After months of planning and anticipation, April Alpina est arrivée. With the mostly dry and warm weather we have had this March, most club members have sprinted out of any winter doldrums they may have been experiencing and have increased their riding frequency, time, and distance. April Alpina is a program that encourages a change of focus from quantity of rides to quality of rides. It is thought that a month of “hitting the slopes” will help most riders to ramp up to a level of strength and conditioning that will serve them well for the rest of the year.
As noted in an earlier article, there are two new aspects to this year’s edition: a new, very challenging ride and a new goal of accumulating 1,000,000' of gain through the month of April. Intellectually, one can assume that club members overall accumulate at least a million feet of gain in a month, but the April Alpina data page is the only place one can see it documented.
As for the new ride—the Fearsome Five—due to scheduling conflicts for its creator, Marc Moons, we are holding it on March 31 but still counting the gain in April. Guidelines on how to log your elevation gain can be found on the club’s AA web page. Also, it has come to our attention that a certain number of riders doing the Solvang Double Century on March 31 are, rightly or wrongly, feeling left out, so it has been decided to also allow their accumulated gain to be logged in April. (There will be a SAG vehicle at the base of Pine Mountain Road during the FF for water and other supplies.)
To sign on, contact Bill Dunn (415-269-0591; cfcycle@yahoo.com) and tell him your goal and preferred password, if any.
Saturday, April 14 Spring Picnic (aka: March Magic Wrap-up) Riverfront Regional Park • Eastside Road April 28-29 SRCC-RUSA 400-K Brevet Destination RKA • Windsor Saturday, May 5 Wine Country Century Wells Fargo Center for the Arts • Santa Rosa Saturday, May 12 WCC Volunteers’ Appriciation Ride & Picnic Shiloh Park • Windsor May 26-27 SRCC RUSA 600-K Brevet Destination RKA • Windsor June 2-9 Mid-State Tour Santa Barbara • Solvang • Paso Robles Saturday, June 16 The Terrible Two Double Century Analy High School • Sebastopol Saturday, July 7 TT & Brevet Volunteers’ Ride & Picnic Oak Knoll Group Site • Spring Lake Park • Santa Rosa August 4-12 Northern Oregon Tour (FULL) Saturday • September 8 Fall Picnic Ragle Regional Park • Sebastopol October 5-7 SRCC Grizzly Weekend Bass Lake • North Fork Sunday • November 11 West Dry Creek Adopt-a-Back Road Litter Pick-up City Hall • Healdsburg Saturday, December 8 Holiday Dinner & Awards Presentation Druids Hall • Santa Rosa
Registration for the club’s Wine Country Century on Saturday, May 5 is running well ahead of any previous year’s pace. We’ll hit our 2500-rider limit by early April. Now we need to hit our maximum on support staff as well...
We still need volunteers for a number of tasks:
For members who plan to ride the WCC, there are still opportunities to help on the event. You can help out at the Volunteers’ Ride on May 12th. Volunteers who support this ride by staffing one of the four rest-stops or helping prepare and serve the BBQ at the end can ride the WCC for free. If you can help us out, please call Susan Noble (303-4275) or René Goncalves (544-1918).
Aside from the pride of knowing they helped put smiles on the faces of 2500 WCC riders, of putting on one the best centuries around, and of being an active part of the Santa Rosa Cycling Club, volunteers recieve other rewards as well: a beautiful event t-shirt , delicious BBQ meal at the finish of the WCC, and a fully supported ride along the same wonderful course with our own BBQ picnic one week later. Add to that all the money you will be helping to raise to support numerous great local causes and non-profits. So, what do you say? Are you going to join us in the fun? Call a committee chair today! (See Committee Chairs roster on page 8.)
WCC Volunteer Appreciation Ride and BBQ is on Saturday, May 12th, at a new location: Shiloh Park on Faught Road. RSVP with your WCC Chair. Look for ride start times and more BBQ info in the May newsletter.
