Copyright 1995 David E. Cortesi
Owing to a couple of instances of arrythmia at pulse rates over 160, my cardiologist has recommended that I use a pulse monitor and limit my max pulse. After extensive negotiations between him, me, and my spouse, I have agreed to use a Polar Pacer with the upper alarm set at 150bpm, and to slow down whenever it starts peeping. So I strap on this unwelcome companion, Mr Peeps, the Polar PaceFink.
I head south on Middlefield road for Mountain View and Santa Clara. The morning traffic is surprisingly light here. Waiting with the light at San Antonio road, I pull the bike sideways to make room for a pickup truck turning right. The burly driver shouts a cheerful "Thank you!" through his half-open window as he rolls by.
Middlefield rises in a graceful arc and drops me onto Central Expressway. This is a rarity, a limited-access road with a bike lane. It is an adrenaline rush to pedal along with commuters going 50mph (80K). I have to "observe and anticipate" (the British driving instructor's mantra) with special intensity to get through the cars merging on and exiting. The brisk traffic kicks up a lovely following breeze that adds 15% to my normal flat-ground cruise. For a while I roll at 21.5 mph (35K) with Mr. Peeps reading a comfortable 130.
Central Expressway ends in a T-junction at Trimble road and I swing left to cross Interstate 101. Suddenly I am surrounded by huge trucks, the kind that, when they idle, sound as if the engines were chewing on large rocks, and whose wheels are as high as my shoulder. There is no verge. They want to turn right onto the freeway, while I need to go over. I pull to the side and wait for a break in the flow, then sprint (the PaceFink yelping madly) past the mouth of the freeway entry lane.
Beyond the freeway, Trimble is easy. At some point it leads over railroad tracks where the asphalt has squeezed up into sharp wedges around the steel rails. I feel the front tire squash against the rim as I hit this, and expect a fine pair of snake-bite punctures, but the tube survives.
Trimble joins Montague Expressway and it takes me (in two adrenaline-fueled sprints) over Interstates 880 and then 680. At some point, unnoticed, Coyote Creek passes under my wheels. This sluggish tidal creek marks the center of the valley; from here on I am climbing gently toward the East Bay Hills, a range of soft brown hills that extends from furthest left to furthest right in front of me. My surroundings change from industrial flatlands to new suburban townhouses on sloping streets.
Montague ends at Piedmont, a well-named street that bounds the foot of the hills. Behind is suburban Milpitas; across the street is only yellow grass sweeping up to the top of the hills. I've come 21 miles (34K) in 1:40. The sun is well clear of the hills and I'm sweating. Under a "Welcome to Milpitas" sign I take off my neon-yellow fog shell and stow it.
A few miles down Piedmont I start up into the hills on Calaveras road. Calaveras is a bad road. It is narrow, and the asphalt at its edges crumbles into a narrow, rock-strewn shoulder. There is a surprising amount of traffic, mostly trucks with horse trailers.
This is the first real climb of the day and I am learning what I have to do in order to pacify the PaceFink -- namely, climb gently in my lowest (42:32) gear, standing, resting on the front bars. During these slow-motion climbs there is no wind and I can feel the sun. At the entrance to Ed Levin county park I stop to smear on sunblock.
Shortly Calaveras road turns left from Weller road, and the road turns steeply uphill, but in compensation all the traffic has been left behind. (I will see one other vehicle in the next 45 minutes.) The silence is wonderful. The loudest sounds, other than my lungs, are red-winged blackbirds.
The PaceFink forces me to stop three times in this climb. (Note to cardiologist: 60 seconds suffices to drop my pulse from 152 to 132.) Behind and below me the metropolitan south bay is a slate-gray lake of pollution. The air-lake's near shore is toast-brown; the far shore is the black profile of the densely-wooded Coast Range. (Somewhere over there, someone must be climbing up through redwoods to the Saratoga gap.)
Calaveras road crests a pass and reveals a spacious valley in folded hills. The only way I can find to describe this terrain is to imagine that once, there was a much steeper alpine landscape here, but it was left too long in the oven, sagging and melting. Then a blanket of fine beige wool was thrown over the remains: a blanket with dark-green crochet-work in the folds -- the oak copses that accurately outline the hydrology of the slopes.
At the bottom of the valley is a sheet of water, Calaveras reservoir, much shrunken by five years of drought and a hot summer. Calaveras road follows a contour line along the west slope, dipping in and out of the gullies. Each inward dip is a slight downgrade, leading in under the shadow of oaks to a hairpin turn at the head of the gully. (Loose gravel and acorns are strewn over the inner arcs of these curves.)
I come pumping out of each hairpin to hold speed up the slight grade to the turn around the convex fold. Here I meet the sun, the view over the lake, and gusts of wind that send oak leaves skittering over the pavement. The normal San Francisco onshore flow has started, but I've planned for that. I'll pedal into it over only one stretch today; the rest of the time I'll be sheltered by trees, as here, or have it abaft or abeam.
Near the head of the reservoir I stop to eat a banana and finish the first bottle of Hydra-Fuel.
From the reservoir Calaveras road drops gently through sweeping turns among oaks to the Sunol valley. The road edges miles of commercial nurseries. Interstate 680 grumbles across the center of the valley, coming out of Livermore to the right and grinding up the Sunol grade on the left. Calaveras road deserts me at the junction of highway 84 and 680. I ride down 84 to the first junction where a tiny store sells snacks and drinks. I down a bottle of apple juice and ponder the AAA map of "Fremont and Newark."
