weekend of fun
Every once in a while I get an email from one of my friends with the subject “weekend of fun.” Weekend of fun is his little euphemism for house work day. He bought a house recently and is slowly remodeling it. So he sends out these weekend of fun emails asking for help. I’d totally be down to help if he didn’t live so far away. At the beginning of the week I didn’t really have anything planned for the weekend, so I was planning to go down for a weekend of fun, but by the middle of the week I had plans for the weekend, so I sort of forgot about the weekend of fun. I’ll make it down there one of these days.
I thought the weekend was going to be pretty uneventful, but it ended up being pretty fun. On Friday night I went out for a motorcycle ride with one of my friends from CalPERS. We had a little close call on the ride out. At one point he had passed me. I needed to get back in front so I could lead him in the right direction. He was way off in the left side of the lane, so I figured I’d pass him on the right (stupid idea)… but I guess right as I was about to pass him, he decided he would scoot over to the right and let me pass on the left. I slammed on the brakes and heard the front tire squeal and the rear of the bike start to lift. I don’t really swear a whole lot, even in my brain, but at that moment I remember clearly thinking, “OHHHH SHHHH*******,” as I eased up on the brakes and swerved to the right and ended up in the gravel shoulder, miraculously still upright.
The rest of the ride to Winters was pretty uneventful. We ended up at Buckhorn for dinner. I only go there maybe once or twice per year, but Buckhorn is by far my favorite steakhouse. They had added a new special on Friday and Saturday nights since the last time I had been there, a three pound rib eye for two people. We ended up ordering that. It was the most beautiful piece of meat I had ever seen. They wheeled it in on a cart carrying a huge platter, and they carved up the huge slab of meat in front of us using a crazy curved butcher’s knife. It was definitely one of the best steaks I had ever had.
After dinner we rode around a little more. The roads we were riding were pretty familiar to me, since we were riding on the route that I usually ride on my bicycle when I’m training for century rides. It’s amazing how much quicker it is on the motorcycle. It also amazing how different the scenery looks at night. It’s actually a bit scary riding on those curvy country roads at night, because even with the headlights on high beams, I can’t really see to the end of the curve. I also learned something– Cantelow road, which pretty much everyone from Davis rides to train on hills, turns into sort of a make out point at night.
On Saturday I went hiking out with a few friends out near the ski resorts on highway 80. George drove his Prius, and we weren’t sure it could handle the dirt road into the trailhead, so we ended up hiking in a couple of miles before getting to the trailhead.
It was a pretty beautiful day, as the sky reflecting off the lake reflecting off my sunglasses shows.
Our goal was to make it to Royal Gorge, which is the valley way off in the distance in this picture. We didn’t make it because we started too late. It took us almost a mile to hike into the trailhead, plus we kept losing the trail and ended up bushwacking part of the way, which slowed our progress.
We saw a few mountain bikers out there. It reminded me that I went pretty much the entire year without mountain biking– there’s still time I suppose. I need to get off my butt and fix up my bike. I definitely want to come back here on a bike, there were a ton of areas that looked really fun. A bike, a nice trail and a few good friends– that would truly be a weekend of fun….
