Endurance Turtle A journey through this turtles triathlon adventures

And did a final ride on my other bike

Last week I was in San Diego for a conference and on the last day I was finally able to get a ride in. I decided that I wanted to go over to Coronado, so I mapped it out the night before and wrote down all the directions. It was mostly on bike paths but there was some rough road riding as well. Since I was in a mostly industrial neighborhood, I must have crossed over at least 6 sets of railroad tracks.

Here is the route I took, I used the google maps bike feature for the first time and I liked it. I had some trouble at one point finding the where the bike path cut to but eventually figured it out:

This would be the last real ride I would have on my Specialized, and while I was riding I finally named it….Big Red….because it is too big for me and is bright red Overall, the ride was really flat. The steepest grade was 4%, and that was for 2.5 seconds as I went over a bridge. It started to get a little bit boring after a while, and I started to miss the San Gabriel Mountains. Once I got to Coronado, I hopped on the ferry and took it back to the convention center since I had to get back for my last session. I also had to get back because I was going to a Padre’s game with my cousin. We had pretty good seats, and I really like that stadium….makes Dodger Stadium look like a dump!

Then, when I got home, I coordinated a time to pickup my new bike! I bought it used off of a friend, it is the right size and is SUPER light. It has an all carbon frame and Ultegra components. I still have to get a new compact crank for it, right now it has a standard double, which i’ll get to later. Here she is in all her glory, I still have yet to name her:

I’ll probably change the handlebar tape to black, the white just gets too dirty!

So yesterday, I was finally able to get out and ride on the new bike. George and I started out near Northridge and headed toward Simi Valley. We climbed a pretty steep hill, and in my standard double I was struggling to get up but I managed to do it…which made me happy

Here are a few pics from the ride, this first one is when George said “we can take a left and go around or walk over the dirt.” I opted for the dirt…

Then we get to the other side, and George got slightly lost…. this was him circling while looking up on his phone where we needed to go:

We somehow managed to get to some sort of camp area for kids. But George figured it out and we were on our way. We eventually got to the hill we needed to climb and I told George that I would take it nice and slow. Being in that double wasn’t going to help me get up the hill any faster…. I eventually made it up, this is George and I under some shade after the climb:

George is very euro with his jersey all unzipped It got pretty hot on the ride up, we were in a canyon that doesn’t get much of a breeze and it was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

On our way back we stopped by REI and George picked up supplies for a new saddle bag, he lost his recently. Then we ate and headed back, on the way back I took this picture…I really don’t know how he does this. I have tried and I can never do it…

Hope you had a great 4th of July weekend! Time to get back to work!

P.S. Now my bike is for sale….2007 Specialized Allez, size 56″ for $650. If you know anyone looking for a bike in the Los Angeles area, let them know about it.

Craigs List posting: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/bik/1828314975.html