Back in Austin after six days in the San Francisco area. We were blessed with unseasonably warm weather for January, and were able to get around with just a light jacket or even no jacket at all. There was only one problem: no biking!
It was purely a family visit. We took Mrs. Noob’s mother out there for her 80th birthday, since it’s where she was born and raised, and where Mrs. Noob was born and mostly raised. We spent a lot of time with relatives, but did little sightseeing, and no biking!
That no biking thing really hit home when we went to a family gathering at the home of Mrs. Noob’s cousin and her husband. Their house in Danville, in the East Bay area, backs up to undeveloped land with a view of Mt. Diablo.
Mt. Diablo in the distance, seen from the swimming pool behind the house.
I’ve been reading about Mt. Diablo in biking blogs and biking forums for over a year now, and it’s really got me thinking about doing some biking on something more than just hills. The fact that one of Mrs. Noob’s other cousins is training for a triathlon, and he and I talked biking nonstop for much of the afternoon, just whetted that appetite even more.
So you California bikers, keep climbing Mt. Diablo. I’ll do my best on the hills in this area, but I’ll always be thinking about what it must be like to climb an actual mountain on two wheels. I don’t know when I’ll get out that way again, but the next time I come, you can bet that biking will be on the agenda.
I live in Sacramento and picked up road cycling last summer. During the last few warm days of the fall, two friends and I decided to climb Mt. Diablo, and one of the friends that came me is a very experienced road and mtb biker (the type that has multiple bikes, always bikes for a commute, from Oregon, etc…). He said that, hands down, Mt. Diablo was the best ride he had been on.
It is spectacular, challenging enough, long enough, short enough… spectacular.
There’s an evil downside to this.
*Every* cool ride in Silicon Valley ends up involving a mountain climb. There are no cool rides that can just go up a few hills and do a bunch of flat riding.