Category: Rides

Twilight Tour de Pomegranate

Some of you may remember my love of riding for wild or semi wild foods from my Walnut Ride.  Time to enjoy the dry weather and the morning chill, and ride for the pomegranates I had seen a few weeks ago.  No laws were broken and the trees are on public easement.  Living in an area surrounded by agriculture it would be all to easy to just grab fruit from the end row of the farms and orchards, but that would kind of defeat the point, and I am pretty sure it is stealing.  These particular trees are on the fence line of land grabbed by the water district when they built the Casitas damn.  Many ranchers and homeowners lost land to eminent domain with this one, and there are quite a bit of interesting things tucked into the corners of this area without having to jump the fences lined with “No Trespassing” signs.  This morning it was a truncated version of a favorite loop to get the quarry and make it home in time for baby duty.  Having fresh fruit keeps you out of trouble when you are a little late. 

I am looking forward to daylight savings time coming to an end, a little more morning light for a bit. 

Weekend Recap – Movies, Rides, BBQ

Saturday

Saturday started off with a drive down to Santa Monica for a screening of Ride the Divide put on by Erik Mathy of 1Gear1Cause fame. The movie was awesome, it really put the difficulty of the ride into perspective. For readers not familiar, the Divide race is an informal unsanctioned race along the continental divide that was pieced together from a collection of forest service, ranch, logging and other dirt roads and trails by the Adventure Cycling Association. The route is over 2700 miles with 200,000 feet of vertical climbing, and the racers that do complete are averaging it in around 20 days, that is really hard to think about when you sit down and think about the sustained daily averages.  Erik had organised the screening as part of his pursuit to raise funds and awareness in the battle against cancer and will be riding the race next year on a single speed Salsa Fargo. Prior to the race Erik had ridden down the coast with Jason and Joe from Salsa and Eric from Adventure Monkey. It was great to meet these guys after reading on their blogs about their inspirational adventures and photography for so long.  Salsa had helped to sponsor the event, and after the movie there were raffle prizes from Swerve, Ergon and 1Gear1Cause, as well as water bottles from Salsa.  I won the first draw and took home a set of Ergon Grips, the only time I came in first all day.  Thanks guys

After the movie everyone headed over to Topanga reek Bicycles for a BBQ and ride. If you are in the area and have not been to their shop yet, you are really missing out.  They are one of the few shops have been to in southern California that actually sell and STOCK touring bikes and gear, Arkel, Brooks, Berthoud, surly, salsa, tubus etc.  Great shop and great people.  The food and company were great.  After the BBQ most of the group headed on a ride up Santa Maria Rd for a little dirt and single-track in the Mulholland area.  Genius that I am, I had all my camera gear, tripod too, and even my 6lb Ulock.  It is likely I was hauling more gear than the guys did on their tour.  Needless to say I was running sweep the whole time and my legs were feeling dead, thanks to the whole crew for waiting for me to catch up more than once.  Again though it was a  great time.  Here are a couple of pics from the trail:
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I was pretty Lazy with the camera and hopefully some others will chime in with more pics from the ride.

Sunday

Sunday was back to normal 22 mile loop to the farmer’s market at Chanel Islands Harbor.  It was a beautiful day and a chance to run at my own pace, working out yesterday’s sore legs.  The haul was not as big this time, but respectible:
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The Rawland performed well when front loaded.
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I am working on a writeup for later this week on the Bruce Gordon rack and bag set up I have switched to with this bike.  Even with 20-30 lb loade on the front the handling has been fine, but that is another post.

Fun weekent, lots of time in the saddle, and it feels good.