Dartmouth Cycling Wiki | Profiles / Day 6

I'll start off with a real life craigslist classified ad (from the washington DC craigslist; as seen on the best of craiglist series):

"You're riding down 18th street on a cool fall afternoon. You notice all the women aged 21-35 are standing along the sidewalk, all staring at you. As you stop for a red light, one approaches:

HER: Pardon me, is that a Campagnolo bottom bracket? YOU: Why yes... it is. HER: [blushes] Wow, you must be a man of true discernment... tell me big boy, how big IS it? YOU: 111mm. HER: [stammers, begins to twitch] E-english threaded? YOU: ENGLISH threaded... HER: [tearing off clothes] YOU TOTAL HUNK OF A MAN, TAKE ME NOW!!!! YOU: [under your breath] Thanks, craigslist!!

Seriously dudes, it could happen to you. This thing is BRAND-FREAKING-NEW! Reduced price!"

Today, I drove up to Marin to go ride. When most people hear Marin, they think of hot-tubbing liberal hippies. That's pretty accurate, except they're incredibly wealthy to boot. In addition to hot-tubbing, they enjoy fine bicycles. I've heard the rule of thumb out there for figuring out how much to spend on your next bike is to subtract the monthly nanny bill from the cost of your wife's most recent boob job.

I rode around the Mt. Tamalpais/Stinson Beach/Point Reyes area. This area is recognized by UNESCO as being representative of an ecosystem type. There is a reason why mountain biking was invented in this area. The roads and scenery are amazing. To start my ride, I was doing a long, switchback laden climb through a fog-drenched redwood forest. The road was red from all the redwood needles on the ground. After hitting the coast ridge, I eventually emerged from the redwoods to grasslands. On the ridge, on the right, you could see the heavy ocean churning at Stinson beach; on the left, you could see thick fog enveloping the bay, with the higher mountains jutting out of it. Once I descended next to the ocean, there were migratory birds all along the bay. On the way back, I was following a creek where Steelhead salmon go in the winter.... Enough scenery-porn. The plan was to go climb Mt. Tam, follow the ridge and descend Muir Woods down to the ocean (highway 1), then climb back to the ridge via panoramic highway, then descend back to the ocean on fairfax bolinas road. this route would ensure a ride with ~1.2 million banked switchback turns. Instead, after climbing Mt. Tam, I saw that highway 1 had been washed out (again), so I had to rework things (ed note: the tour of california goes along this section of highway 1, so I don't know how they're going to re-route it-- the only way I can think of involves some pretty awesome descents, though) .Despite the changes, and the rain, the ride was still awesome. Ended up doing 55mi, with 5000ft of climbing.

A couple of side tidbits: 1) Descending panoramic highway, someone had spraypaint stenciled on the ground "biker outfits suck." What an astute observation. 2) Going up Mt. Tam, I had zoomed past a group of cyclists. On the way down, I had asked them about the road closures. Below is a snippet from the ensuing conversation:

Biker guy: How old are you, by the way? Biker girl, interjecting: He can't be that old, he has dartmouth stuff on Me: Uhmm, i'm young enough... 22. Biker guy: that makes me feel better about you passing me so fast Me: Oh, don't worry, I do a lot of drugs. Biker guy: Really? Me: No. Biker girl: Do you have any drugs for me, I could really use some. Me: No (and I leave)

rock out, and do drugs, matt

ps-- rudy, toby, jen-- nice results again. i'm still waiting for a race report....