Route for '02 Turkey Trot ride,
Thursday, November 28th, 7:45am
For past Turkey Trots, check out our 1998 & 1999 rides, 2000 & 2001editions!
Had a great ride Thanksgiving '02!
Besides the usual photos & descriptions, I've also included the
readout from my Ciclomaster HAC-4 computer so you can check out
elevations, temperature and my heartrate. I've labeled the
various points along the way so you can figure out what's where. By
the way, you can click on both the map & computer readout for a
bigger, easily-read version.
55 miles of great riding, an effort to burn
off the TurkeyDay calories ahead of time! We left from the
usual place, Olive Hill & Canada Road (about one mile north of
Woodside) at 7:50am.
You can see from the HAC-4 cycling computer profile (shown below) that this
wasn't an easy ride, with almost 5700 feet of
climbing. We took in several major climbs, including
Old LaHonda, Haskins Grade, the Stage Road roller coasters, Los
Lobitos and finally Tunitas Creek.
7:47am and our
group assembles at Olive Hill & Canada. Eventually about
twenty people showed up, although ten of them decided to ride a
previous year's TurkeyTrot route, up Kings, south to 84, down to
LaHonda, and then up West Alpine. But on a beautiful day like
this, a ride to the coast shouldn't be passed up!
8:26am finds us, and another
group (or two) at the top of Old LaHonda. A few of ours headed
north on Skyline for a shorter ride, while the rest of us went down
the west side of Old LaHonda for our date with Haskins Grade!
Due to the longer length of this ride, there were quite a few
bailouts along the route.
9:04am and we're making pretty
good time, regrouping at the top of Haskins Grade, on our way to
Pescadero.
9:16am finds us at the infamous
Flamingo house, now decorated for Christmas with Candy Canes too!
9:28am and we're already at the
outskirts of Pescadero. This wasn't a take-no-prisoners ride, but
the pace was anything but casual. Seven of us left at this
point, with just one further defection a bit up the road.
9:34am and Kevin Keenan's
question about whether there will be some place open that he can buy
a Diet Coke is answered! The Los Amigos gas station in
Pescadero.
9:46am on Stage
Road, just out of Pescadero. You can click on the photo on the
left for a much larger version (1024x768) of this scenic piece of
road. Did I mention yet there there were almost no cars on
this ride? Thanksgiving morning is a great time to get out on
your bike! On the right photo we see the bizarre
machine-gun-man metal sculpture (it's on the left edge of the
photo).
9:59am cresting the second peak
on Stage Road, approaching San Gregorio. This was a beautiful
day with cloudless, clear skies and, along the coast, very warm
temps (70+ degrees!).
10:04am and we regroup for the
final time at San Gregorio General Store which, surprisingly, is
open on Thanksgiving Day! There's now six of us left, with
Ueyn heading back home via 84.
From San Gregorio we rode the final piece of Stage Road up to
Highway One, which was about the last piece of hill that I felt
pretty decent on. We then went north, riding past Tunitas
Creek to the Los Lobitos cut-off, a fun (and sometimes nasty) piece
of climbing that loops you back towards Tunitas Creek. Of
course, you lose a lot of that climbing in the narrow twisty descent
down to Tunitas Creek!
The climb up Tunitas began at 10:55am and finished at
11:28, a pretty slow pace for me, but that's all that was left
in my legs. Todd and a couple other young riders were well
ahead of me on the climb, while Kevin stayed back to keep me
company. The two other guys went north on Skyline, leaving
just Todd & I to finish the ride together, making it back to the
starting point by 11:45am, considerably earlier than I had
figured. All in all, a very nice TurkeyDay ride!
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