Death Ride Lives Up to its Name

[jbeattie]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/07/17/fire-california-spreads-tamarack-fire-prompts-evacuations/8003312002/

I think they should run the ride and charge extra for the thrill of running from the flames -- creeping up the >20% sections of Ebbetts Pass with the fire closing in. Definitely get a special jersey.

-- Jay Beattie.

[Tom Kunich]

On Sunday, July 18, 2021 at 8:03:44 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/07/17/fire-california-spreads-tamarack-fire-prompts-evacuations/8003312002/
>
> I think they should run the ride and charge extra for the thrill of running from the flames -- creeping up the >20% sections of Ebbetts Pass with the fire closing in. Definitely get a special jersey.

Are you aware that fires are a normal part of natural forest management? When ever enough ground clutter gets around - especially in areas open to lightning storms fires are normal. Just because people like you build houses there doesn't mean that fires should be stopped.

[jbeattie]

The Bootleg Fire has consumed nearly four hundred square miles of standing timber owned by someone, including you and me. Where do you think wood comes from? Read this (which you won't): https://www.fs.usda.gov/resources/fremont-winema/landmanagement/resourcemanagement That's a managed forest with timber sales.

An uncontrolled fire is not management -- that's just plain destruction. 116 degree temperatures in Portland are not normal. The extreme drought and dryness of the tinder is unprecedented -- although extreme drought is turning into the new normal in the Klamath basin. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bootleg-fire-grows-7-contained-western-wildfires/ Fires destroying an area large than NYC is not the ordinary circle of life Simba, and something is clearly out of whack.

And coming from Shitholia, a forest for you would be two closely spaced valley oaks -- and a bay tree. Around here, however, forests are not an abstraction. We have real forests nearby -- which some dope with fireworks can ruin in a hurry and spoil for the rest of us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YQvaP3eQG4&ab_channel=KGWNews https://www.wweek.com/news/2017/09/05/woman-witnessed-teen-tossing-firecrackers-into-gorge-there-was-a-whole-group-of-kids-who-found-it-funny-to-do-this/

Regardless of what is "natural" in your mind, I would prefer not to hack smoke and ride through a burn zone in one of the most beautiful areas in America -- accessible from my doorstep via bike. Its also a source of tourist dollars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLUcbgpVIpw&ab_channel=AmericanQueenSteamboatCompany

Its not Oakland, and the idea that you don't save it is ridiculous -- even coming from you, the guy who is talking about moving to K-Falls -- soon to be a burn scar.

-- Jay Beattie.

[Tom Kunich]

We all know that you don't know any history and huff and puff to hide it but the ENTIRE state would burn down regularly. This is provable by tree rings particularly on Redwood which evolved with a fire resistant bark. You think you own the forest? So what did YOU invest in anything?

[Tom Kunich]

More dimwit palavering from the chief palavered. https://projects.oregonlive.com/weather/temps/ There is no "climate change" in Portland no matter how much you Democrats attempt to use scare tactics to pretend it is so.

[William Crowell]

I did the Death Ride once, when I was younger. After you did 4 of the 5 climbs, and before doing the 5th one, you had to ride right past the parking lot where the ride headquarters was located, and where your car was parked. When you did so, your handlebars pulled really hard to the left, causing your bike to have this unnerving propensity to veer across the road, into the parking lot and over to your car, so it was pretty hard to keep going straight and continue on to the 5th climb. It felt like you were at the Mystery Spot or something.

I'm pretty sure they quit calling it the Death Ride after it really did live up to its name, when a rider died of a heart attack during the ride. I recall that his family asked the organizers to quit calling it the Death Ride out of respect to him, and I believe they agreed to do so.

I don't think the Death Ride is being run anymore, is it? Nowadays there are rather few centuries in California, and when they do have one it costs way too much (around $75 - $100). I don't know why; maybe insurance? Probably all the money is going to Jay's law firm. Yes, it's probably all Jay's fault.
In any event, my yuppiness quotient is too low to pay that much in order to do a ride. There are lots of good rides starting at the end of my driveway, so no travel or lodging is involved, and they are free.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 7/18/2021 11:03 AM, jbeattie wrote:
> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/07/17/fire-california-spreads-tamarack-fire-prompts-evacuations/8003312002/
>
> I think they should run the ride and charge extra for the thrill of running from the flames -- creeping up the >20% sections of Ebbetts Pass with the fire closing in. Definitely get a special jersey.

A Nomex jersey?


--
- Frank Krygowski

[jbeattie]

Actually, event insurance is pretty cheap, and everyone signs a waiver. I think that the price of the Death Ride (which is still a thing), its more market driven. Entry is limited, and everyone wants to cheat death -- and get the jersey. Cheating death is worth $75-100, maybe even more. And back in the day you got the patch and pin even if you didn't want to buy the jersey. It was like the "free" Tyvek jacket for the STP. A near-death souvenir.

