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| 2003, Dec. 7, Ahmanson Ranch property |
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This was the sky that we were treated to during Sunday mountain bike ride. In
spite of a few overnight drizzles, 6 1/2 people showed up for today's ride into the newly public Ahmanson Ranch
property. I say 6 & 1/2 because Rod was only 1/2 awake when he showed up in his jammies & slippers (not
really) to tell us the ride he was going to lead was going to be leaderless because he didn't think anyone would
be crazy enough to show up after the rain. Which brings me to the 6 crazies--Me, Warner, James, Brian, Mitch, &
Aaron A. After being led to the start of the ride and given some oral directions by Rod before he left us to
climb back into bed with his jewish guilt, we entered the trail that led to Ahmanson.
Rod's directions were exquisite and we found our way thru the new state
property down to the Las Virgenes Fireroad. Unfortunately, there was a thin crust of moist clay soil covering the
dry Ahmanson soil underneath, and we picked up a fair amount of mud, especially in our cleats and pedals and
tires. Although we (especially me) stopped a few times to dig the mud out of our cleats, we never got seriously
bogged down, and by the end of the ride most of the mud was gone.
We turned right on the Las Virgenes FR, rode past the bottom of Gas Pipe and
up to the single-track trail that comes in from Bell Canyon. At this point Aaron decided that he had had enough
and left us to go back to the cars. The rest of us decided to continue on up the fireroad. Usually we come
down this road....little did we realize all of the climbing that was involved. We continued past the top of
Marbles Trail, climbing (and walking sections of) the fireroad until we felt we could climb no more.
No one had a GPS device or altimeter, but we took a rough estimate and figured
we climbed about 300,000 feet, give or take.
At the top of our millionth grueling climb we saw that that there was yet the
million first grueling climb awaiting us, and so we decided to turn back. Of course, since we did so much
climbing to get to this point, we were treated to a lot of downhill fun on the way back. In some odd quirk of
nature, the time spent enjoying the downhill goes by so much quicker than the time spent suffering the same
distance uphill. What is THAT all about?!#%!
We finally got back to the single track that led us out to the top of paved
Bell Canyon. A quick ride down Bell got us to our cars for the journey home after almost 16 miles and the
aforementioned 300,000 feet of climbing. We also noted that Aaron's car was gone which meant either he was having
a very good day (he made it back safely to his car) or a very bad day (he was lying on the trail somewhere and
someone else had stolen his car). I prefer to think the former.
Have a good week.
Robco Baggins
P.S. It was good to see Brian out riding again after his horrible accident
this summer in Hawaii. He has made a remarkable recovery and seems to be riding as strong as ever. A close-up
view of this strongman!
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