Awesomeness Report: OMG I'm Gonna Vomit...

Thankfully this weekend has been one with many bike related happenings in it, and such I have a pocket full of stuff to write about. I'm not going to smash everything into one post, but instead I'll divvy it out through out the week. But since it's a Monday, I'm going to quench your thirst for that special brand of 15 Rides bloggerizing with this Awesomeness Report!!!

On Friday I decided to post ride plans on the PAA message board. It went something like this:

Greetings carbon based life forms with similar interests and hobbies...

Sorry this is kind of late but I'll be riding out of Griffith Park tomorrow to do 80-ish miles including Mulholland, Topanga and Old Topanga. Leaving at 7:00 a.m. Come along and do all or part of this ride. Pace will vary between conversational and vomit-inducing.

See you there!

Now, usually when I call rides that are 80 miles or more the response I get is "I'm training for Cyclo-Corss" or "It's the middle of race season" or "It's Mtn Bike Season" which are all valid reasons not to tag along with me on one of my epics, although I usually get some company for at least part of the ride from folks who like bits and pieces of my routes. Because most folks never join me I usually get to set my own pace, which is a plus, but I end up with no one to talk to for 5 hours and my face is in the wind the whole time. Inevitably I end up having long and drawn out conversations about religion, politics, or BBQ with myself. This time however, I was very excited (At first, later I would be regretting being born) to have Doug and Ryan joining me for a part of the ride, and Aaron Wise joining me for the whole excursion. Let me start off by saying this: If your reading this Aaron, I'm sorry I'm so slow.



I snapped this pic of Aaron after I caught him on Mulholland. He had stopped to wait and in the time it took us to catch up had made an Espresso, drank it, and read the most recent copy of La Gazzetta dello Sport

For the first 20 miles of the ride there were four of us, Aaron, Myself, Doug Wolfe and Ryan. Doug and Ryan had things to do (pffft... Families) and rolled down the hill at different points. To that, our time on Mulholland was pretty fast, as the pace was high, I mean vomitously high (for me at least, the others were sipping mimosa's on the way up) and we were to Coldwater Canyon before I even knew it. Aaron and I jetted down Sepulveda and headed towards the beach. It was our plan to take the normal route to the beach, head up PCH to Topanga Canyon, and then head up Old Topanga for a little extra climbing. Afterwards we'd head back through the valley to get to Griffith Park. Which is what we did. Saturday was the perfect day for riding. We managed to get down to the beach and on to PCH by around 9:00 AM. Another rider named Shawn (possible misspelling there)caught us and went along up to the Old Topanga intersection. There's nothing I hate more than when super skinny cyclists like Shawn say stuff like "Oh, I'm not a very good climber" and then woosh! off the back for me like I'm dragging a cart of boulders. Honestly though by this time I'd spent most of the day barely hanging onto Aaron's back wheel so I was quite alright with the humiliation of being dropped. Oh well, my fault for taking on that "Drink Beer and Don't Ride" training program.

We stopped at the usual (CVS on Mullholland), took a break and then rolled out. We got a little lost in the valley, made our way to the bike path, then made our way off the bike path as it's kind of annoying and then hustled back to the park via Ventura/Moorpark/Riverside. It was a sweet effin ride, and if you get the chance I highly recommend riding with Aaron Wise. If you get a kick out of watching cyclist "handle" 10-12% grades while in their big ring then this is the guy to watch. Mind you that Aaron "made" that Espresso I mentioned earlier. He had an Espresso cart in tow the whole ride.