Last Ride of 2007: Dec 30 China Camp, Remembering those Dry Days

Here I am again remembering when we used to ride in dry weather, and came upon these pictures of my last 2007 ride. It was Sunday Dec 30, 2007 at China Camp.

We were at least 19 people and I believe everybody somehow knew everybody, so it was like a high school alumni reunion. The picture below shows most of the people that showed up. From Left to Right you can see Eddie, Cowboy, Kristy, Joe, me (Celia), Ronda, Lisa, Dana, Lisa's friend Cloude, Lori, Mike and Aaron. Linda was taking the picture! Mario and John were around who knows where, probably didn't hear my call for the group picture. And Chad, Dan, Dolores and Tom, were on their way, they joined later.

We all started to ride together although several rides were happening at the same time: Dana was leading the beginner's Mike's Bikes ride; I was leading the advance one with Chad; Lisa came with Cloude to do their own ride; Joe, Eddie, John and other boys also did their own route; etc... but somehow we managed to start pedaling at the same time and most of us finished together as well. Weird...

At the top of China Camp by the Nike site, Dolores, Tom, Chad and Dan catched up with us. Here is a picture of Dolores being mad at me for not waiting for her at the bottom. Mario, Linda and Lori are also on the picture.

And here is Tom with Mario and Lori managing to be in all the pictures.

I got a nice pictures of the girls Kristy, Dolores, Linda and Lori.

And here is a picture of Dan by the rolling shoots of the Nike site at the top of China Camp:

And here is Dan about to go down on the shoot!

And here is me going down as well, super fun!

In another blog story I will share how I finally managed to control the fear factor and roll down those shoots. Stay tuned!

Rainy Friday in the Headlands (Jan 25, 2008)

This year Dana, Kevin, Chad and I haven't been able to ride much. Rain, rain, rain, being without power for days, being sick with a horrible flu, rain, rain, rain, burnt arm, visit to Connecticut, rain, rain, rain, school work, rain, rain, rain, and more rain.

Dana, Kevin, Chad and I were thinking about riding last Friday even though it was going to be raining, steady rain and more rain, rain, rain! And here is what happened:

Chad bailed due to rain, rain, rain, school work and, even though he hasn't admitted it, I know he didn't want to get his new XC bike his wife Leigh gave him for X-mas dirty and muddy.

Poor Dana had to bail not because of the rain, rain, rain but because she burnt her arm with boiling water at work really badly. Dana is a chef and also a great caterer (http://www.dbeckcatering.com/) and she was moving a big bowl of boiling water in the kitchen that spilled right on top of her arm! She was too much in pain to ride. Below is a picture of her very swollen arm:


Kevin who went back home to Connecticut (yeah I am referring to Kevin the Cunnecticutian, he is back!) and spent the whole month of December without biking, was dying to ride his bike. And I who was sick with the horrible flu for 2 weeks, I was dying to ride as well.

So Kevin and I went for a killer 3 hours ride in the Headlands. We only saw one more rider near Tennessee Valley Beach, everywhere else we went we saw just the mountains, the trails and incredible amounts of water falling down the sky.

Below is a picture of a desserted Muir Beach and two very wet riders.



Here where I am mounting my bike you can appreciate the kind of visibility we had due to really heavy rain.




But after a killer ride, we got home and got hot showers, hot chocolate, yummy meat and potatoes while telling Sally about our adventure.

We were very happy we went out for a quite killer, wet and fun ride!

And below is a picture Kevin sent me of a cool sculpture made of bike wheels and tires he saw in San Rafael at 4th Street. Pretty Awesome!