All right, Garmin said it was 50 miles, and Strava said it was 40. Whatever it was, it sucked. 5600 feet of climbing, including Tunitas Creek, which is evil.

Because I like being sterotypical, sometimes.




At the bottom of Tunitas Creek.




After much suffering...




Smooches!

My birthday present from my lovely husband was a trip to Rich Oliver's two-day Fun Camp. We have been intending to go for years, but could never justify the money - until he decided, you only live once, and gave me this awesome gift. So we packed up my gear and headed out on Friday evening to Auberrry, CA (a hop, skip, and a few jumps from Fresno).

It's actually quite a pretty drive.



( Fun Camp and wet IMS race. )

Commute pics. There are advantages to living here. :D

( Pics. )

1) Make a list of fourteen characters first, and keep it to yourself for the moment. (That way you're not leading the questions asked to fit the characters.)

2) Ask your flist to post questions in the comments.

For example:

'One, Nine, Fourteen and One are chosen by a prophecy to save the world from Four. Do they succeed?'
'Under what circumstances might Five and Seven fall in love?'
'Which character on the list would you most want on your side in a zombie invasion?'
'What would Two experience in Silent Hill?'
'What Pokémon would Eight have?'
'Write a drabble in which Six and Nine FIGHT CRIME.' (...possibly not technically a question.)

3) After your flist has asked enough questions, round them up and answer them using the fourteen characters you selected beforehand, then post them.

Crazy inversion layer this morning - it was pea-soup all of the way up past the entrance to the Radio Tower Road, then it cleared away. It was totally clear at the top of the mountain, the fog lying down below like a blanket. Too bad I only had my cell phone for pics.

We made it down to Santa Cruz before the end of 2011!

The Strava is here.

The pictures are below. :) I set the GoPro to shoot off pics every so often, so the pictures with a visor at the bottom are from that. The rest are from the point-and-shoots.

I took the Fuji, Neal took the Moto-Bacon. We took off on Friday morning. It was damp, but it looked clear.




( Pictorays!! )

First of all - thank you for doing this! This is one of the loveliest parts of the season, to me.

As far as my likes, the first will always be canon compliance. (Yes, if you drew Ultima, canon is a little more flexy.) That makes me very happy.

I do like a good bit of humor if it's that kind of a fic, and I like some angst if that's what's on tap. I like sex if it fits, but I don't require it if it doesn't. I don't have a lot of squicks around sex or violence, as long as it works with the story (I don't like watersports and scat, that kind of thing, but anything else...). I don't like MPREG.

Beyond that, go for it, and again, thanks!

aka 100-mile bike ride. I did it. That's about all I can say...!

I've done 60-70ish mile rides; I did a 65 a few weeks ago. So, I thought, what's another 35?

Rather a lot, it turns out. After about 65 miles, I was getting a bit tired. With 30 miles to go, I was dying a bit, and finding that I was having trouble visualizing finishing. With 20ish to go, I was in a bit of a state where I wasn't sure of anything. With less than a mile to go, when they had a Turn Right sign one turn too early, and I made a wrong turn, ended up on 101, and had to turn around, I was about ready to give up on this whole bicycling thing...

I finished, collapsed against Neal, and tried to raise my hand to my face to stuff it with complimentary salad and lasagna. It was rather hard to use my muscles.

What didn't help with the whole thing is:
-Cold. Wet. Foggy. Raining.
-Big hill right at the beginning.
-Headwind on the way back.
-No peloton to ride with. A gal I passed easily on the big climb went whizzing by in a peloton later.
-The course. It used a lot of big roads - most of it was Highway 46 and Highway 1. This is central California - there should be lots of cool backroads!
-The aforementioned bad marking at the end.

But, hey, I made it (in just over 6 hours of pedal time, just under six and a half hours total). I used my new Garmin Forerunner 305 to record it to Strava, and that seemed to work well. Integrated heart rate, cadence, and speed is rather cool. (It says 99.4 instead of 100 because I forgot to start it at the start line.)

( Pictures from my GoPro Hero )

Depsite not getting enough sleep last night, I did my personal best on the Guadalupe Canyon and Radio Tower climbs this morning. I had a few changes that probably helped; I finally got some real road shoes and SPD-SL cleats to replace my SPD cleats and mountain shoes (well, perhaps 'complement' instead of 'replace;' I'm keeping the SPDs and mountain shoes for my Jango commute bike). I also found some tires in the back room that were rated to 110 PSI, so I switched out my 90-PSI tires for those. I've been running 100psi with no issues in them, but might as well be safe.

All this is to say - I like red, it's my favorite color, but still - the bike was on massive sale, the seat was the only color they had in a good women's saddle, the tires were lying around - I'm not trying to be that goofily coordinated!

It also didn't help that the road shoes - on clearance in my size for a killer price - are, yes, red, black, and white.

This is all a shakedown for the 100-mile ride Neal and I are doing on Saturday - eep!

Strava of today.

San Bruno mountain at the top is so very worth the climb. Today is high pressure, hence the haze.