Mt. Hamilton the Hard Way

Bill Bushnell — Saturday, March 26, 1994

When I looked out the window at 5:15 and saw no one waiting to go, I wondered whether anyone would bother showing up for an early-morning start on a clockwise ride around the Mt. Hamilton Loop. At 5:20 our rude doorbell rang long and loud. When I went to the door Richard was ready to go. After checking over his bike and pumping up the tires, we set off from my place in Palo Alto.

Our route took us past the Palo Alto Cultural Center where I had told others I’d meet them if they had felt inclined to join me at the last minute. No one waited in the dark parking lot. We continued up Newell, on the old bridge over San Francisquito Creek, and left on Woodland Ave., probably the bumpiest paved road on this side of the Santa Cruz Mountains. (The bumpiest paved road on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains is the lower part of Last Chance Rd.)

After turning right onto University we cruised quickly and quietly through the silent streets of East Palo Alto. The pavement on University Avenue was still broken and rough in spots, but the street was quiet. There were no people loitering in front of the bar near University and Bay, and the streets seemed unusually clean.

At Bayfront Expressway we turned right onto the bike path and cruised up to the apex of the Dumbarton Bridge. We stopped to enjoy the sunrise through a thick layer of fog. We were supposed to enjoy sunrise from a bay area “peak”. As I dismounted I noticed that my rear tire bounced. I felt it. Soft. Drat! This is the first time I’ve had a flat on the bridge, and I suppose it won’t be the last.

It didn’t take long to find the sharp piece of glass that had lodged itself in my rear tire. We continued quickly down the eastern flank of the bridge and then at a moderate pace along the levee.

We rode down Thornton to Fremont Blvd. then to Peralta. Just after we passed under the BART overpass, I felt my front tire go flat. This was not an auspicious start to a long ride. This time the culprit was a goathead thorn.

We continued on Mowry to Mission Blvd. and then to Niles Canyon Rd. and through Niles Canyon. Our urban route is usually unpleasant later in the afternoon, but at this early hour, the streets were mostly empty, and motorists were polite, even the drivers of pickup-trucks hauling motorboats.

At the mouth of the Niles Canyon we got behind a fast cyclist who looked to be out for a serious ride. I attempted to get a draft, but I usually find this difficult to do without going down onto the drops, especially when the lead cyclist is on aerobars as this cyclist was.

I must also admit that my desire to draft was partly motivated by my curiosity. Was the cyclist male or female? Perhaps we should call this the Pat Syndrome. The 21 mph pace up the canyon was anything but leisurely. That would tend to indicate that the cyclist was male, since men are on the average faster than women. Yet this cyclist’s hips were wide, and the musculature of the legs looked more like what I’ve seen on strong women cyclists. The upper body was barrel-chested and compact and the hair was short. That would tend to indicate a male. The brisk pace precluded any sort of conversation, and besides, I somehow wanted to prolong the mystery. I looked into my rearview mirror and noticed that Richard was lagging behind. Just before I fell back to let Richard catch up, I noticed a bump in the middle of the cyclist’s back that looked suspiciously like a bra clasp.

Having been dropped by our hermaphroditic cyclist, we continued at a slower pace through Sunol and onto Foothill Blvd. Several large groups of women were riding the other direction. I later learned that we had found ourselves in the midst of the “Cinderella Classic”, a women-only organized century ride.

We turned right on Castlewood Rd. and then left on Pleasanton-Sunol Rd. As we rode through Pleasanton, we saw many women cycling, more than I’ve seen concentrated in one place in a long time.

At a light I said, “Hello.” as innocently as I could to one of the women. She looked away as if I wasn’t there and did not answer. Perhaps she thought that if she replied my next utterance would be a proposition for hot, steamy sex.

