From: cortesi@informix.com (David Cortesi)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.rides
Subject: RIDE REPORT: Calaveras Reservoir loop
Summary: Nice day
Date: 10 Oct 92 00:16:50 GMT
Followup-To: rec.bicycles.rides
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.

Ride report: Palo Alto to Calaveras Reservoir and return, Friday
10/9/92. 65 miles (105k) including: across the south bay during
commute hours, idyllic oak woodland, and one way to get from Sunol to
Fremont without using Niles Canyon Road.
 
During two weeks of vacation spent helping a critically-ill elderly 
relative navigate a maze of hospitals, specialists, and surgery, I'd
had just two rides, both less than 15mi (26k). I needed exercise. More
important, I badly needed to assert wellness in the face of memories
of illness, feebleness, drugs and despair.  So I pumped up the tires
of the Miyata 1200, packed 32oz (1.5L) of Hydra-Fuel(R) and some snacks
in the rack pack, and left the house with the rising sun at 0800.
 
Mr. Peeps, the Polar PaceFink
 
Owing to a couple of instances of arrythmia at pulse rates over 160,
my cardiologist has recommended that I use a pulse monitor and limit
my max pulse. After extensive negotiations between him, me, and my
spouse I have agreed to use a Polar Pacer with the upper alarm set at
150bpm, and to slow down whenever it starts peeping.  So I strap on
this unwelcome companion, Mr Peeps, or the Polar PaceFink.
 
A Thank-you on Middlefield Road
 
I head south on Middlefield road for Mountain View and Santa Clara.
The morning traffic is surprisingly light here.  Waiting with the
light at San Antonio road, I pull the bike sideways to make room for a
pickup truck turning right.  The burly driver shouts a cheerful "Thank
you!" through his half-open window as he rolls by.
 
Adrenaline on Central Expressway
 
Middlefield rises in a graceful arc and drops me onto Central
Expressway. This is a rarity, a limited-access road with a bike lane.
It is an adrenaline rush to pedal along with commuters going 50mph
(80K).  I have to "observe and anticipate" (the British driving
instructor's mantra) with special intensity to get through the cars
merging on and exiting. The brisk traffic kicks up a lovely following
breeze that adds 15% to my normal flat-ground cruise. For a while I
roll at 21.5 mph (35K) with Mr. Peeps reading a comfortable 130.
 
Through the Trimble Maze
 
Central Expressway ends in a T-junction at Trimble road and I swing
left to cross Interstate 101.  Suddenly I am surrounded by huge
trucks, the kind that, when they idle, sound as if the engines were
chewing on large rocks, and whose wheels are as high as my shoulder.
There is no verge. They want to turn right onto the freeway, while
I need to go over.  I pull to the side and wait for a break in the
flow, then sprint (the PaceFink yelping madly) past the mouth of the
freeway entry lane.
 
Beyond the freeway, Trimble is easy.  At some point it leads over
railroad tracks where the asphalt has squeezed up into sharp wedges
around the steel rails.  I feel the front tire squash against the rim
as I hit this, and expect a fine pair of snake-bite punctures, but the
tube survives.
 
Across the Heart of the Valley
 
Trimble joins Montague Expressway and it takes me (in two
adrenaline-fueled sprints) over Interstates 880 and then 680.  At some
point, unnoticed, Coyote Creek passes under my wheels. This sluggish
tidal creek marks the center of the valley; from here on I am climbing
gently toward the East Bay Hills, a range of soft brown hills that
extends from furthest left to furthest right in front of me. My
surroundings change from industrial flatlands to new suburban
townhouses on sloping streets.
 
Montague ends at Piedmont, a well-named street that bounds the foot of
the hills.  Below it is suburban Milpitas; above it is only yellow grass
sweeping up to the top of the hills.  I've come 21 miles (34K) in
1:40. The sun is well clear of the hills and I'm sweating. Under a
"Welcome to Milpitas" sign I take off my neon-yellow fog shell and stow it.
 
Into the Hills
 
A few miles down Piedmont I start up into the hills on Calaveras road.
Calaveras is a bad road. It is narrow, and the asphalt at
its edges crumbles into a narrow, rock-strewn shoulder. There is a 
surprising amount of traffic, mostly trucks with horse trailers.
 
This is the first real climb of the day and I am learning what I have
to do in order to pacify the PaceFink -- namely, climb gently in my
lowest (42:32) gear, standing, resting on the front bars. During these
slow-motion climbs there is no wind and I can feel the sun. At the
entrance to Ed Levin county park I stop to put on sunblock.
 
