Went for a hike...and a ride down...

I left Dan at home this morning to rest, ice, and let the Time Warner cable guy in...yes, we have Internet again!

Anyway, expect the blog to be updated a lot more now, especially since I have the time to do it.

I drove up to Poway to meet up with Joy and Darren...the plan was to hike/ride up Iron Mountain and then ride back down again. A long push with a nice reward at the end. We got up there around 9 and it was pretty humid out...lots of hikers and Joy forgot her bear bell. But, we were super polite and cool with everyone...honestly rode down pretty slowly as we were trying to practice our technical cornering and all.
Iron Mountain is a 3.5 mile hike up to the top. Lots of switchbacks, waterbars, and rocks. I opted for just knee pads, no uppers or elbows, and my full face. The Socom was my bike of choice and it was perfect. Able to pedal the flats pretty well and smooth on the descents.








Today couldn't have been more opposite to yesterday...I felt super comfortable on the bike, I wasn't paying so much attention to my flat pedals, and I rode really well. Last night, I had Dan slam the seat all the way down, which helped me tremendously. I guess I never realized that I had been riding with the saddle up a bit, which made it harder to maneuver the bike underneath me. Hmmm...

In any case, it was, as you can imagine, a long push up. I took my jersey off within the first half mile...it was sticking to me too badly. We passed a lot of hikers, most of whom were cheering us/encouraging us on for being so "hard core" and riding up.





I didn't have to take any breaks and felt good on the hike up. Took some pictures along the way and stopped at the top to get changed into my knees/helmet/gloves. There was a nice breeze up there (2600 feet or so...we started at about 1600 for a vertical gain of 1000', give or take).







You know, for me, hiking up a trail makes everything look so much worse. Rocks look bigger. Rollers look higher. Steep parts look steeper. Today was no exception. I had myself pretty much convinced that not taking upper body protection had been pretty unwise. But on the way back down, everything was fine. I wasn't worried at all.













We took it slow, sessioning some of the corners, trying to perfect our lines. Mostly, we just had a blast.

























































Good day with good friends, some Rubios for lunch, and then home sweet home to find the Web, waiting......