Tierra Bella – Apr 17, 2010
Yesterday (Saturday) was the Tierra Bella, an organized ride near Gilroy. We registered far in advance, for the easiest route (60 km), thinking we should go with an safe warmup for the season. 3 weeks ago, when Elliot and I rode 75 km to Santa Cruz, I realized that the short route of the Tierra Bella might be a little too easy. It was…
Ample toilets at every stop
The Tierra Bella 60k turned out to be a be a beautiful route, following the flat grade of the Uvas reservoir for much of the way. There were toilets at every rest stop, and an assortment of good foods, including bagels, roll-up sandwiches, gorp, bananas, oranges, grapes, pineapple, energy bars, cup-o-noodles, hot and cold drinks, and home-baked breads.
Rest stop food every 10 miles or so
Elliot and Merrianne at lunch
We finished at about 1:00 pm, enjoying a delicious lunch of all-you-can-eat jambalaya on red beans and rice. They even had live music.
Live Music
By the way, I’m timing myself on this blog entry. I want to get an idea of how long the laptop will be on per night on the real trip, and thus, how long the battery will last. Everything, from turn on, downloading pictures, reworking things with GIMP, and synchronizing to WordPress took 38 minutes. That includes 4 minutes of figuring out to the Cupertino public library network, and 3 1/2 minutes to actually upload everything. Afterwards, I moved to McDonald’s and tried the connection there. Only 30 seconds to upload the same thing. This could work!!
