Archive for the ‘Cycling’ Category

No More Tunnels

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009

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By far my favorite place to ride my mountain bike (that is reachable without driving) are the single track ‘tunnels’ that are typically reached through Peñasquitos Park (although they aren’t actually inside the park, they are on non-park city land). They are called ‘the tunnels’ because for most of their length they are covered by low bushes and trees just over head height. There are four of them that total a few miles in length and vary in technical difficulty. Until about a month ago, they were somewhat illicit and not patrolled, now they are very expressly illegal. During the rainy season I think it’s perfectly reasonable to close them. Muddy and wet ground is especially susceptible to erosion, and nature doesn’t need human help to erode the ground during the rainy season. The ditch my bike is pictured in above was fairly level ground the last time I was there, less than a month ago (*).

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Tour of California Disappointment

Friday, December 5th, 2008

Below is the map showing the just-released 2009 Tour of California stage 8 route. And I’m disappointed. I thought the stage would end on the top of Palomar Mountain, but it is simply going to pass over the top, circle back around and finish in relatively boring Escondito.

Just like when the race goes through the Bay Area, I am familiar with much of this route. The race starts in Rancho Bernardo, and heads east on Highland Valley Road. That road has several nicely steep sections that kick my non-professional racer butt. I’m sure that the pros won’t charge up those hills so early in the race, but their pace would drop me, no doubt.

They go up the hard side of Palomar which is a world-class climb. It is every bit as hard as the Tour de France cols I’ve climbed. In February the top of Palomar can be quite cold (sometimes it even snows) so the temperature changes along the route could have an effect on the race.

I wish the race organizers would have given us the grand spectacle of a mountain-top finish. I am grateful, however, that they’ve finally dipped below the Los Angeles divide.

Oh, and I can’t forget to note: parts of the race go through Indian reservations, so the racers can get their gamblin’ on, if they feel like it.

Gateway Cycling

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

I recorded the BMX races last night out of curiosity. (I’ve included some HD screen grabs of crashes for your enjoyment; click on them for the full size image.) BMX has been introduced to increase the interest of young people, those who like Xtreme sports. NBC even has a BMX crashes compilation for you to watch while you drink your Mountain Dew or get another tattoo.

This is the first year BMX is being contested at the Olympics and I’m conflicted about it. While I support any kind of cycling, in order to introduce this kind of cycling, the Olympic Organizing Committee cut two track events (the men’s 1000m and women’s 500m time trials) to make room for the BMX events. This was done to conserve the number of cycling events. According to this page there are 18 cycling events. Swimming has 34 events. So increasing the number of cycling medals wouldn’t have given it a ridiculous number of medals (unless you think swimming has a ridiculous number of events, which I in fact do). Granted, Olympic cycling isn’t as popular as Olympic gymnastics, and that only has 14 medals, but at least gymnastics takes place on different equipment. The cycling events range from 40 seconds to over six hours on four different kinds of venues that require very different types of skills and strategies. Each medal rewards a clearly different set of accomplishments. All but two of the swimming events are in the same damn pool (the 10K open-water swim is new this year) with the same equipment, only the strokes and distances change, and the distances vary by far less than cycling. It’s not clear that adding BMX is a net gain for cycling in the Olympics, and they could have very easily increased the number of cycling events, in my opinion.

Of course, cycling has the Tour de France every year, while swimming has ?

I think the best thing that can happen is if BMX becomes a kind of gateway drug into cycling. Get the young ones into the sport and then push them into the real hard stuff, like the velodrome and road cycling. Then they’ll really be hooked and there’s no going back.

Huzzah!

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

I have previously groaned about the Tour of California ignoring everything south of Los Angeles. But today it was announced that next years tour will visit San Diego County! The final stage is Rancho Bernardo to Escondido. They must plan a circuitous route as those communities aren’t very far apart.

I’m excited.

Car Pit

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

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Today Steve Lynch and I did some exploring off Peñasquitos Park and came across these derelict cars dropped into a small gorge. A VW Beetle, Audi and Ford Explorer (high gas prices, you know) were ones I could identify. There were two others rusted beyond recognition. It looked like after the cars had been shoved into the pit, they had been sledgehammered, to make sure they were really dead, of course. The Beetle was missing its motor, among other things, while the Ford didn’t have any seats in it. The Audi was probably a nice car once upon a time, it had a sun roof (or moon depending on trademarks).

I like to imagine this is what might happen if the world order collapses. People just junking once useful and valuable things when you can no longer get gasoline or electricity. Kind of like Mexico.

Update: you can see the Ford on Google Maps.