One more thing...WCC work day at club locker: Sunday, April 8th, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. Building shelves, fixing signs, sorting and taking inventory of equipment. Come for all day or just a couple of hours. Lunch provided. We need to borrow a generator for the day...got one ? Please call Doug Simon to sign up (577-0113). He can be reached on that day at the locker at 481-6355 (cell), so you can get in the locked gate.
The mileage feeding frenzy that is March Magic traditionally finds its closure with the MM Picnic, held in April...this year on Saturday, April 14. But this MM Picnic will be a little different. The club has decided to open the party up to all club members, whether they did the MM thing or not. We hope this picnic will become a new club tradition: a Spring picnic to counterbalance our Fall picnic.
All food and drinks provided by the club. 12:30 to 3:00 PM; Riverfront Regional Park (off Eastside Road). This will be our Second Saturday multi-tempo date, and rides will be listed for A, B, & BC groups, all designed to arrive at the park in time for the feast.
There is very limited parking at the park, so we have designed these routes to start and finish elsewhere, with the riders arriving at the picnic on bikes. See Ride List for details on routes and start times. Because it is not a potluck, you won’t need to worry about how to transport your tossed salad or casserole to the event on your bike.
Menu: BBQ tri-tip sandwiches; grilled polenta with marina sauce; grilled veggies; caeser salad; blond brownies & ice cream; beverages.
RSVP is a must! Let’s please not have any more of those “not-clear-on-the-concept” people who can’t be bothered with this simple but essential courtesy. Don’t make Miss Manners mad! RSVP with Doug Simon: desimon@sbcglobal.net; 577-0113.
It’s always about the weather, isn’t it? Especially in the springtime. This past reporting period was no exception...from late February to mid-March. (Call it the month of Febarch.) It started out pretty rotten, but just kept getting better as we went along.
Randall Ray’s A Hill and a Bump ride led things off on February 24: “So much for never having listed a rain ride. The forecast called for ‘overcast, with occasional showers.’ As the start time approached, there was a steady light rain falling. Nine riders showed up, two of whom weren’t dressed for the rain. The other seven of us talked ourselves into at least giving the ride a shot. We had one guest, John, who is a very strong rider. In the spin out to Pine Flat we ate a lot of grit, and someone turned back. The remaining six of us made an easy tempo the first few miles up Pine Flat. As we passed the pond, I pointed out where I had gone into the fence, and was surprised to see a little fluorescent piece of my shell ensnared in one of the barbs. Pretty good reminder. The higher we climbed the more the wind picked up and the horizontal rain really began to sting. Five of us went to the foot of the wall, and the new guy and I made it to the gate. That was the easy part...
“We descended very carefully, partly because the wet brakes didn’t work so well, but mostly to minimize the wind chill. We regrouped at Jimtown, where they quickly recognized our near-hypothermic plight. We were offered moist towels heated with steam from the espresso machine. As we cuddled our coffee and gumbo, appreciating the return of sensation to our extremities, we agreed to cut the ride short and head back to Healdsburg. This was a character-building experience. We all share a stronger bond as a result. Cycling is so much more than just riding the bike, isn’t it?”
You know the left-hand column next to the Ride List on page four? The part where it says, in large caps: “RAIN CANCELS ALL RIDES, UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.” I guess either they didn’t understand this sentence, or perhaps it was one of those “otherwise” rides. These guys were crazy. Simple as that. But who among us has not conned himself into riding in the rain? See that little patch of blue over there? Yeah...it’s getting bigger! (Not.) Most of us found something else to do on this soggy day, and it looked as if Sunday was going to be more of the same when we rolled out of bed. Personally, I wrote off all the listed club rides—three of them—as wash-outs. But around 9:30 in the morning, the rain stopped and the skies cleared, more or less. If you were paying attention, you jumped all over this with both feet: out the door and on the bike to wherever...salvaging something out of what had appeared to be a lost weekend.
