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.
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.