Squaw Peak: In the Evening

Yesterday morning, as you ought to know, left me without a ride. I was sad, but not undaunted. I was determined to get a ride in.

Accordingly, in a whirlwind of bath time and dinner time and reading, I got the children to bed and got on my bike to hit the open road. It was around 7:40 pm. Here are some observations about that ride.

Observation 1
It gets dark earlier than it used to. I can't mount lights on my road handlebars (these) because of the flat tops--a nice feature most of the time. As a consequence, I was in a BIG hurry to finish the ride before dark. I almost made it, if you count dusk as being "before dark."

Observation 2
Gun Shots everywhere. As it turns out, there are a number of places for shooting along the road. For some deranged reason, I never got tired of feigning like I got hit after every report. I only stopped because it was taking too much energy.

Observation 3
Squaw peak is much busier in the evening than in the morning. Squaw Peak faces west and is quite a popular spot for couples. Luckily, I was wearing the Road ID--not a single close call.

Observation 4
New tires make a difference. After too many miles and too many flats on the Vittoria Rubino Pros, I mounted some Hutchinson Top Speeds (a good training tire with a anti-puncture belt). These felt really nice in the turns.

It was a great ride. I actually was able to push myself with a heart-rate higher than 170 the whole way up (about 31 minutes). The weather yesterday was cool--I think it was in the 70s when I left on my ride. Though I wanted to make better time up the hill, I kept up a much faster pace than usual. ("Much," in this case, is relative.) In fact, instead of being in the lowest gear the whole way up, I was able to shift up a gear for around 60-70% of the time.