This Thanksgiving I woke up at 6:45am so I could put on all my cold weather bike gear and leave the house by 7:30 on my bike. I was headed to Summit Bicycles to go meet up with a bunch of other mountain bikers for the annual Los Gatos Turkey Ride. That may not be its official name, but the idea is that everyone meets up at 8am to go ride up Kennedy Trail, which has its trail head located half way across Kennedy road in Los Gatos. The trail is a large fire road that is quite steep in some areas, but big enough to allow many bikers to ride at the same time. I was very surprised to see that there were several hundred people at Summit Bicycles so early in the morning, and they were kind enough to have the shop open for business until the ride started, and they provided free breakfast rolls and coffee.

The ride started at 8:15 or so and it took me 1:15 to climb 3000′ to the top in about 7 miles. The very last section of the ride, just before the peak where the party was had a 24% incline and was brutal. This was the first time (out of about 8 attempts) that I’ve actually ridden all the way to to the top without having something go wrong on that section of the hill. That incline is steep enough that a single rock, a chain issue, or anything out of the ordinary will completely throw you off balance and its too steep to start again. At the top, there were turkeys, beer, someone actually hauled a keg up on a bike trailer. Someone carried up an entire cooked pig to share, and there was no shortage of brownies, cookies, and other good thanksgiving food to be shared. Next year i’ll have to bring some food to share. I dont know if I’ll go as far as to carry a trailer on my bike, but we’ll see.

Here is a little video clip from my digital camera.
This was such a fun ride that I will for sure participate next year. I hope that I can get more of my friends to come with me as it would make a huge difference once we were at the top. The whole ride from my house was about 20 miles and the whole trip was about 4 hours long, and I was home in time for thanksgiving with the family, or I would have been if we had plans this year. My mom got sick at the last minute so we had a very low key day.here is a link to the message boards where everyone who participates talks. http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=359615

Today started just like any other Sunday, I woke up and decided to ride my bike. Jess wanted me to come say hi to her and her family up at the regatta at Lexington so that’s what I went to go do. I rode up the creek trail to the lake, and just as I went up the first little hill, before crossing over the spillway, there was a group of people gathered pointing up the hill. As I approached, I looked up and my stomach sank. There was a pickup truck, with a rowing trailer with five 8-person rowing shells on it, half way slid down the hill, facing backwards. The truck was in very bad condition; it looked like the truck bed was bent at about a 30-degree angle to the cab. The driver and the passenger were OK and climbed out the passenger side window and up to highway 17. This all just happened about five minutes before I arrived at the scene. I immediately called Jess who was at the boathouse and told her what had happened, and I think she was the first to tell anyone who was still there. Most of the people had left the regatta by then, but the few that were still around went to go help out. I rode over to the boathouse to show them some pictures, and then headed home. On my way home I decided to go up St. Joseph’s hill to see if I could see the accident from above, and sure enough, I could. I whipped out my camcorder again and proceeded to film for an hour, or until the tape ran out, while they removed boats from the trailer and pulled the truck and trailer back onto the freeway. The story I’ve heard thus far is that the brakes on the pickup gave out, and the trailer wanted to go faster than the, causing it to jack knife and fall off the freeway. At $20,000 - $30,000 each, this was no cheap accident. I dont even know if they will be able to repair the one boat they removed by hand before pulling the rest up the hill, as it was missing its entire bow. (see video)

Video Footage: SI-CrewBoatAccident.mp4 Except for the first 15 seconds or so, I took this footage from half way up St. Joseph’s hill in Los Gatos. To the very left of the main shot, is Lexington Dam, and to the right, is downtown Los Gatos. The camera shot is from at least a mile away, zoomed in all the way on my little Panasonic 3ccd minidv camcorder. I didn’t use any digital zoom. I took interest in this accident as I rowed for LGRC for 4 years and know the kind of dedication those rowers have put into their sport. Hopefully they have more boats at their boathouse so they can continue their season.

If you have more info about this incident, or if I didn’t quite get something right, let me know. If you’ve come to this site, and are a member of SI Crew, I’m very sorry for your loss and am very happy to hear that both people in the truck are doing well. I can provide a DVD copy of this video to those directly related to this incident.

so yesterday I decided to buy some running shoes and to run st. Joseph’s hill.. the route i usually bike ride. Well as it turns out i ended up walking about 75% of it. Hopefully next time I can run a little bit more. Today I went on my regular bike ride, but it didn’t turn out so regular. I rode to the top of St. Joseph’s hill, and then down to the launch ramp at the lake. I was feeling pretty good at that point so i decided to ride around the lake. When I got back to the launch ramp I decided to go home the hard way, up the steep hill and to the split where Jones trail will go back to town or i can go up the hill more to the summit. I decided to once again go to the summit for the 2nd time that day. It was harder the 2nd time and went a little slower, especially since I already drank 3 liters of water and had no more. It was an easy ride home from the top, and the trip was about 23 miles long. Much longer than Ive been doing. Tomorrow morning I hope to do Spin class at 6am, but we’ll see how i feel. Now I’m going to go eat some food and go do my homework at Starbucks in Los Gatos. If its still the 16th of October and before midnight, come see me at Starbucks.

So today i went on a much longer bikeride than normal. When I was done I went almost 19.24 miles and climed and decended near 2000 feet. I left the house and went to the bike shop to get some things checked out, and then headed up kennedy road. At the top of kennedy road is a fireroad called kennedy trail (i think). This trail winds up the hill for almost 4 miles of switchback after switchback and eventually puts you on top of the mountain. This hill is right in front of the large white radar cube that is visible from almost everywhere, actually its about 300′ lower. I’m now exhausted and dont really want to move. Im sitting at starbucks with jeff matt and dan and have not done anything worthwhile. I think I’ll go home now.