From this point there are three ways to go: back the way I came; or down 84, the Niles Canyon Road; or south on 680. My first time through here I took Niles Canyon, and hated it. It is a narrow, heavily traveled road. Cars move much faster than the road can safely support. Shoulders are nonexistent, or else sprinkled with sharp rocks that tumble down from the cliffs that border the road. To add insult, the prevailing wind squirts up the narrow canyon as through a wind tunnel.
On the other hand, it isn't my style to backtrack. That leaves one choice and I head up the 680 onramp. I see no sign prohibiting bicycles (this seems to substantiate a vague memory that bikes can use a freeway where there is no other route). The traffic whips up a fine tail-wind and I cover the short distance to the Andrade Road exit at a fast clip.
Along the way I get a nasty shock. At four points in this stretch there are iron grates over storm drains -- grates whose bars are aligned with the direction of travel. More perfect traps for the front wheel of a road bike could not be designed! These death-traps (and I mean the word quite literally) are a very good reason to avoid freeway riding.
From the Andrade Road overpass I look out over the artificial green of the Sunol Valley golf course. Expensive-looking ranches dot the hills above it, but there is only one road leading away, a quiet frontage road up the hill toward the crest of the pass. I take this, the second real climb of the day. The air temperature is well into the 80s (near 30c?) and shade is scarce. In the intervals while I wait for Mr. Peeps to settle down I listen to the diesels downshifting on the 10-lane freeway to my left.
At the top, my frontage road dies at a locked gate. A road of no interest to me wanders over the freeway and into the eastern hills. I want to continue southwest, downhill into Fremont. But here there is a sign prohibiting "pedestrians, bicycles and motor-driven cycles" from entering. I ponder. The next exit, Vargas Road, is just 3/4mi (1.2K) ahead on the freeway, which slopes down sharply from here. At 30mph I can be on and off the freeway in under 3 minutes. What chance of being apprehended? I head down the ramp and hit my highest gear.
The shoulder is littered with gravel and chunks of tire rubber, and there are three more death-trap gratings on this stretch, but no highway patrolmen. Dropping off the Vargas road exit is like closing a door, so suddenly does the ambient noise drop.
Vargas road is a pleasant amble through rows of huge eucalyptus trees. The loudest sound is made by a squirrel that, as it scampers up a trunk, causes sheets of papery bark to fall into the brush. I see one truck, one motorcycle, and one rider on a mountain bike. I've nearly drained my second bottle, and a vision of frozen yoghurt begins to form in my mind.
Vargas joins Morrison Canyon road and suddenly I am on a precipitous descent. The road is barely one lane wide, no shoulders, a cliff on one side and a gully on the other, and it drops like a staircase. It would be a most challenging climb -- for someone else. Almost before I know it, I am among houses and into the Fremont Civic Center.
With the keen instincts of a skilled woodman capable of reading the subtlest signs of forest life, I find a Baskin-Robbins store in less than five minutes. I call a progress report home, and eat and drink on a shady bench. Then it's back out into the glare of what is now the early afternoon sun. I head down Mowry toward the bay.
There's one last adrenaline-boosted sprint to get across 880. Here three lanes of traffic squeeze into a single line over a bridge with no shoulders. As I sprint up the approach I see that the guard rail is going to squeeze me into the adjacent traffic and I wimp out, stopping while there's still clearance, leaning on the railing to let the cars pass until there's a short break.
From there the streets are quiet, through suburbs to the the stinking tidal ponds near the bay. I turn off at the sign for the wildlife refuge (there's no indication that this is, in fact, the only approach that will let a bicycle cross the Dumbarton bridge). Avocets and red-legged Stilts comment on my pedalling style; I pick up the cadence so Mr. Peeps can answer them in their own tongue.
At the visitor center I fill my bottle with cold water, then head out across the mud flats toward the bridge. I snuggle up alongside a fence that cuts the wind, but this strategy backfires: shortly my back tire flats. I change it, and have the sense to run my fingers around the inside of the tire before mounting it. There is a tiny brown thorn, smaller than a pencil point, embedded in the tread.
Dumbarton bridge rises like a concrete rainbow over the bay. The climb over it is easy; I don't even need the lowest gear. From the top you can lean on the railing and look out for miles up and down the bay, but today all I see is veils of polluted air in attractive shades of translucent blue and gray. Behind are the brown silhouettes of the hills I've left, ahead the black ones of the Coast range.
Over the bridge and onto Willow road, I pick up my usual homeward commute route and run on in on autopilot, thinking of other things. I peel my jersey and trunks and find myself crowing with delight at the feel of a hot shower on tired muscles. It is such a privilege to occupy a well, vigorous body! Treasure every moment.
I went exactly 65 miles (105K) in a door to door time of 6.5 hours. I have only an Avocet 30 so can't say what the actual average speed may have been; probably 12mph (19K).
Hydra-Fuel worked very well for hydration. The taste didn't gag me and it quenched my thirst. It contains the usual electrolytes as well as some carbohydrate in the form of glucose polymers and fructose. The carbo content definitely had an effect; I ate a lot less of the trail mix I'd packed than I would have eaten when drinking (yech) GatorAde. A jar of Hydra-Fuel powder sufficient to make 16 qts (what's that, 10L?) cost $12.95, considerably cheaper (as well as easier to store) than an equivalent amount of (yech) GatorAde.
I can't praise Bullfrog sunblock enough. It comes in a tiny bottle that packs easily. It goes on easily. It has an inoffensive smell. And one application protected my fair skin from strong sun for 6 sweaty hours.