Shortly Calaveras road turns left from Weller road (my Rand-McNally
San Jose street map shows the opposite; it's wrong). The road turns
steeply uphill, but in compensation all the traffic has been left
behind. (I will see one other vehicle in the next 45 minutes.) The
silence is wonderful. The loudest sounds other than my lungs are
blackbirds.
 
The PaceFink forces me to stop three times in this climb. (Note to
cardiologist: 60 seconds suffices to drop my pulse from 152 to 132.)
Behind and below me the metropolitan south bay is a slate-gray lake of
pollution. The near shores are toast-brown; the far shore is the black
outline of the forested Coast Range. (Somewhere over there, someone
must be climbing up through redwoods to the Saratoga gap.)
 
Around the Reservoir
 
Calaveras road crests a pass and reveals a spacious valley in folded
hills. The only way I can find to describe this terrain is to imagine
that once, there was a much more dramatic alpine landscape here, and
it was left too long in the oven, sagging and melting.  Then a blanket
of fine beige wool was thrown over the remains: a blanket with
dark-green crochet work in the folds -- the oak copses that accurately
outline the hydrology of the slopes.
 
At the bottom of the valley is a sheet of water, Calaveras reservoir,
much shrunken by five years of drought and a hot summer. Calaveras
road follows a contour line along the west slope, dipping in and out
of the gullies.  Each inward dip is a slight downgrade, leading in
under the shadow of oaks to a hairpin turn at the head of the gully.
(Loose gravel and acorns are strewn over the inner arcs of these
curves.)  I come pumping out of each hairpin to hold speed up the
slight grade to the turn around the convex fold.
 
Here I meet the sun, the view over the lake, and gusts of wind that
send oak leaves skittering over the pavement. The normal San Francisco
onshore flow has started, but I've planned for that.  I'll pedal into
it over only one stretch today; the rest of the time I'll be sheltered
by trees, as here, or have it abaft or abeam.
 
Near the head of the reservoir I stop to eat a banana and finish the
first bottle of Hydra-Fuel.
 
Decision in the Sunol Valley
 
From the reservoir Calaveras road drops gently through sweeping turns
among oaks to the Sunol valley.  The road edges miles of commercial 
nurseries.  Interstate 680 grumbles across the center of the valley,
coming out of Livermore to the right and grinding up the Sunol grade
on the left.  Calaveras road deserts me at the junction of highway 84
and 680.  I ride down 84 to the first junction where a tiny store
sells snacks and drinks.  I down a bottle of apple juice and ponder
the AAA map of "Fremont and Newark."
 
From this point there are three ways to go: back the way I came; or
down 84, the Niles Canyon Road; or south on 680.  My first time
through here I took Niles Canyon, and hated it.  It is a narrow,
heavily  traveled road. Cars move much faster than the road can
safely support.  Shoulders are nonexistent, or else sprinkled with
sharp rocks that tumble down from the cliffs that border the road.
To add insult, the prevailing wind squirts up the narrow canyon as
through a wind tunnel.
 
Dodging Deathtraps on 680
 
On the other hand, it isn't my style to backtrack.  That leaves one
choice and I head up the 680 onramp.  I see no sign prohibiting
bicycles (this seems to substantiate a vague memory that bikes can use
a freeway where there is no other route).  The traffic whips up a fine
tail-wind and I cover the short distance to the Andrade Road exit at a
fast clip.
 
Along the way I get a nasty shock.  At four points in this stretch
there are iron grates over storm drains -- grates whose bars are 
aligned with the direction of travel.  More perfect traps for the
front wheel of a road bike could not be designed!  These death-traps
(and I mean the word quite literally) are a very good reason to avoid
freeway riding.
 
Up and Over the Sunol Grade
 
From the Andrade Road overpass I look out over the artificial green of
the Sunol Valley golf course.  Expensive-looking ranches dot the hills
above it, but there is only one road leading away, a quiet frontage
road up the hill toward the crest of the pass.  I take this, the
second real climb of the day.  The air temperature is well into the
80s (near 30c?) and shade is scarce. In the intervals while I wait for
Mr. Peeps to settle down I listen to the diesels downshifting on the
10-lane freeway to my left.
 
