Three Speed October

 So, I decided to do Three Speed October, and I am much happier writing about my rides in the little ride journal Shawn sent, than trying to post every single day on the internet.  I'm basically doing to same riding I do every weekday, a 13.4 mile loop from my house back to my house, which is what constitutes a commute for me during the pandemic.  My wife rides with my, and we really enjoy our ride.  We usually set out between 6:00 and 6:30, and I reach the house between 7:30 and 8:00, when my work day begins.  I'm trying to write a little bit about each section of the ride in the ride journal, so it doesn't get too boring to read.   Tomorrow, Tuesday, I will go in to work, which adds just a tiny side jaunt to the usual ride.  I was thinking this morning that I would just measure the ride to work and not count the ride home, but then I realized that this morning was ride three of three for the week's challenge.  It looks like most of my recording will be Friday, Saturday, and Monday.  Saturday is usually a ride to the Farmer's Market on the Happy Little Three Speed.  It wins out over the Raleigh on market day because of its front basket.

I'm not big on statistics, and I usually don't document my rides, but I mapped it once with Ride with GPS to get the mileage right.  Actually, looking at it right now, I realize it's 13.6 miles.  I'm shortchanging myself.  My average speed is 9.3 mph - a decent speed for an early morning conversation ride.  My maximum speed is 23.3 mph.  I ascend 748 feet, and mysteriously descend 747 feet to arrive where I started.  My maximum grade is 6%, although that means absolutely nothing to me.

For a variation from the usual, I decided to ride the half century loop on Saturday.  I left the house at 5:00 a.m., to avoid the above average warmth and hopefully most of the traffic.  Of course, I quickly realized that, even with the contemporary LED lights on the Raleigh, I couldn't see potholes, patches of sand, broken bottles, etc.  I think that old dynamo doesn't put out as much amperage as the LED can take, at least it seems like the same light driven by a sidewall dynamo on the HLTS puts out more light.  I had to start out a little slowly, but I did avoid much of the traffic.  I was only passed by one car until I got out onto highway 14.  Dawn broke around 6:30. By the time I made it to the turn to the east onto state road 42,

the sun was rising, and I was bicycling straight into it.  I decided, for this ride, to pull off to the side when I heard a car approaching behind me.  (There is no shoulder.)  I figure if I am blinded by the sun, then drivers of motor vehicles most certainly are.  I know I am when I drive my ancient Subaru with its sand-scoured windshield.  However, driving straight into the sun does not seem to prevent most of the early morning pickup trucks - and they were all pickup trucks - from going about 70 mph on this narrow road with no shoulder.  Usually, I'm pretty assertive about my right to be on the road, but in this case, I thought discretion was the better part of valor.  And anyway, there were only about three trucks passing me on the ride.

42 rolls up and down through a convoluted landscape, with beautiful views of the Ortiz Mountains off to the right, and views of the mountains near Santa Fe off in the distance.  I took my Olympus OM-1, a Christmas gift from my daughter, and took some photos of the trip to include with the journal.  The pictures in this blog post are just a few I took with the phone.  I had it slung on my back with my Rivendell Grabsack, which actually works very well with a bike with a more upright position.  On other bikes, the rate at which it slides around to the front can be frustrating.  The road descends toward Galisteo and crosses the railroad tracks the Southwest Chief rolls on.  It bottoms out in this wash, with some of the most beautiful cottonwood trees I've seen.

The photo is much lighter than it really was that time of day.  The sun was just getting well up into the morning sky.  From that point, there is still a very long climb before you descend again into the village of Galisteo.  I stopped at the church to have some water and some of the GORP I had in a ziploc.  I spoke to an elderly lady who had crossed the street to pray at the steps of the church.  She said they might close the church.  The priest from Cerrillos, (which is another village not much bigger than Galisteo), is angry at them, she said, because not that many people were going to church.  The pandemic has everyone staying home.  She still works, she told me, for a Wells Fargo in town, but she's been furloughed since April, and they keep pushing forward the date they want her back.  On top of that, they are planning to close the branch she worked in.  She's happy to stay home, but she likes to stay busy.

Galisteo, I believe, is near the halfway point of the fifty miles.  From there, though, it is mostly uphill. It climbs gently out of Cerrillos, but steadily, dropping only slightly where it joins highway 285.  You climb up 285 past the turnoff to Lamy, where the Southwest Chief stops for passengers going to and from Santa Fe, in a steadily increasing climb until you crest the hill looking into the bedroom community of El Dorado.  There follows a slight drop before another steady climb toward Old Las Vegas Highway.  At the intersection of the two roads is a nice restaurant, Cafe Fina, and I was hoping they would be serving on their patio.  I usually stop there for second breakfast, or early lunch.  (How early is too early for a beer when you've ridden 40 miles?)  However, they were only doing drive-up web orders.  I contemplated eating something in the dirt parking lot, but quickly decided against it.

By that time, the wind had picked up.  The ride into Santa Fe on Old Las Vegas Highway is usually enjoyable - rolling hills that, nonetheless, trend to the downhill.  However, the headwind was so strong, that I stayed in low even for some of the downhill riding, and rarely did I get out of normal gear.  I was ready for the ride to be over by the time I reached the house.  

I claim the title of the longest ride made in blue jeans in Santa Fe that day.

Statistics for that ride - average speed 11.2 mph, maximum 28.2 mph.  3, 267 feet of climbing, and again, mysteriously, 3,268 feet of descent.  It was roughly three hours of going up and two hours of going down.

I keep telling myself that the one thing I probably could not do on the Raleigh is ride up to the ski basin.  Even in my lowest gear on my touring bike, it's a grind.  Maybe I'll turn my attention to that challenge someday soon - though I don't like to think about descending from the ski basin with sixty-eight year old brakes.