Friday 30 June 2017

Cycling West Dry Creek with Sarge Singin' The Coffaro Blues: Friday, June 30th!

Up at 7:30 am to mist shrouded hills and vineyards. Lovely and cool, poifect for cycling so we made our breakfast, Greek style yogurt with green grapes, (granola, added, for Sarge!), and cups of tea, mugs of java, before we suited up and made for Yoakim Bridge Road, crossing over to West Dry Creek Road. Little traffic so it was wonderful to cycle the mini-roller-coaster, fairly narrow road, in and out of tree tunnels. Started off going north until the road actually terminates at a private residence. Turned around here and went south as far as Westside Road before turning back to retrace our steps. 

I have done this route quite  a few times before and the last time was with Whirlygig and Glasgow. On that ride the county was repaving much of the length of this section of West Dry Creek Road so the surface is now terrific and we sailed along. By the time we were close to Coffaro we had 36 km on the clock and Sarge had set 40 km for his goal. This being the case he rode with me, a further 2 km, until we reached Dutcher Creek Road where he turned around. His back fender had been rubbing the tire for the entire ride and he wanted to take it off. He'd stopped shortly after we started but couldn't do anything about it without first removing the wheel so we both had to live with the annoying squeak! 

I wanted to log my basic 51km so I kept going. Had never ridden much of this section and wanted to scope it for a future outing. Was most pleasantly surprised to find both a lovely park and the fish hatchery associated with Lake Sonoma. I dipsy-doodled around the large parking lots associated with these facilities although I didn't venture up Skaggs Spring Road which winds into the hills surrounding Lake Sonoma to a boat launching ramp there. David had mentioned, in earlier conversations, that the climb is considerable so until I've first driven it to see what it would be like on a bike, I decided not to push my luck. At any rate, I didn't have the time to explore as I knew Sarge wanted to be off as soon as we could to wine taste!

Had almost enough distance when I passed the winery so only had to ride back across Yoakim Bridge to West Dry Creek Road and turn around. Found Sarge just about finished dismantling the back fender and when he had the last bolt removed I helped him put the brake apparatus back together as he needed four hands to accomplish the task, so finicky was the cable housing. Task accomplished he returned the wrench he'd borrowed from David and I went inside to shower. Great ride and I was more than delighted to have discovered another possibilty for future outings. Plenty of good hills hereabouts so loads of challenges if one tires of the relatively flat roads of the valley floors. Map and Stats for ride:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1827941330#.WVbnRnCxb_w.email

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