Cali trip - part 1: Save the newts!

This past weekend, I made a trip down to the Bay Area to visit my friend, Bill. He's an old buddy dating back to seventh grade. We've always had similar tastes in hobbies over the years; model railroads, slot cars, hockey, etc. We both spent some time after college trying to be bike racers, but that went by the wayside pretty quickly for us both.

So now we try to get together each year or so to do some riding and enjoy an old friendship. This most recent trip was timed to coincide with the prologue of the Tour of California, held at Stanford. The idea was to ride on Saturday, then catch the pros on Sunday

Bill had a great route planned out for our ride, starting from his house in Moraga and winding up through the Berkeley hills overlooking the University of California campus. Before we could leave, we had to attend to, of all things, a loose headset on Bill's bike. For you techno geeks, it was the star nut not seating in the steerer tube that was causing the problem, so we made a quick trip to the bike shop to get it fixed. Then we hit the road.

The ride started with an easy loop through town to get the legs warmed up, then wound along the base of the hills until the road took a sudden turn to the left and lurched skyward.

1.2 lung-searing miles later, we arrived at the top of the climb. Bill said he needed to check the map, but I think he was just catching his breath. Not that I was complaining, mind you.

Continuing along the ridge, we were treated to some great views and some easy rollers. That didn't last for long as we soon reached Grizzly Peak Rd. for some more climbing fun.

As Paul Sherwen would say, we were "digging deep into our suitcases of courage" to get up the climb.

Once we'd finished off that climb, we were done with any significant increases in elevation for the day. We continued along until we reached a road that had been closed to cars for a uniquely California reason - newt mating season. I am not making this up.

The road was a twisting, steep decent and I was too occupied with grabbing handfuls of brake lever and avoiding stroller-pushing soccer moms to see if there were any newts having sex in the road. I don't think I squished any - there were no newt guts on my tires when I got to the bottom of the hill - so that was a relief.

We had the option to extend our ride, but decided that the risk of decimating the newt population of the Bay Area was too great a risk to bear. So we headed for home.