The Pursuit of [Even More] Excellence - Saturday, October 18

[The Passage Announcements]

The Pursuit of [Even More] Excellence

Passage #328 Metro A Line Remix

Saturday, October 18

Depart from CA Donuts at 9:15am

Ride starts at Glendora A Line Station at ~10:40am (and ends at La Verne/Fairplex Station)

I led this route again a couple years ago, in slightly remixed form, after learning a fun, different way down the final hill on a Wild Wolf-related ride. Now, I am further remixing it to take advantage of the latest A Line extension. 

Quite a bit of the original route is still intact — approx. 20 miles in the middle — but several miles of the beginning and end are now new. Distance-wise, it is about the same as what we did last time around, but it does add an extra (albeit fairly small) hill to the beginning. 

The main advantage of having the A Line at our disposal is that there doesn't need to be any long wait for our return train: we'll pull up to the station and one should come along in 15 minutes at most. Nice. (Also makes bailing early, if you want, much easier.)

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Let's just get into the details, of which there are many:

- We'll group up at CA Donuts, since it is a nice place to meet, but then we'll ride together over to the Wilshire/Vermont Station to catch the Metro to downtown. If you don't already have a Metro card with fare on it, just go directly to the station and purchase it and meet us there (on the upper platform). We're aiming to catch a train scheduled for 9:30am.

- When exactly we'll get to the actual ride start point in Glendora is a bit hard to predict, given the distance and variety of hiccups that could occur in the Metro system between our start and end points. But assuming we make it on the A line by ~9:40, then we should get out to Glendora about an hour later. 

- I'd really like to get moving as soon as we get out there, so if you want to meet out in Glendora (or anywhere along the way), please be on time (or ideally early)!

- The ride itself is ~36 miles. The first half, before lunch, is a lot of small-ish ups and downs, many on wide trails. After lunch is a relatively leisurely jaunt through several Pomona college campuses and then a big-ish final hill, with a partial single track downhill (it's about as easy as that can be though).

- Going to do an In-N-Out Burger stop for lunch again. There are a few other options nearby that you can grab instead (mostly also fast food, but also a Super King grocery store), if you take exception to that choice.

- The ride will end at La Verne/Fairplex station. If you do drive to Glendora, it will be an easy couple stops on the A Line back to your car.

- And, again, if you need to bail early, should be pretty easy at any point, since we'll never be too far from the A Line.

- Temperatures are looking pretty good for Saturday, around 75 or so. As always, bring plenty of water, snacks, sunscreen, etc. All the normal things one will need for a day-long bike ride.

- For this route I strongly recommend bikes with low gears. Indeed, I'll say NO SINGLE SPEED/FIXED. And super skinny tires are probably not the best idea either. Some of the off-roading will get sorta rough/technical. Nothing TOO crazy though; I'd put it in the "fun" category and not "frustrating" (YMMV). And, before you bring your e-bike, you might want to ask yourself how much you like carrying your e-bike, because there are places where some uphill hike-a-bike will be necessary. Anyway, yeah, this route has a lot of stuff. Fun stuff, but a lot of it.

- And, speaking of stuff, there are also quite a few water crossings. I tend to walk them; a bolder rider could probably ride many of them. But as we found out last time around, if the water level is high enough on a few of the little creeks, you can pretty much not avoid getting your feet wet. (I will note that I did NOT have this problem while scouting a couple weeks ago.) This is all to say: packing an extra pair of socks in your bag is not the most bogus idea in the world.

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And, finally, the original ride announcement had this to say:

Though a longer, more elaborate ride announcement might be warranted here, it behooves us to remind you (scarcely more than an hour before our normal ride time, we know) that the Passage is on Saturday this week. So, lest you show up at the donut shop to find no ride and declare the entire enterprise bogus, let us be uncharacteristically brief and straightforward: we will be going to the furthest reaches of the San Gabriel Valley this week and, much like Mssrs. Logan and Preston did with their historical figures, exposing you to all the best things that the 1980s had to offer — aerobics*, water slides**, roller rinks***, etc.****.

All in all, a most excellent adventure.

* aerobic exercise, anyway
** or at least some establishing shots thereof
*** that is, the rolling of your tires over... stuff?
**** definitely lots and lots of cetera; we promise you that!