Rock, Solo, Tuna

The ride starts out flat...


but there might be some hills on this route...


Yeah, there are hills...

It's Monday, game over. I was scheduled to get home on the red eye last night, but thanks to the snow that was canceled, and I'm on Flight 54 to Oh Hair! right now, hoping to get back to Beantown later this evening.

The weekend got busy and the neighbors must have setup an acl on their wireless network, hence the lack of updates. Friday was the piece d' resistance of the trip, an epic solo of nearly seven hours duration. I'd planned on about five, as Thursday I was already feeling pretty toasted on a two hour ride over to Balcom Canyon Road (did not scale "The Wall"). Heading out at 10 am, after cruising across the flat plain it was up Potrero Road (1.2k @ 12%), then up and over the little bump into Hidden Valley, where a helmetless rider in Fuji-Servetto clothing sailed past. It was Ivan Dominguez. He gave me the over the shoulder look to see if I was going to jump on, but since this was the 1:30 mark of a planned long day in February, I had none of it. Don't let anyone tell you sprinters can't climb, as he left me in the dust going up Westlake Boulevard (2.1 miles @ 8%). Not that it would have been difficult. I had the camera and should have chased him for a photo op, but Solobreak doesn't think that quickly, especially when I'm on vacation (nice mix of first and second person solo...)

After tackling the 30 switchbacks, I continued east on Muholland. Once passing Encinal Canyon Road, I was breifly in (for me) uncharted waters, and soon came upon the epic descent of "Rock Store," just over 2 miles at 7.5% with hairpins all the way down. One of the motorcycle magazines had a photo shoot setup, and some dude clad head to toe in white leathers was dragging the fairing around the bends, back and forth for the cameras. The valley below led out to where we'd ridden on Monday, and so I sort of knew where I was going.


Two miles of this.


The rock from which the Rock Store gets its name.

I headed to Stunt Road, 6.5k @ 6%, all marked out from a race in days gone by. At the top I passed more cafe racers as I continued up Schuren/Saddle Peak Road, shown on some maps as "Muholland Raceway." This led to my ultimate destination for the day, Tuna Canyon Road, made famous by the Red Bull Descenders Challenge. Only problem was, do I go left or right? I have a feeling the race went right, down to the coast, but I'd been advised the PCH was not that great for riding when you got this close to Santa Monica, and besides, left looked more twisty on the map. It was unreal. Several miles of banked hairpins marked at 15 mph, one after another in a seemingly endless sweet flow. This road is way more built up than the others, with gated driveways all the way down, so you had to watch it a bit, hence, no photos from this part of the ride. This was both hands on the bars stuff, braking required. Once at the bottom it turns to Topanga Canyon road, where, no exaggeration, 50% of the vehicles are Range Rovers. I guess that's the ride of choice in this part of Malibu.

A short distance later I turned off on to Old Topanga Canyon Road, which by contrast looked like East Tennessee. I guess it's a bunch of hippies, religious nut camps and communes, etc, and just plain recluses. In my wisdom, for some reason I imagined this road would be flat, and of course I imagined wrong. Steady, shallow climbing typical of the canyon roads turned to steeper stuff as the houses disappeared, and of course this all led to another epic switchbacked descent, eventually leading back to Muholland way out near where it turns to dirt. At this point I had four hours on the road, and I was passing Muholland Highway mile marker 28. My base camp was about 21 miles from mile marker zero... That's right, 4 hours down and 49 miles to go. Including the ascent of Rock Store.


Doing my best tetaequalsboobie impression.


Up Rock Store. I've got five plus hours invested at this point...

Your hero had a bailout option though, simply going back the way he came. Even though descending Muholland to the coast was the original plan, by now it was getting late in the afternoon and that meant two potential perils on the PCH, a) heavy commuter traffic, and b) a stiff gale in the face for all 10 miles back to Mugu and friendly Lewis road. So I turned right at mile marker 10 and once again descended Westlake Boulevard. Some dude in a pimped out Chrysler 300 with chrome 22's squeezed me good as he passed, and I jumped right on his bumper. I hardly know this descent, having only ridden it once a week ago and once more about twenty years ago, so having a car to follow was a big help. When he really lit up the brake lights and squealed the tires I knew there was a sharpie coming. We wailed down, him gunning it S to S, and me riding as fast and smooth as I dared, way faster than me and Armand rode it on Sunday. The scariest part was that some other dudes in a clapped-out Datsun stake body nearly kept up with us all the way down.


It was a downhill finish nstuff...

Once into Westlake, I felt I was home free. One more little climb out of the valley and into T.O., then motorpacing off yet another crazed trucker, this time an Iveco box van, down Potrero. At the bottom an Amgen guy on a tri bike caught up to me, just doing his commute. He was happy to have reeled me in with his backpack on and all, but I think I sort of burst his bubble when I told him I'd left Camarillo 6.5 hours early. Total damage for the day was 6:45 on the road, minus 15 minutes or so to take on and let out fluids. I had no odometer, but near as I can guesstimate using online mappers the trip was just over 100 miles. The "major" ascents add up to 5000 feet or so, but on a ride like this all the little bumps could have added several thousand feet more of "climbing" to the total. This was the second 6+ hour day of the trip, and left me feeling like I'd exceeded all my riding goals, so the rest was going to be gravy. With a major goal of not getting tendonitis on my plate, caution would be the rule for the rest of the trip. Thanks for reading.