We continued onto Stanley Blvd. I had originally planned to take Vineyard Rd. to Livermore, but a recent discussion in one of the rec.bicycling newsgroups made me curious to try the bike path alongside Stanley Blvd. We started on the path, but it soon degenerated into the most glass-strewn sidewalk I’ve ever ridden on, even worse than the Dumbarton Bridge. To add injury to insult, utility poles were planted squarely at inconvenient intervals in the westbound “lane” of the path. We got off the pathway and continued on the ample and cleaner shoulder of the road.

At the railroad tracks I unwisely continued at my cruising pace. The rails cross at an oblique angle to the road, and the asphalt has heaved alarmingly on either side and has left a large gap at the rail. Normally I could have handled this, but I had forgotten that I did not nor could I get more than about 120 psi into my rear tire after using my hand pump on the bridge after my flat. (I normally put 140psi in my rear tire, and bunnyhopping my 45+ lbs of rear-heavy bike is extremely difficult.) I heard and felt the rear tire hit the metal rail hard. It surely bottomed out.

When we got to Livermore I checked the wheel. It was distinctly out of true, and the nice, even spoke tension I had finally achieved all around was shot to hell. Still the wheel was rideable, so we did not quit the ride.

Richard did not bring any real food with him, so we stopped at a deli where he picked up a croissant and a bagel. We both refilled our water bottles and prepared for the long climb up Mines Rd. ahead.

At 8:15 we headed south on S. Livermore Ave., past vineyards and turned right on Mines Rd. Traffic was light, and most of it was headed to Del Valle Park.

The first mile or so of climbing on Mines Rd. is steep, but soon the grade lessens and the climb becomes easier. We rode easily up the hill with the aid of a slight tailwind. I stopped once to water the plants, but we both did not take an extended break until we crested Eylar Ridge some 2300 feet higher and 26 miles from downtown Livermore.

While we ate our snacks we heard the sound of a helicopter approaching in the distance. Soon an evil-looking black military helicopter slowly hovered into view. Richard said it was a “Huey”. It flew past us slowly from north to south then curved westward and then to the north behind Mesa Ridge. Then with little warning it rose up from behind a nearby bluff to the northwest and made a mock-dive toward us, thundering past not more than 200 feet overhead, close enough for us to see clearly the bristling weaponry mounted on each side of the cockpit. I didn’t quite have the nerve to take a picture of it. I suppose we in our bicycling attire stood out like bullseyes in the monotonous landscape.

We continued on to the The Junction, arriving at Mike’s Junction Cafe at about 11:10. I haven’t quite figured out what makes Mike, the proprietor, tick. Everytime I walk into the dimly-lit cafe he gives me a hard stare as if he’s just seen a madman. Maybe he thinks all bicyclists are nuts for riding out to his part of the world. Maybe it’s just his personality.

I asked Mike if the water from the hose outside the fire station was safe to drink, in case I happened by some time when his cafe was closed. He seemed insulted.

“Why don’t you ask them? We all drink the water around here. It comes from the same place. Though, there are a lot of cattle around here,” he added with a laugh.

Richard thought Mike was rude. I decided to buy a six-pack of 7-Up and sell two cans to Richard.

As I handed over the money to pay for the drinks, Mike said, “You realize you can’t drink this on the premises. The six-pack is to go.”

I shrugged my shoulders and put the drinks in my bike pack. It seemed odd that he didn’t mind if we drank water from our bottles, but didn’t want us drinking something we bought at his store! Maybe he just wanted me to carry it on my bike.

Richard went back in and bought himself a serving of french fries.

A few minutes later John Hughes, Rick Anderson, Mike Topper, and Kim Freitas arrived at the Junction. They had ridden up the west side of Mt. Hamilton earlier in the morning and were doing a similar loop in the other direction.

When we go in to fill up our water bottles, Mike offers to fill them up under his tap.

“What would you guys do if I weren’t here?”, he asks teasingly.

“You’d be in deep trouble, wouldn’t you.”

A few minutes later several other long-distance cyclists came by: Seanna Hogan, Jim DeCaro, Wyatt Woods, and Shawn and Antoinette Addison.

Twenty minutes after they arrived, John and his company headed out toward Livermore. Richard and I lingered for another 15 minutes before heading south into San Antonio Valley.