Sue Bennett was in charge of one of the rides and sent in a report: “It had been raining off and on, mostly on, all morning, and at 9:00 am it was still raining. At 9:15, the sun poked out between the clouds, so Alan and I decided we had probably better go to the start in case someone showed up. No one was there, not unexpectedly, but we waited until 9:45 anyway. During this time the sky continued to clear a bit, so we decided to ride. Along the route, Kirsten joined us. She had ridden from home, once the rain let up, and intersected the ride. On the way back from Petaluma, we could see rain here and there around the area. At one point the roads were even newly wet, but we managed to dodge the rain the entire ride. Yahoo!”
I rode solo to Petaluma on the same day, and for about one mile right in Chicken City, I got nailed by a rain squall. Aside from that, a nice day to be out riding. The reports I get from the other two rides seem to bear this out. Denise only had one person show up for her Mix and Match Ride, but they had a great day, with mostly sun and just a teeny bit of drizzle. Nikola Farats had a small handful of riders show up for his 74th Birthday Ride, and they too got away mostly dry and made it back to Nick’s for a gourmandizing gala...vast quantities of food. If it had just looked as good at 8:30 as it was starting to do at 9:30, a lot of us would have been there to share in the feast.
And that was the end of the funky weather, at least for now. March opened up pleasant and warm. There were two fairly ambitious rides on the first Saturday and another on Sunday that could be as ambitious as you wanted to make it...an infinitely expandable ride. Saturday began with the opening salvo in our season-long march to Paris-Brest-Paris in August. This was our qualifying 200-K brevet...a run from Healdsburg to Napa and back. Club brevet boss Donn King reports: “We had ideal conditions on Saturday for a speedy 200-K and that’s just what we got. Craig Robertson and Jennie Phillips pretty much defined the pace at the front on their tandem and finished in six hours flat. Club members who rode: Dave Batt, Charlie Rowell, Bill & Evelyn Ellis, Greg Durbin, Dennis Forer, Craig Robertson, Mike McGuire, Barley and Susan Forsman, and Donn King.
“Sharon and Donna handled the check-in and brevet card distribution unflappably. Bill Mattinson helped out with crowd control and gave the instructions to the riders at the start. Lo and behold, Bob Redmond came up from Petaluma just to be there and provide moral support. Chris Culver, Casey Morrigan, Tom Kuhn, and John Miklaucic set up and ran the turnaround at Skyline Wilderness Park, just NE of Napa. John M.’s wife was there too, and my apologies because I don’t remember her first name. There were 102 entrants, 90-some starters, and 88 finishers. Everyone got back in one piece. For the second year in a row, thanks to Bill E.’s concept, and Kimberly Hoffman’s administration, the finish was located at the Bear Republic in Healdsburg. On Saturday, the weather was fine and we had our own little 200-K corner outside on the patio. It was very congenial. Many, many thanks to Matt and Kimberly for your support and time and good naturedness.”
The other ride on the day—a bit shorter but equally challenging—was Wes Hoffschildt’s Franz Valley-Spring Mountain loop. Any ride that climbs Spring Mountain is going to be a full-tilt ass-kicker of a ride, and this one didn’t disappoint. There were close to 20 riders at the start in Santa Rosa, and they stayed gruppo compatto over the climbs on Montecito and Riebli, then broke apart on the Mark West-Franz Valley ascent, regrouped on the far side, then split up again on the Franz Valley School climb, regrouped again in Calistoga, and finally split up for good not on some big climb, but on a little roller on Silverado Trail. Once distanced from the lead group, those of us in the back group decided to abandon Silverado for Crystal Springs, and this lovely little side road was reckoned by all to be a big improvement over the busier main drag. But it put us even further behind the front bunch. Then Janice Oakley got a complicated flat requiring first a tricky boot to get into St Helena and then a purchase of a new tire in town. All of that took more time, so that we never saw the avant garde again. But we still had a great time, if you can call struggling up Spring Mountain a positive experience. That is just one seriously hard climb! But the descent off the far side pretty nearly made up for it. Did you know those are the headwaters of Mark West Creek along that descent? I didn’t until I looked it up on the map just now. The creek was cranking, and several cascades and waterfalls were as cute as calendar photos. A flurry of e-mails to the chat list after the ride reassured us that all parties made it home okay, if somewhat tuckered out in a few cases.
