A very momentous road ride today. After almost two weeks of cold rainy weather, the day dawned bright and clear. It was over 60 degrees by the time I got started. It got up to the mid 70's before too long. The colors were as good as they get for the Rogue Valley. My pictures cannot convey how vivid they were today.
Nice colors and sky coming back into Ashland on the bike path.
I achieved several milestones today. The first came early in the ride when the odometer on my road bike rolled over 15,000 miles. That's since I got the bike in May 2005. It still seems like a new bike to me.
Actually I had several rides this summer when the battery was dead, so this is really about 60 miles behind.
The other big stat was going over 6,000 miles for the year, but that wouldn't come until the end of the ride. I knew I needed a long ride if I was going to get it today. I headed out the west side to Hanley road with the plan to check out the new section of the Bear Creek Greenway again. I got to ride part of it once, but the last two times I got out that way I couldn't get on the path. The "Path Closed" sign was still there, as well as the barricade, but there was no one to stop me today so off I went. Big disappointment. The path goes for less than a mile. I had actually ridden the whole thing last time. It goes along the freeway and then dumps out on a frontage road, where they built another nice parking lot, in addition to the one on the Penniger end. The other thing was that in that short a path there were no less than 5 "Caution Horses On Path" signs. I guess they built it for horses. The road it came out on is called Dean Cr. Road. At first I thought it was gravel but it was just rough chip seal, ridable enough. After another mile it dumped into Blackwell. Not bad, I thought, as there was a good shoulder on this part of Blackwell. I decided to continue on to Gold Hill. When I got to the intersection of Kirkland it looked bad. They redid the intersection so that Blackwell goes straight into Kirkland. You have to get in the left lane and make a left to continue on Blackwell. Just as I was wondering how I was going to navigate the traffic I saw a small sign which said Gold Hill to the right. Low and behold it was a bike path that went under the overpass through a little tunnel and merged back into Blackwell on the other side. Very well done. So, all in all, the new section of the bike path coupled with this little addition does open up an easier route to Gold Hill.
When I got to Gold Hill, for some reason, I turned on the road just before the bridge that goes along the other (south/west) bank of the Rogue. The sign said it is Upper River Road. I stopped and asked a man how far it went and he said it turned to dirt in "3 or 4 miles", so I rode on. It was really pretty. Nice to ride along the river with no traffic. I stopped by the river for a snack.
The hill on the other side was much more golden than this shows.
It turned out to be only 2 miles to where the road crosses the railroad tracks and turns to dirt. When I got there it really looked familiar and I realized it must be the other end of the road from Gold Rey Dam that I wanted to ride. Sure enough I asked someone else on the way back and he confirmed it. He said I'd be fine on my skinny tires, it is smooth granite not gravel, but I decided it can wait for another day on my Trucker.
I hardly noticed the climb coming back up Old Stage. I was enjoying the scenery too much to care. I took a few more pictures from my favorite view point by the forest service nursery.
Mt. Mcloughlin wearing its winter base layer.
Looking back towards Mt. Ashland
and on towards Soda Mountain
I ended up with 71 miles on the day, 4 miles more than I needed to reach 6,000 for the year. It's almost dead even 3,000 on my road bike, and 3,000 on my touring bike. To put things in perspective my total miles last year was 3,380, and my best previous year was 4,639 in 2005, the year we did Ridaho.
But maybe the biggest milestone of the day was not crashing. It was exactly one year ago that I had a nasty mountain bike crash that could have ended my riding for good. It feels really good to have been able to come back and have such a great year riding since then. I hope I can keep it up, although I'm sure I'll cut back on the mileage for the winter.