One of the reasons I had planned to do this loop this weekend was because I thought I’d hit the wildflowers at their peak. We were disappointed when we saw very little color in the not-so-lush green meadows. It’s been a rather dry winter. Perhaps one or two weeks from now should see the foliage at its peak, but it won’t be as spectacular as it was last year.

We continued without stopping through Upper San Antonio Valley and up over the China Grade Summit to Arroyo Bayo. Not far down the other side, I stopped with a side-stitch. Richard continued on saying he’d probably stop and rest a little later.

The night before I had eaten something that my digestive system did not take a liking to. Early in the morning it notified me of its displeasure in no uncertain terms, and it continued to give me grief as the day wore on. The more worrisome side-effect was that I didn’t absorb the Calories from dinner the night before, and I was starting to feel weak. Fortunately, I have accumulated a small pouch of fat that keeps me from disappearing, but I still needed carbohydrates to proceed comfortably.

After a short break I resumed riding. A took another short break at the top of the ridge separating Arroyo Bayo and Isabel Creek. While I stopped, a large group of cyclists came up from Isabel Creek. They had obviously come from the top of Mt. Hamilton and were traveling in the opposite direction.

Richard was waiting at the turnout on the far side of the bridge over Isabel Creek. I stopped for a minute to move water into my drinking bottles. Then we began the long climb: 4.5 miles and 2050 feet.

We were lucky. The air was cool, yet I sweated profusely. About 1/3 of the way up, Richard dropped his water bottle and stopped to pick it up. I continued slowly hoping he’d catch up, but he was riding very slowly. I managed the climb in my 46x30, and Richard’s lowest gear was 42x23, a rather high gear for this climb.

I had set a goal for myself of riding the entire climb without pause in my 41” gear from the bottom to the top, so I continued on and hoped Richard would make it to the top. I passed the spring just before milemark “3” and just before the top passed a truck screaming downhill towing a tractor trailer. They guy must’ve been nuts to take a big truck down this hill. By the time I reached the top 43:30 later, my back was killing me (Time to start doing stomach crunches again.), and my digestive system decided it was time to clear inventory and must have sensed I was about to make a sale. I proceeded posthaste to the observatory building at the summit and made my way to the single porcelain throne—fortunately vacant—and commenced business.

About 15 minutes after I had arrived, Richard rode up. I apologized for riding on ahead, but I told him I would have ridden back down to look for him if he hadn’t showed up after a while. We enjoyed the hazy view of San Jose from the benchmark at the summit. I was hoping to meet Gardner Cohen at the top as he said he would probably ride up the west side and meet us. After looking down the winding road below I saw a pair of cyclists, but neither of them looked like Gardner.

We stayed at the top for about an hour and a half until 15:30 and the threat of getting caught in the dark pressed us on.

The descent down the west side is much more gradual, but it’s no less twisty. To make matters worse, sand had been dumped on the road to increase automobile traction in the light snowfall that landed on the mountain the day before. Of course, sand on a dry road doesn’t help bicycles at all.

I waited up for Richard at the summit on the far side of Smith Creek and again on the minor upgrade just past Quimby Rd. We descended Crothers Rd. to Alum Rock Ave. and Penitencia Creek Rd. I stopped at a restroom again.

We continued to Piedmont, turned right and proceeded to Cropley. We turned left and continued down the gradual hill through suburb hell where I was nearly the victim of a “left-hook” maneuver by an impatient, testosterone-crazed teenage driver.

We continued on Trade Zone Blvd., Montague Expressway, Trimble Rd., Central Expressway, and Middlefield Rd. arriving home just past 18:00.

Ride stats:

distance: 125.3 miles

climbing: 6890 feet

total time: 12:33

riding time: 8:42

average speed: 14.4 mph

maximum speed: 37.5 mph

index: 153

irp: 12.2

mirp: 17.6

climbing density: 55

An article on indexing can be found here.

©2004, Bill Bushnell

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