Palomar Ride with Toon

Toon (Mike Toribio) and I hit up Palomar Mountain for a ride this past Monday. We thought since it was Labor Day we should labor up a huge climb. I know, that was so cheesy, that's why I said it.

I call Palomar the Alpe d' Huez of California. I don't know how accurate that is though. It's about 7 miles at about 7% with about 13-15 switchbacks. That's a lot of "abouts."

We decided to set out early and meet at 7am at a spot about 20 miles from the ride. I promptly set my alarm for 5:15am, made sure it was set for the "weekend" and went to sleep. Turns out Monday is not on the weekend, who knew? I was up at 4:40am for a bathroom break and fell back asleep only to be woken up by Cezanne at 6:35am saying it looked a little light outside.

Ooops. Chaos ensued. A quick text message to Toon and Cezanne (being the little trooper she is) helped me get everything ready, including mixing my drink bottles with Accelerade.

Here is the ride below. We went clockwise from the red marker, a 2 mile warm-up before the climb.

This is the climb, all squiggly.

We actually had fun this time instead of crushing ourselves on it. This was Toon's 4th or so ride after coming back from deployment and he did awesome!

Here he is in his USNA get up, hydrating at the bottom of the climb. The Madone...freshly tuned up.


We were encouraged when we saw a lot of cloud cover, until we got within about 5 miles of the start of the ride. Here is a hot, long, steep stretch.

Beautiful curves. There were a ton of motorcycle riders out as we expected. No issues at all, we didn't get buzzed close once.

Here's Toon crushing it up the last couple of meters. He always has to be first. He sprinted when I took the camera out. Slimy tactic! Just kidding.

Now on to some sad news. Cezanne and I have been cleaning out the storage unit lately in preparation for the move to D.C. and every time I go I have to stare at what's become of my mountain bike. Sad. It still has mud on it from 4 years ago. Not joking. Back tire is flat, front one really soft, no seatpost, I don't know if it even shifts.

One of these days I'll get her cleaned up and riding again. Something about hopping on a 30+ pound bike isn't too appealing when you're riding at half that weight. But then again, I used to love mountain biking.