March Madness Ride

So Darin and I wanted to go on another ALC10 training ride, but the closest one was in Ventura. And we didn't want to drive an hour just to go on a ride. So we decided to go and ride w/ Stan between Simi Valley and Fillmore, which is part of the ALC training ride from Ventura, just going the opposite way. So it shouldn't have been a surprise that we ended up bumping into a couple of them at the top of the hill. So while Darin and I were taking a little break, we chatted w/ them for a little bit. Nice group of people. It would have been nice to ride with them. Maybe next time.

The ride itself didn't seem too difficult and not very exciting. We just went over the hill and back. I'm proud to say that I felt pretty good throughout the ride and could have probably ridden another 15 miles or so. I guess after riding 60 miles last week in warmer weather, this 46 mile ride wasn't too bad. And the hill yesterday felt pretty comfortable. And I almost did as much climbing yesterday as the previous week.

While on top of the hill, Darin and I decided to take a couple of pictures. Because Darin's previous ALC profile picture wasn't very good. Here are our two best pictures.

Sexy, huh? I guess since I had very little pictures last week, I tried to make up for it this week. After climbing the hill, we dropped into the city of Fillmore and had ourselves a little snack. Below is Darin putting his fingers all over our sandwich that we bought at Starbucks. And Stan drinking coffee. Coffee...in the middle of the ride. Wow. I'm so afraid of getting dehydrated that I would avoid coffee (even though I had a little before we went on our ride). But everyone is different and everyone can handle things differently.

After lunch, we turned around and headed back up the hill. And while on top, we got to take a couple more pics. Here is part of the road we took. Looks pretty neat, huh?

And here are some carvings on the side of the mountain. The wall was kinda soft like packed sand, so it probably only needed a knife or something to create the carvings. There were several of these carvings, but I thought this hourglass was really neat. And I didn't notice this until much later, but there's a hand just right above the hourglass. Pretty neat.

Last picture is of Stan riding up the hill. You can see what a beautiful day it was for a ride.

Next week, I'm going to do another ride to UCLA and shoot for 65 miles or more. Wish me luck.