would be something new to experience. We took the Back Bay road up through Newport Beach and then jumped on the San Diego Creek trail from there into Irvine. That trail system is excellent. We turned off the river trail and rode along Alton Parkway to the station. Irvine is really beautiful and extremely bike friendly. We’ll have to go back to ride around there some more.

We only had to wait about 45 minutes for the next train to Oceanside, but once there we would have had to wait a couple hours for the next train to Solana Beach or Sorrento Valley. It would be faster to just ride home and if my bike died along the way it wouldn’t take too long for Charmaine to make it home and come back with the car. My Frankenbike held together all the way home. I still have to figure out what to do about it, but at least we made it back without too much trouble.

I work remotely on a team that decided to take a long lunch to go see the new Superman movie today. Instead of messing around while everyone was gone, I decided to try the same route again, but this time take Pomerado all the way to Ted Williams, then jump onto the bike trail when it becomes the freeway. I don’t think I liked it as much as the other way for multiple reasons, so I doubt I’ll go that way again.

Weather Underground made me expect to have a big tailwind on my way up Del Dios Highway today, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. I was pushing myself really hard and I wasn’t doing that much better than usual. The wind did pick up later, giving me a nice headwind all through Poway and especially as I headed back along the 56 bike trail.

I spent a lot of time fighting with my bike today. It is in dire need of a tune-up. For the past few weeks I haven’t been able to shift into my second largest gear on the back. Any attempt to do so would cause phantom shifting up and down between 1 and 2 or 2 and 3, depending on which direction you came from in your attempt to go into that gear. I still have that problem, but now I have an even worse problem. Sometimes when I shift down to that gear from 3rd (since I can’t go to second), it acts like I’ve dropped my chain. The derailer collects a bunch of chain and then releases it all at once skipping the gear completely. It’s very strange and makes it very frustrating trying to climb. Also my chain does actually drop from time to time. I had to put it back on 3 times today. That’s way too many.

I don’t think I’ll ride again until I get it tuned up. It’s way too frustrating, and I’m way too much of a psychological rider. Maybe I can get Charmaine to take it to the shop while I’m out of town next week. That would be perfect.

So taking Pomerado all the way to Ted Williams turned out to be a bust. The light at the intersection of Pomerado and Twin Peaks took 6 full minutes. That’s one of the longest lights I have ever seen. It’s insane. My legs were completely tight by the time I needed to ride again. It was terrible. But that wasn’t the worst part of my plan.

When Ted Williams crosses I-15 it becomes a freeway. I knew this, but I also knew that the 56 bike trail goes all the way to I-15. I thought I would take Ted Williams across I-15 and then cross Ted Williams on a crosswalk to get on the bike trail. Wrong. There is no crosswalk. As soon as I rode across the bridge over I-15 there was a big sign saying bikes were prohibited. There was no crosswalk. There was no way back. I was not impressed. I finally managed to cross when the light changed for one of the off-ramps to cross (they could only go straight or left, so I knew they wouldn’t turn and hit me). Needless to say, I won’t be trying that again. Besides, I think I actually liked the ride over Paseo Lucido/Carmel Mountain better.

I decided to expand the loop up Del Dios Highway around Lake Hodges. After crossing the bottom of the lake on the foot bridge, I crossed the street and took Pomerado Road the other direction into Rancho Bernardo. It actually didn’t add much distance and it may even have reduced the amount of climbing I had to do. I wasn’t exactly sure how to get over to the 56 bike trail from there, but I think I could have just stayed on that road all the way until it hit I-15. I’ll have to try that someday. Of course, I still hit a bunch of red lights in Rancho Bernardo. I swear the lights in that town hate me.

I didn’t push too hard and there wasn’t much wind until I headed down the 56 bike trail. I had hoped there would be wind to push me up the Del Dios climbs, but it was calm through the whole canyon.

I nearly hit a squirrel that darted out in front of me on the way home. I wondered if I had clipped his tail or not. It was a miracle I didn’t squish him and possibly send myself flying over my handlebars again. As I was thinking about how lucky it was that I didn’t hit him, ANOTHER squirrel darted out in front of me and I almost hit that one too. I don’t know what they were thinking, but I’m glad we all survived.

I have strong legs. My calves are especially strong. I have a tendency to rely on them too much as other parts of my body get tired. I did that on Saturday and I think I pulled something in my right calf, so I’ve been taking it pretty easy. I didn’t ride yesterday and I went nice and slow today. Even so, on some of the hills I could feel it pulling. It wasn’t good. Hopefully I allow myself enough rest to get things back to normal.

Today I just rode up and down the 56 bike trail at a very slow and easy pace. I never really pushed very hard. There was a bit of a wind from the west, but it wasn’t extreme.