The next day, Steve Drucker reprised Martin Clinton’s March Magic miles making ride: a 25-mile loop out of Cotati that could be repeated as often as one wished. Steve reports: “We had just six riders for the 8 am ride. Crisp air, virtually no traffic, and beautiful scenery. 15 or so riders of all abilities were out for the 10 am ride. Ditto for the 12 o’clock round. Just two of us rode all three loops. Several did two circuits and many rode from home or added variations to the club ride. The wind picked up as the day went on, but the green fields splattered with yellow and the perfect bike riding temperatures made the riding very enjoyable.”
And that brings us to the March Second Saturday Ride, which was something old made new again. This marked the rebirth of the venerable Free Lunch Ride. Those who attended the January meeting and voted in our election were rewarded not with free pizza at the meeting but with a promise of a free lunch in March. The Free Lunch Rides were the original multi-tempo, all-inclusive rides in the club...the prototype for all the Second Saturday and Friendly Friday rides that have followed. It had fallen by the wayside a few years back, but is now with us once again, and it functioned as it used to do and as these affairs are supposed to do: all the different factions of the club ended up mingled together, both at rest stops and along the country roads. Something like 60 or 70 people showed up for the ride on a day that was about as nice as it could possibly be. None of the routes was too killer, so the atmosphere was relaxed and congenial. That doesn’t mean the pace was entirely pokey though. There was a frisky, feisty dynamic at the front of the fastest group, with two or three strong tandems trading pulls and making the singles work a little to hang on. But it was all good fun and stayed just this side of painful.
There was a big regroup at the Jimtown Store. Folks were a bit thoughtless in the disposal of their bikes, eventually obstructing the entrance to the store, which prompted an awkward moment with the manager. Let’s be very clear about this: the folks at the Jimtown Store like cyclists. They have the water spigot there for us in the alley, and they like our business. But we need to be considerate of their needs and the needs of their other customers. We need to be a little less clueless about how we clutter up the forecourt with our bikes. Anyway...back to Healdsburg and our date with El Sombrero, where around half of the whole ride contingent stayed on to do battle with their burritos. Good weather; good company; good roads; good food. Did we leave anything out?
Next up was another day of above-average excitement on the club ride front. That would be the 14th annual Apple Cider Century out of Sebastopol. Due in part to the unbelievably nice weather and in part to it being a great course with an established reputation, we had a substantial turn-out for the combined 100-mile/100-K start: at least 100 riders on hand, from all over the bay area. (Hidden between those two distances is an increasingly popular third option: beginning on the longer course, then peeling off for Sebastopol in Occidental, which works out to around 75 miles. Many people chose to do this.) The massive group stayed somewhat cohesive to the first rest stop in Monte Rio, where the 100-Ks turned south. On the long course, the big hills—and a few flat tires—soon had the pack fractured into many little splinters, and many of those never came back together again. It was weird: from one of the biggest packs of the year at the start to some of the most isolated little clusters of riders at the finish. But whether riding in big groups or small, no one could ignore the scenery: everything as green as Ireland on St Paddy’s Day. You’d think we’d grow jaded with this Disneyland-for-grown-ups where we get to do our biking, but when great weather and great spring scenery combine to showcase the west county, it’s pretty well impossible to ignore it all. And not only is it gorgeous to look at, it’s also a hoot for cycling thrills. No wonder 100 people show up to take part. This was as nice as any of the previous 13 Apple Cider Centuries.
Once again tackling the tough job of following up on a big event, Rose Mello listed a ride on the following day, from Cotati down through the rolling, green dairylands to Petaluma. Rose reports that around 30 riders showed up for this one and that it was, as usual, another day in Paradise. Uneventful, except for being perfect.
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