Saturday, October 17th, 2009

Low Key Tunitas and MTB Skeggs

I had always wanted to help out at Low Key Hillclimb Series and finally my chance arrived — on Week 3 in the 2009 series for Tunitas Creek climb. When I drove over, the sky was still a bit gray, but when the riders arrived at the Bike Hut on Tunitas where registrations took place, the weather cleared up and presented the blue sky. Cool! There were a few of us taking registrations, so the process for the 100+ riders went smoothly. It’s nice to see so many riders ready to crank hard when I feel completely relaxed.

I was stationed at Star Hill and Swett as a course marshal and even got an orange vest for it. I was just wondering when the first Low Key rider would be coming up, then I heard the distinct buzzing sound. That had to be from the motor in Bill’s hybrid recumbent. A few minutes after him came the superman riders. I could hear them breath yards away. The riders came in clusters and then they thinned out. I tried to cheer for all of them while warning them about the steep part after the sharp left turn, but wondered if some riders might find it annoying. I didn’t know, but I was just that excited for the riders. And finally it went quiet, but I knew there were two riders yet to come — a father and a 5-year old girl’s tandem team.  And they did eventually come. I cheered even louder. I could tell that dad was digging deep into his reserve. I tried to shout out encouragement to the girl, Emma, to push harder, but I think she probably had never seen anyone cheering before and kept looking back even after the tandem had pulled away from me. I had to say, “Emma, look ahead, push, push!”  Oh, she was cute!  Then I drove up to the finish line and cheered for them again with other volunteers.

After the Low Key event wrapped, I was ready for my own action. So, I parked at Alice’s and hopped on my mountain bike. A ride at Skeggs would be nice. It was! The place had been cleansed by the rain early last week, so the trails were very sticky and the usual winter time mud puddles had not yet formed. When I started the ride, my bike was covered in the crud from my Friday’s ride at Waterdog, but after my ride at Skeggs, the bike was clean! Since I did not have any meal after the early breakfast, I again made this ride short.

Upper Steam Donkey -> Lower Steam Donkey -> Gordon Mill Trail -> Crossover -> Crosscut -> Timberview -> Manzanita -> Fir -> Sierra Morena .

2 Responses

  1. # Patrick Herlihyon 20 Oct 2009 at 11:34 am

    Good for you for volunteering, Mei! I found myself with a few hours that morning and thought about heading down to the Bike Hut to volunteer on the spot. But I wasn’t sure when it would be over and had to get to Modesto by 3pm so decided to hit up Skeggs.

    Skeggs was in excellent shape, wasn’t it! So nice without dust. And many of the trails had a nice carpet of pine needles, like someone had been dragging an old Christmas tree through the preserve 🙂

    All that Coe trailwork had me well trained and I stopped and cleared a lot of fallen branches, especially on Resolution.

    Are you going to ride Soda Springs?

  2. # mudwormon 20 Oct 2009 at 12:10 pm

    It looks we are rocking climbing this Saturday, so no riding for me. I’ll miss Soda Springs.