I stopped and snapped a couple pictures of a snowy egret fishing in the turtle pond today, but the turtles eluded me as usual.

We didn’t plan our big Saturday ride before we went to bed on Friday night. That meant we slept in and acted all morning like we were not going to go on a ride. When we neared the final edge of the ride launch window (when McDonald’s stops selling breakfast items), we snapped into action. If we were going to go, we had to go now.

Charmaine planned a nice little route that took us up Rancho Santa Fe Road, through San Elijo Hills, the Elfin Forest, around the edge of Escondido, and then down Del Dios Highway. We had alawys gone up Del Dios Highway, but never down. There were always a lot of riders coming down, and we knew we needed to try it. There were several ways we could add on to the route if we felt we needed more miles or more climbing. It sounded like a plan. Charmaine called Ryan to see if he wanted to go. He couldn’t go until sometime in the afternoon, so we were on our own this morning. We decided to keep the morning route fairly small (no add-ons) so we could do a second ride with Ryan in the afternoon.

The ride up Rancho Santa Fe Road was nice and easy. We turned at San Elijo Road and cut up through San Elijo Hills. That’s a really pretty place. From there we turned on Elfin Forest Road and cut down to a beautiful stream with lush vegetation. I expected the whole road to be like that, based on the name, but we didn’t really hit the lush part until we turned onto Harmony Grove Road. We rode past the creek a little ways and suddenly found ourselves in Escondido. We followed a couple riders through the edge roads and headed down Del Dios Highway.

It didn’t feel like we were going down; it felt like we were doing a lot of climbing. There was a massive headwind forcing us to pedal hard just to keep going. And, of course, there were a couple actual hills to climb. When we got back to San Dieguito Road, I turned left instead of right, leading us up and over the 3 Witches. I think Charmaine thought I would be a little smarter than that and just head home, knowing we would be riding again later in the day, but she was wrong. I’m a sucker for punishment. I expected the headwind on Carmel Valley Road to be extreme, based on what we had coming down Del Dios Highway, but it wasn’t that bad.

We made it home and had a good lunch before Ryan and Julie showed up for the next ride. The goal of this ride was to ride along the coast and have a little fun, then meet Julie down on the 56 trail so we could all ride our bikes with their oldest boy who learned how to ride a bike recently and has been asking to go on a ride with his dad ever since.

I found myself pushing north pretty hard. It was one of the first times I had ridden north along the coast without a headwind. It was pretty fun. Of course, that meant coming south would be without the usual tailwind. On the way back Ryan and I pushed through the headwind that had developed. We took turns drafting and made really good time. Unfortunately, we dropped Charmaine right at the start when she missed a light and had to wait. We didn’t realize how far ahead we were until we descended from Solana Beach into Del Mar. By then it was too late to do anything about it. I thought about texting her to let her know where we were, but we just kept hitting every light green and there was never a chance until we stopped at the appointed meeting place at the end of our ride. She had wondered if we had taken a different route and were waiting for her, so she called and left a message letting us know where she was. That’s what we should have done at some point, but we never did. In the future I think it’ll be better to wait and call/text if we ever get separated so we get back together as soon as possible. It’s no fun to ride alone.

As it turned out, our average speed for that second ride was almost 18.5, which is pretty good considering I had already ridden 50 miles that morning. I’m happy about that. Now to recover.

It was a rough day at work today. They are repainting the exterior of the building, so all the doors and windows are covered in plastic and taped up from the outside. A very loud compressor has been sitting just outside my window every day this week. Today it really started to get to me. I work from my home office, so it’s not like I can escape the noise, paint smell, and heat (no breeze with everything shut) by simply “working from home” for a day. No, I either work through it, or leave and get nothing done.

At some point I realized I would get more done by not working. I needed to get away from it to clear my head. A nice long ride sounded like just the right solution. It was.

Like yesterday, there was a lot of wind coming in off the coast today, but it was coming from the west north west. I thought it might give me a boost climbing Torrey Pines. Nope. The road is cut out from the cliff and almost completely shielded from the wind on the way up. It was torture seeing the trees just across the street whipping in the wind while I felt none of it. The trees on my side were calm. I managed to push through it and get a PR anyway, so I’m not too upset. But I really did not like coming back down on that rough road into the gusty headwind. It wasn’t fun.

Heading up the coast was almost like riding into a headwind the whole time, since the coastline goes sort of north north west. I figured I would just ride up the coast until I got too tired, then turn around and let the wind push me home. That’s pretty close to what I did, except that I couldn’t stop myself from pushing hard on the way back too. It turned out to a be a pretty good ride for me, but I’m really sore now. I think I might need a real rest day tomorrow.