At the top, my frontage road dies at a locked gate.  A road of no
interest to me wanders over the freeway and into the eastern hills. I
want to continue southwest, downhill into Fremont.  But here there is
a sign prohibiting "pedestrians, bicycles and motor-driven cycles"
from entering.  I ponder.  The next exit, Vargas Road, is just 3/4mi
(1.2K) ahead on the freeway, which slopes down sharply from here.  At
30mph I can be on and off the freeway in under 3 minutes.  What chance
of being apprehended?  I head down the ramp and hit my highest gear.
 
The shoulder is littered with gravel and chunks of tire rubber, and
there are three more death-trap gratings on this stretch, but no
highway patrolmen. Dropping off the Vargas road exit is like closing a
door against a storm, so suddenly does the ambient noise drop.
 
Around Vargas and Eyah-hah-hah-hooey!
 
Vargas road is a pleasant amble through rows of huge eucalyptus trees.
The loudest sound is made by a squirrel that, as it scampers up a
trunk, causes sheets of papery bark to fall into the brush.  I see one
truck, one motorcycle, and one rider on a mountain bike. I've nearly
drained my second bottle, and a vision of frozen yoghurt begins to
form in my mind.
 
Vargas joins Morrison Canyon road and suddenly I am on a precipitous
descent.  The road is barely one lane wide, no shoulders, a cliff on
one side and a gully on the other, and it drops like a stairway. It
would be a most challenging climb -- for someone else.  Almost before
I know it, I am among houses and into the Fremont Civic Center.
 
The Last Legs
 
With the keen instincts of a skilled woodman, capable of reading the
subtlest signs of forest life, I find a Baskin-Robbins store in less
than five minutes.  I call a progress report home and eat and drink on
a shady bench.  Then it's back out into the glare of what is now the
early afternoon sun.  I head down Mowry toward the bay.
 
There's one last adrenaline-boosted sprint to get across 880.  Here
three lanes of traffic squeeze into a single line over the bridge with
no shoulders.  As I sprint up the approach I see that the guard rail
is going to squeeze me into the adjacent traffic and I wimp out,
stopping while there's still clearance, leaning on the railing to let
the cars pass until there's a short break.
 
From there the streets are quiet: Mowry to Cherry to Thornton which
takes me out across the stinking tidal ponds toward the bay. I turn
off at the sign for the wildlife refuge (there's no indication that
this is, in fact, the only approach that will let a bicycle cross the
Dumbarton bridge).  Avocets and red-legged Stilts comment on my
pedalling style; I pick up the cadence so Mr. Peeps can answer them in
their own tongue.
 
At the visitor center I fill my bottle with cold water, then head out
across the mud flats toward the bridge.  I snuggle up alongside a
fence that cuts the wind, but this strategy backfires: shortly my back
tire flats.  I change it, and have the sense to run my fingers around
the inside of the tire before mounting it.  There is a tiny brown
thorn, smaller than a pencil point, embedded in the tread.
 
Dumbarton bridge rises like a concrete rainbow over the bay. The climb
over it is easy; I don't even need the lowest gear.  From the top you
can lean on the railing and look out for miles up and down the bay,
but today all I see is veils of polluted air in attractive shades of
translucent blue and gray.  Behind are the brown silhouettes of the
hills I've left, ahead the black ones of the Coast range.
 
Over the bridge and onto Willow road, I pick up my usual homeward
commute route and run on in on autopilot, thinking of other things. I
peel my jersey and trunks and find myself crowing with delight at the
feel of a hot shower on tired muscles.  It is such a privilege to
occupy a well, vigorous body!  Treasure every moment.
 
Your Basic Wrapup
 
I went exactly 65 miles (105K) in a door to door time of 6.5 hours. I
have only an Avocet 30 so can't say what the actual average speed may
have been (probably 12mph (19K)) or the total elevation change (trivial).
 
Hydra-Fuel worked very well for hydration. The taste didn't gag me and
it quenched my thirst.  It contains the usual electrolytes as well as
some carbohydrate in the form of glucose polymers and fructose.  The
carbo content definitely had an effect; I ate a lot less of the trail
mix I'd packed than I would have eaten when drinking (yech) GatorAde.
A jar of Hydra-Fuel powder sufficient to make 16 qts (what's that,
10L?) cost $12.95, considerably cheaper (as well as easier to store)
than an equivalent amount of (yech) GatorAde.
 
I can't praise Bullfrog sunblock enough.  It comes in a tiny bottle
that packs easily.  It goes on easily. It has an inoffensive smell. 
And one application protected my fair skin from strong sun for 6
sweaty hours.