Don,
Sounds like a really cool ride; glad I missed it! ;-) No way I could have come back up the hill from the tidepools, not to mention covering the cost of the $3.00 admission to the lookout. I was able to be home and watch P-R on TV. Great race!
Hopefully next month I will be finished moving out of my shop and will have begun to ride again. Right now I'm REALLY out of it.
Brian Baylis
La Mesa, CA
The San Diego Vintage ride today began at 10:03 in the aerospace museum parking lot at Balboa Park. In attendance were myself (Don Gillies - silver Carlton Pro 1977 - SR Royal), Omar Firestone (heavily hot-rotted Peugeot 'Course' circa 1980 with cool pearlescent paint and IRD/Nitto/Phil Wood), Richard Bryne (early 1980's Blue Masi Gran Criterium with mid-70's campy in all the right places), and Glenn Benveniste (Dave Tesch in grey with campy C-Record(?) parts).
I led the ride, rather awkwardly, as I was hoping someone experienced would know how to navigate through Ocean Beach and Point Loma. My navigational difficulties - to put a positive spin on things - at least gave us some beautiful views of the Pacific from the hillside of Ocean Beach.
When we arrived at Cabrillo National Monument, unlike most rides, we paid the $3/person admission and went to the viewpoint because the skies were relatively clear. Then later we did a hair-raising 13%-grade 1 mile descent at 30-40 mph to the tide pools and looked briefly for wall-crabs on the ocean cliffs. The ride back up the hill could only be described as 'knee splitting', especially in my 54-inch low gear.
At the end we stopped at Anthony's fish grotto for fish tacos and beer, while Glenn excused himself for 1:30 appointment. Richard ecstatically told us that his sponsored rider - Stuart O'Grady for team CSC - had won Paris-Roubaix and that he had to be home at 2pm to watch the race on cable. Stuart O'Grady is the first Australian ever to win, and Speedplay has sponsored the winner for 3 out of 4 of the past three years! Richard is the founder of Speedplay, but he was too modest to volunteer this fact. However, he provided so many fascinating details of his pedal and crankset collection that it caused us to guess his secret identity.
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA