This afternoon in my spare time between opportunities I went for a bike ride. While I was climbing I stopped once or twice to check on a sound that my rear wheel kept making, something to do with the spokes, but I couldn’t identify it. After a little bit more riding, and climbing up Overlook Road in Los Gatos, I decided it was something I should have checked out. I turned around and headed for Summit bikes which was literally all down hill from where I stopped. There was no obvious problem with my wheel other than being out of true which means the spokes are giving uneven tension from one spoke to the next and it results in a slightly crooked wheel. While fixing the truing on the wheel one of the spokes popped, and split the rim down the center. Had I not gone in this probably would have happened while I was riding. Good news is that it was all covered by the warranty as the wheels, and the bike are only about 4-5 months old. There was also another spoke a few spokes away from the split where there evidence of more splitting. Below is a photo of my split rim. I am just happy this happened at the shop and not while I was on the road. Summit bikes gave me a loaner wheel to ride home on and will work on getting my split wheel replaced under warranty. As always, Summit continues to impress.
The Los Gatos Turkey Ride 2008 is almost here. Last year mountain bikers came by the hundreds, many carrying complete meals to share with everyone at the top. This year I am excited to have more of my friends interested in this ride as they will be joining me to the top of the hill. To prepare we started to go on longer bike rides, the first of which was to the top of Kennedy trail. I am glad we started to get ready before the big day because we were clearly needing to rest a few times. I wanted to do it again last weekend but the rain prevented us from leaving the house. Weather permitting we should be up there again getting in better shape for a more enjoyable ride on Thanksgiving morning.
If you don’t know what the Turkey Ride is, here is a brief overview.
On Thanksgiving at ~7:00AM, Summit Bicycles in Los Gatos provides coffee and healthy refreshments and is open for business for a short time to help people prepare for their ride up Kennedy trail. Many people have kid trailers for their mountain bikes and they fill them with ready to eat turkeys and all of the other yummy stuff everyone likes to enjoy on Thanksgiving. Other people bring beer and other things to drink. People share everything that they tote up to the top and everyone is very friendly. The ride to the top is not very technical but its also not easy, especially if you have not been riding, but people seem to rest everywhere along the way and there are enough people that you never feel left behind. Last year was my first year and I didnt bring anything, this year I will figure out something to bring to share.
… also if you have not read my previous post from last year about Turkey Ride 2007, it has some videos and additional information. It is found below, sadly it has been a year since my last post.
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.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqTWjTKJruY[/youtube]
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)
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.
