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10 miles lost

    Had a great birthday ride yesterday. The plan was to go 81 miles, but only did 70. Nothing to sneeze at, especially since 90% of the ride was climbing hills.

    Okay, how’d we loose 10 miles? It’s a math problem.
    First, an overview: the route had us riding on Pacific Coast Highway from Newport Beach to Laguna. But my riding buddy, Stephanie, and I didn’t want to ride there. Too many lights and unfriendly motorist. Take the previous Saturday as an example; a cyclist in front of us was hit by a car, then other motorist started honking and yelling at us to ride someplace else. The nerve. So this week we decided to create our own route, that’s after riding the first 30 miles of the route.

    Now the math: let’s see if I can explain it simply. We rode 15 miles from Foothhill Ranch to Cooks Corner, by way of Trubuco. Then rode another 15 miles (totaling 30 miles) before taking to rode less traveled. At this point, we’re near the Tustin/Irvine border. We decided that at some point we’d turn around, and when we get back to Cooks Corner, we’d go directly to our cars and not ride through Trabuco; about 5 miles. That means, of the 81 miles, 35 have already been accounted for.

    Here’s the million dollar question — “how far do we ride before turning around to make the entire ride 81 miles?”
    Simple math says with 46 miles. That means we’d turn around at mile 53, after riding another 23 miles.

    Right? Yes, except we didn’t want to ride the same route we rode from mile 30 – 53 (been there done that). So we changed the route again at mile 54. Yes, and that’s how we cut off 10 miles of the ride.

    Funny enough we mush have stopped 3-4 times to re-do the math, and didn’t realize our problem till we got back to Cooks Corner. By that time hamburgers were on the bbq. We were starving. It was time to eat.
    This is what happens when you ride on the fly.

    A true warrior in action — On the way back to Cooks Corner, while riding Santiago (a 12 mile stretch of hills and valleys with nothing in between), a man who about 65 years old was running. He was flying up a hill so fast that he almost beat us to the top. Go Grandpa.

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