Sunday, 26 Feb 2018
New bikes are a thing, this year. Perhaps is is catching. WWWobble rode his new bike to breakfast. It looks much like his old bike. Same model. Same color. But look closer — it is shiney and it has factory installed heated grips. The heated grips for his old bike are still sitting somewhere in his garage.
Nice turn out for breakfast in Los Gatos. There were about a dozen riders. After breakfast group headed toward the coast. Except for Bob on his clean, new bike. Well, maybe he headed to the coast but he didn’t do it the back road way.
Bear Creak is closed at the 17 end. No problem, take Black road to Skyline. Turn north on Skyline to run into a road closed barricade in about a mile and a half. I was hoping to get closer to where Skyline isn’t any more. No matter, turn around and head north on Skyline to the top part of Bear Creek.
Skyline between Black and Bear Creak is a mess. Passable. Lots of single lane. Many places where trees were unrooted and tossed down the side of the hill. More places where trees may become unrooted and further block the road. None fell on us.
Bear Creek mostly open into Boulder Creek. A few messy spots with dirt on the road. A few lane blockages. One delay with a signal near Boulder Creek. There was a sign saying the road was closed for those heading up the road from Boulder Creek.
We stopped at the coffee shop in Boulder Creek. After the coffee break it was off to Alba, Empire Grade, Ice Cream Grade, Bonny Doone, and highway 1. At highway 1 Alberty headed toward Santa Cruz. He’s trying to run his bike out of gas to see how much reserve he has and wants to be close to gas stations now that he is finally on reserver. He has a container holding maybe a liter to get him to a station once he finally runs out.
The rest of us headed north. We turned onto Gazos creek, then Cloverdale Rd where we had a roadside stop. The others were going to Pescadero for lunch. I headed back to highway 1 and continued north to Half Moon Bay then took 92 to home. I did stop to take some pictures of the local color along the way.