And yes, it is far cheaper starting at the end of your driveway, but then there is no jersey, pin, patch, jacket -- or ice cream bars or a night or two sleeping in a tent at a campground. I remember one year stopping at the top of Carson Pass, and they had ice cream bars -- which are great, but not good jersey food. Coked up on ice cream bars and Cytomax but still too tired to care, I hit 62mph coming down Carson Pass, headed back to Turtle Rock. That's the fastest I've gone on a bike -- a Cannondale 2.8 with a notoriously limber front-end, but I didn't get any speed wobble and was only concerned when I looked at my speedometer (actually 61.5mph, but I prefer to round up). It really makes a difference when a road is closed to auto traffic and nobody is going to bust you for centerline violations. You just have to look out for ascending cyclists.

-- Jay Beattie.

[Tom Kunich]

I rode from HOME to a motel in that podunk town and did the ride and rode back. That meant riding on Highway 50 through the foothill towns and across the central valley and back over the old Altamonte Pass and then it was a mere 30 miles home.

[Tom Kunich]

On Sunday, July 18, 2021 at 11:57:56 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:

I was coming down Golf Links road a while ago and some full size SUV came up behind me, The road was open with a good view forward so I pulled all of the way over to the edge to let him by. This went on for 3 straightaways with a clear road ahead. Finally I pulled out to the center because there is a sharp high speed turn and that SOB passed me within inches laying on the horn in that blind turn with very fast traffic from the opposite direction. At that point I was doing 28 mph and I would normally hit 30 around that corner then pull into a bike lane after passing a road that comes in with a poor view of the road. Then the bike lane almost immediately disappears and the edge of the road is a cliff face with dirt out into the right foot or so of the road. This is followed by a steep downhill to a blind turn with a full stop on an 8% grade onto flat road. No one could ever accuse Oaklanders of having the brains that God gave a goat.

[jbeattie]

WTF? It's 200 miles to Markleeville from Oakland via HWY 50. You rode that and then did a 120-ish mile ride with 15K of climbing and then rode home 200 miles. That's impressive.

And why take HWY50? I don't think you can even ride on parts of HWY 50, and you have to ride north to catch it. I've taken HWY 88 and HWY 4 down or up. HWY 88 is Carson Pass, but its not terrible, except that it has a saw-tooth downhill on the west side, which gets tedious -- climbing to descend.

-- Jay Beattie.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 7/18/2021 2:57 PM, jbeattie wrote:
>
>
> And yes, it is far cheaper starting at the end of your driveway, but then there is no jersey, pin, patch, jacket -- or ice cream bars or a night or two sleeping in a tent at a campground.

I've never been much into "organized" or "invitational" events. For one
thing, I don't like driving much, and for a long time family events and
other conditions have required far too much driving. I'm very unlikely
to drive somewhere to ride my bike.

But even when I did some of those events, I found them far less than
ideal. It was nice to meet different cyclists and see lots of different
bikes, especially back when we were almost the only cyclists in a tiny
redneck town. But I didn't like sharing the road with packs of
squirrelly riders, waiting in long lines for porta-johns, camping in a
field with hundreds of other tents, etc.

We have friends who just returned from riding from Pittsburgh to
Washington DC, under the guidance of a touring company that provided sag
support and most meals, made hotel reservations, etc. Even that is not
my style. I get the greatest pleasure from wandering on my own way,
doing my own navigation, choosing my own stops, sleeping where I like.


--
- Frank Krygowski

[William Crowell]

J.B. wrote: "And why take HWY50 [to South Lake Tahoe]? I don't think you can even ride on parts of HWY 50.

You're right, J.B., about bikes being banned from Hwy. 50 between Sacramento and Placerville because that part of the route is hard-core freeway, but contrary to popular belief it is legal to ride on Hwy. 50 from Placerville to S. Lake. It's much shorter and easier (less climbing) than going by other routes, but nerve-wracking as hell. There's a fairly decent shoulder to ride on, but the really fast auto and truck traffic buzzing by you so closely tends to freak you out. The preferred, and much more scenic, but longer, way to go is to start at Diamond Springs (a couple of miles west of Placerville), take Pleasant Valley Road through the town of Pleasant Valley, up the hill to Sly Park Road (aka Mormon Emigrant Trail due to the double-naming of places by the traditional Christians vs. the Mormons) to Highway 88, thence east on 88 over Carson Pass to Highway 89, and then north on 89, over Luther Pass to S. Lake. That is a really cool, exciting ride.

It's much better, IMHO, to center your base of operations for this ride in Diamond Springs, rather than in Placerville, because D.S. is located on a plain, so you don't need to do any unnecessary climbing before getting into the Sierras proper, while P'ville on the contrary is surrounded on all sides by steep hills that you have to climb in order to get anywhere interesting. Plus, D.S. is much less congested with tourists.

