fall riding to folsom

Growing up in San Francisco I didn’t really experience autumn. In San Francisco the climate doesn’t change much between seasons, and I remember most of the trees (of which there weren’t all that many) being evergreen. So I didn’t really experience colorful autumns until I moved to the Davis/Sacramento area. Out here there are tons of trees, and every fall they erupt into an explosion of color.

The area near the American River Parkway has a ton of trees, which makes it a really nice bike ride this time of year.

Although there were tons of leaves that had fallen, the path itself was clear.

We started at the Sac state bridge.

And then rode about 20 miles to the Old Folsom bridge.

We refueled at a coffee/gelato shop in Old Folsom. Espresso bean gelato– rawr… I was trying to focus on the gelato, but my little point and shoot camera doesn’t have any way to select the focus point. The camera seems to like Ray’s bike and didn’t wanna focus on anything else. I, on the other hand, focused on eating my tasty gelato.

Old Folsom is quite nice. I like it better than Old Sacramento. They even have street performers here. This statue guy was teaching this little kid how to be a statue. I wish I had thought of that when I used to teach fourth grade boys Sunday school. My class would have been less rowdy if they were pretending to be statues.

My ride back was pretty quick. I stuck to the back of this paceline. The guy in front was a real beast, he was pulling 23 into a headwind the whole way, outside of this paceline I was pulling maybe 18 on my own.

It was my first ride in a while, so I guess I’m kind of out of shape. I’m hoping this is another mild winter, so I can continue biking through the winter and hopefully at least keep some of my endurance up.

Things I’m thankful for:

• nice autumn days
• fast pacelines to leech a draft off of