Raining

The cold air is gone, replaced by relatively warm rain. My mind is wandering to Southern California where I will be riding the
400 mile San Diego Christmas Ride in 10 days. The organizers were nice enough to email the maps and cue sheets to me early so that I could get them converted to files to load on my gps. As I was following along on the map I noted that many of the roads we will be riding are ones that I rode when I was there in June. It will be nice to be back riding there........especially since it's not likely to be raining!

Here are the routes for each of the six days that we will be riding.

63 miles day 1

63 miles day 2

It seems that alternate routes are popular with the riders for additional miles or additional climbing. Well, in actuality, it's more likely for scenic values or lower traffic. Here's a popular 71 mile route alternative for day 2

105 miles day 3

59 miles day 4

55 miles day 5

56 miles alternate day 5 route

56 mile day 6

and an alternate ending to day 6 that takes in a tour of the coastline from La Jolla, around Crown Point and along Mission Bay before rejoining the "official route" near Fiesta Island.

I'll likely ride all alternate routes listed.
I am planning on staying one extra day and start my new year out with a good long ride in sunny SoCal weather on New Years Day! I decided to ride the 127 mile "Alpine-Julian Loop" permanent listed with the San Diego Randonneurs.

EVENING UPDATE:


I joined 9 folks from the Salem Bicycle Club on a ride tonight to take a holiday light tour. Part of this organized route is a stop where canned food is collected for a local assistance program.


There were two really good things about tonight's ride. First off it had poured rain all day. It was still raining as I made my way to the start location in Keizer. It was still raining as I was preparing to ride. It finally stopped raining long enough for me to unload my bike..........and never rained another drop all night as we rode for 2.5 hours! Never would have believed it if I hadn't been there.
The next really good thing was that there was a hot chocolate stop at a cyclist's home along the route. My Furnace Creek crew member John, who broke his leg in a cycling mishap several weeks ago was there.


We sat around and enjoyed their hospitality and talked "bike" for awhile before hopping back on the bikes and continuing our trip.


The night was warm, one of the riders had a temperature readout on his bike and it read 51 degrees. 51 degrees and no rain......... just like a summer night!

I had my mountain bike for this evening's adventure.

By the time it was all over we had fun..........and 9 miles! :-)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
...............Road Bike.....LifeCycle.....Total Miles Today
..................9...............0..................9
Jan total.......501.....+.........30.......=.......531
Feb total.......614.....+.........0........=.......614
March total.....860.....+.........0........=.......860
April total.....790.....+.........0........=.......790
May total.......901.....+.........0........=.......901
June total......543.....+.........0........=.......543
July total.....1322.....+.........0........=......1322
August total...1603.....+.........0........=......1603
Sept total.....1403.....+.........0........=......1403
October.........503.....+.........0........=.......503
November........664.....+.........0........=.......664
December........356.....+.........0........=.......356
Year to date..10,132.....+........30.......=.....10,162 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++