On Pleasant Valley Road, a couple of miles east of Diamond Springs, there is a big hill about a mile or two long at the boundary of a tectonic subduction zone, where the foothills end and the real Sierras begin. At the top of this (in the space of a little over a mile) you find yourself in a completely different biological zone than you were in at the bottom of the climb. I find this really interesting! However, you don't want to stay on Pleasant Valley Road going up this hill because the going is slow due to the steepness, the road isn't very wide and the traffic really zips past, pedal to the metal, up the hill. Instead, make a right on laid-back Zandonella Road at the bottom of the climb and re-join Pleasant Valley Rd. where Zandonella meets it at the top of the hill.

[jbeattie]

I've ridden the Luther Pass route from Markleeville to S. Lake Tahoe -- as part of a longer trip with my wife through Yosemite. This was back when Harrah's had open-air slots at street level, and we leaned our bikes and hit it big on the nickel slots, making enough for some casino buffet dinner -- back when they were cheap. We rode to our start in Mariposa via HWY 88 and then down HWY 49.

I lived in SJ and did a bunch of little tours in the Sierra, but I never got that creative with routes. I would just pick some place to park on HWY 49 like Jackson or Angel's Camp or one of those towns and then took HWY 88 or 4 and went riding for a few days. I stayed off HWY 50 for all the reasons you mention. I'm sure the grades are easier on HWY 50, but I'd rather grind over Pacific Grade than get run down by a gambling bus full of drunk government workers (speaking from experience being a drunk government worker on a gambling bus careening up HWY 50).

-- Jay Beattie

[Tom Kunich]

Well, we only rode on Hwy 50 from Pollock Pines or someplace like that since that was the only real route to South Lake Tahoe. I don't remember that trip very clearly since it was a long time ago. Here I am now thinking that a metric century is a long distance when we used to regularly ride to the Paso Robles event and back. We also rode to San Diego on the coastal route and took the train back. My ride road across the US twice and another half time so that the kids could train for the Jr. Olympics. Mellisa got a third in her age category.

It has been unnaturally cold all of this year. Hopefully we will have an El Nino next and a lot of rain and normal weather. The La Nina routed all of the rain far north this year.

I showed people the actual CDC statistics about the covid-19 and last Saturday. Showing them the actual charts that show that the last DEATH from covid-19 was in the last week of April 2020 I finally realized that people don't understand this sort of thing. They don't understand the CDC using a fucking computer model that predicts covid-19 deaths that never occurred or that it can easily be proven that they never occurred because the mortuary business lost the same amount of money last year as they have been since 2015 due to people opting more and more for cremation rather than religious burials. I might as well have been throwing chaff to the wind. 50 years of experience means absolutely nothing when a tyrannical government decides to rig the statistics. When someone dies a normal death with massive circulatory diseases from misuse of his body over the years, which eventually makes him bedridden and that leads to pneumonia (which is the absolute norm) and then the medical facility adds covid-19 to the death certificate to collect $50,000 from the CDC, we have statistical anomalies that people cannot deal with.

How are they verifying a covid diagnosis? With PCR. I could swab a cabbage in a supermarket and prove it positive for covid-19 with PCR. There is not a definitive test for covid-19 and so they can rig the statistics to show anything. This misuse of the government is what has led to things like Portland and Seattle and Berkeley riots.

I suppose this is hardly the place for it since no one here understands these things any better than those guys I was with on Saturday. Obama-care destroyed medical facility profits so they made back $30 Billion from the covid hoax. Who are they to complain?

[Tom Kunich]

That sounds like a better route. We only did that highway 50 route once. A couple of years ago I rode over Luther Pass and I think we saw a dozen cars on it and that big huge wide road with big wide shoulders was really great. Doing around 45 or so down again was neat.

[William Crowell]

..that big huge wide road with big wide shoulders was really great. Doing around 45 or so down again was neat...

On the Mormon Emigrant Trail -> Hwy. 88 -> Hwy. 89 route, you can't let yourself get into the mindset that it is going to be all downhill going home, because it isn't. There are some pretty bad hills on 88 and the Mormon Emigrant Trail going back to Placerville that can be pretty discouraging if you don't anticipate them.

[Tom Kunich]

On Monday, July 19, 2021 at 7:30:37 AM UTC-7, William Crowell wrote:
> ..that big huge wide road with big wide shoulders was really great. Doing around 45 or so down again was neat...
>
> On the Mormon Emigrant Trail -> Hwy. 88 -> Hwy. 89 route, you can't let yourself get into the mindset that it is going to be all downhill going home, because it isn't. There are some pretty bad hills on 88 and the Mormon Emigrant Trail going back to Placerville that can be pretty discouraging if you don't anticipate them.

Well, I don't remember much about it anymore and we did go back the same way we went - hwy 50. Climbing to the top of Luther Pass and then descending back into South Lake Tahoe was only perhaps 5 years ago. We went to a restaurant on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe that was spectacular but so were the prices.

[William Crowell]

The Mormon Emigrant Trail is often blocked by snow until maybe June 15 or July 1. You need to verify that it is open to traffic before you make your plans for the ride.