Varied Velocipedes

This weekend was host to two great bike rides of two different forms (thus the Varied Velocipedes).

Saturday, I drove out with a buddy to the Boggs State Demonstration Forest, located in Cobb, CA. The fire department out there maintains a small plot of land where they must do fire management experiments. They also have a heliport. I've come across a few other of these Demonstration forests, because the Fire Department either doesn't care, or encourages the use of these lands for trail building. In either case, both the Soquel Demonstration Forest (near Santa Cruz) and the Boggs Demonstration Forest are home to some wicked fun trail networks.

So, Saturday morning, after rebooting my computer on campus, re-arranging my programs, and getting them running again, we loaded up and drove out to Cobb, CA, which is just north east of Napa Valley. I had never been through Napa Valley before. It's very pleasant with the vineyards sprawling on the flat valley floor and scruffy, golden hill rising all around.

The trails at Boggs are very clean and neat. There's about 24 miles of single track trail almost all of it is the smooth buffed out type that makes for very fast riding. That's good because you end up spending less time with your feet in the poison oak.

The trails wind through a pine forest. Not the dense, dark redwood forest found near the coast, but an open, dry pine forest. Riding out there reminded me of the Riding in Nederland, CO, except 7,000 feet lower.

Matt busting through the single track on his new bike. Dual suspension carbon fiber mountain bikes? What Bosh.


Here's a view through the big pine trees. Vineyards and puffy clouds visible in the back.


Today, (after checking to make sure my programs were indeed still running, scrubbing all of the data down) I did a favorite road loop. Started at my front door, rode up to Skyline, and then back down to Pescadero, CA, which is just a mile up from the coast. Rode up Stage road which parallels Highway 1, and climbed back up 84. Its around 60 miles, but it takes you from the flats of Palo Alto to 3000 feet (twice!), through the dark redwood forests where everything is wet, down through manzanita scrub, to the golden hills along the ocean, through eucalyptus groves, and then back again. Sorry, no pictures. A camera is just too many extra grams.