Copyright 1995 David E. Cortesi
Eight AM: I leaned back against a railing one hundred feet (certified by my Avocet 50) above the water, looked around, and whistled with delight: San Francisco was having a Big Air day -- the sky was unblemished cyan, and I could see forever from the crest of the Dumbarton bridge.To my left, the wooded ridge of the Coast Range was olive green; I felt I could almost make out individual trees, although it was 10 miles [16km] distant. The rising sun pointed my shadow northwest toward the San Francisco Airport, 17 miles away [27km]. I watched a 747 climb out, a clean white sliver against the green hills.
To the north, the shape of Mount Tam was crisp against the sky. Early settlers saw it as a supine woman (they were lonely guys). Later, local boosters prettied the image into "sleeping Indian Princess." The city of San Francisco was silhouetted against the Princess's head. I could cover it with my outstretched thumb, yet I could easily make out individual buildings along the waterfront, and see the piers of the Bay Bridge, 25 miles [40km] away. Only the faintest nicotine stain in the lower air between SF and Oakland hinted at the color of our usual chewable atmosphere.
In the northeast the hump of Mt Diablo, 28mi [45km] away and 3825 feet high, was just as crisp. I could almost believe that I could distinguish the tiny pip of the summit observatory building. On my right, the treeless hills of the east bay ran from north to south like tumbled olive-drab bedding. The pyramid of Monument peak stood highest; I meant to circumnavigate it in the next six hours. Directly below the sun I could make out Mount Hamilton, the other local peak that exceeds 1000 meters. It's a figure-8 route of 200 miles to climb and descend both Hamilton and Diablo. Someday...
Not only was this a Big Air day, it was a New Bike day. (How good can it get, eh?) I started east down the bridge on a new Klein Performance that had been loaned to me by George Slough of Slough's Bikes in San Jose, CA. The point of the trip was to find out if the Performance frame suited me. At my request he'd set it up with a triple crank and with Campagnolo Ergopower shifters. The frame had royal-blue-to-emerald-green fade paint. Other than the shifters, it had whatever components were on the bench when George assembled it: Shimano 105 brakes, a Specialized crankset, a Sachs long-cage rear derailleur. My regular bike had contributed a beat-up pair of SPD 737 pedals, the mount for the Avocet 50, and my polar pacer strapped to the very elegant Campy handlebar.
Here are a few visual highlights of the day. Along the Alameda Creek Channel, a deep artificial river whose bottom, at this time of the year, has stagnant water and bullrushes, I was paced for a while by a pair of Great Blue Herons. They fly with massive, slow flops of their 4-foot wings.
At George Slough's urging ("You really want to try that bike on some hills.") I rode up and back Welch Creek Road. This is one lane of ancient asphalt that climbs 1300' in 2.7 miles [400m/4.3km], then stops. Yes, that is almost a 10% average grade, but the grade is not consistent. There were parts where I was in the lowest of low gears, standing, pulling up as hard as I was pushing down, leaning forward to keep the front wheel from lifting. And descending was a blur. But the road runs up a deep green canyon, dense with live oak, with a noisy stream splashing down the center.
Calaveras reservoir is a large artificial lake set in a bowl of very isolated hills. Well, usually they are isolated. On this fine morning there were many cyclists along the road, and an unusual number of automobiles. Still, at one point I stopped and looked out over the sheet of water toward the rumpled, roadless hills on the far side for ten minutes without hearing anything but wind. Actually, the far hills are not entirely roadless. What I was doing was tracing with my eye the line of several dirt tracks that wind enticingly for miles over those hills. I wonder, does anyone ride there...
Torment, or maybe hope, for people who are snowbound this morning: spring is beginning here. I saw cherry trees in bloom in Palo Alto, and the ditch banks and slopes were covered with luminous new grass. The green blades do not yet dominate the brown stalks of last year's crop, so the hills have an odd beige-over-green color that I've called olive drab.
How did the Klein feel? "Light and tight" from the beginning. It took a while for me to learn how it wanted to corner. It seemed to be fighting me until I discovered that it wants a more exaggerated body position on hard turns than my present bike. It wants its rider to stretch the outside leg, to cock the inside knee well toward the center of the curve, to drop the outside shoulder, extend the inside arm, and push the bike down into a bank. Then it goes around smoothly and predictably. Perhaps this is the effect of "touring geometry," requiring a lot of weight transfer to overcome the built-in stability. Anyway, that's how it seemed. The frame construction is immaculate. The fat aluminum tubes flow into each other so smoothly they might have grown in one piece.
Here are the numbers for a splendid ride on the finest of Big Air days:
Distance: 74 miles [119km]
Total climb: 3190 feet [980m]
Average sp: 12.9mph [20.8kph]
Elapsed time: 6:45