Who needs caffeine when you have decreasing-radius curves?

Finally a day where there wasn’t a ton of fog at the higher elevations. Even though it’s a little bit longer and the last few times I’ve tried I’ve gotten socked in with fog, I rode Skyline Boulevard in to the office today.

I’ve ridden Skyline enough that it doesn’t have any real surprises for me. It doesn’t really qualify as twisty, but it has some curves that if taken at a high enough rate of speed will force a rider to really commit and stay committed. It’s a pretty smooth, well-maintained road and when the sun is shining as it was today, it’s a really beautiful stretch of road.

It’s not often that the combination of road conditions and my own comfort level at that time permit me to really stretch my limits. But it really is necessary to my development as a rider. If I can’t feel the panic rise in the pit of my stomach I can’t train myself to hold my line and roll on the throttle. I keep on hearing it said (and I can say it myself) that I’ve never dropped the bike because I was going too fast for the bike to handle a curve; I’ve only dropped the bike when I’ve chickened out and panicked. So some of those long, sweeping curves on Skyline were great for me today. Commit to the curve, get in, stay in, then when the curve tightens and keeps going longer than I’m comfortable with, stay with it and gently roll on the throttle. The reaction to the pit of my stomach dropping needs to be “stay with it” not “hit the brake.”

I’ve heard my tires chirp when I’ve downshifted before, but today was the first time I’ve ever heard my tires make a sustained squeal when I wasn’t on the brake. Gotta love engine braking on a shaft-driven bike. No, really, I do love it. But maybe I should have tried slowing down a little earlier before the turn onto Page Mill.

If Skyline is an old familiar buddy who is glad to see you, Page Mill Road is that ornery bastard who has great stories to tell even though he’s a pain to be around. There are a lot of first-gear switchbacks and the road is twisty enough that it’s really a second-gear road in general. Add to that the general state of disrepair–there are large chunks of pavement missing every ten or fifteen feet, a lot of loose gravel right at the apex of curves, and even the recently-paved smooth sections are just paved over some really uneven road, so the drops and bumps are just as dramatic, but not as sharp as they might otherwise be. And harder to see as well.

Yet the view from Page Mill is gorgeous, and there’s rarely much traffic on it except for bicyclists. So it’s a great road for trying to keep me on my toes and paying attention to the road. It’s either keep my eyes open or take the whole thing at five mph. Especially riding alone it’s a road on which to stay real frosty.

So believe you me, by the time I got to work this morning, I was awake!