California Wine Country
Susan Lowery and I took a trip to Northern California
at the end of April. Susan has loads of vacation time, and I offered
to join her for one of her monthly trips. We chose the area because
we knew the riding would be challenging and scenic and thought
the weather would be reasonable.
John and I had ridden through parts of Napa and
Sonoma when we did the Terrible
Two a couple of years ago. We both fell in love with the area
and decided it would be great to come back and do some touring
or less intense day rides. Of course now I am left wanting even
more, and John is quite envious after hearing my descriptions
of the climbs and descents and seeing the pictures, so we will
go back again.
The pictures don't remotely do it justice. The
wildflowers were incredible, but I kept waiting for better light
and in the end came back with very few shots. And I must have
been too breathless (both from the climbing and incredible views)
of King's Ridge to take many shots. But hopefully you'll enjoy
the few pictures I did take.
Susan ordered a series of route sheets from Adventure
Velo. We also had Krebs
Bicycle Touring maps. These are great maps showing loads of
roads for cycling, with the very important arrows indications
for climbs and descents. A single arrow corresponds to 3-5%, two
arrows is 6-8%, and three is 9%+. Simply pulling out the maps
and connecting a series of roads with three arrows on them will
get you a nice scenic tour, but it was nice to have some descriptions
and options for shortcuts of the pre-planned rides we got from
Adventure Velo. Bill Oetinger, the man behind Adventure Velo has
done a spectacular job of putting together lots of different routes,
with detailed cue sheets, descriptions, course profiles, maps,
and options for longer or shorter rides. I definitely recommend
checking out his site.
Susan brought along her Air
Friday, packed in a Samsonite Suitcase. I brought my Co-Motion
Express, a single bike with S&S couplers, which packs
into a 26"X26"X10" suitcase. This bike was actually
a prototype used mainly for display at shows, which I got for
a good deal last fall. This is my second trip with it and it has
performed quite well. It is great travelling incognito,
if you will. We rented a station wagon, and managed to carry both
bikes, their cases, and our suitcases with clothing. If we had
planned our first and last nights at the same place, we could
have left the bike cases, but they were small enough that we could
fit everything, so it worked out fine!
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