I’ve been out in California since last Friday. Over the weekend I went on a pretty cool ride, Kitchen Creek, East of San Diego. The majority of a 3000 foot climb is on a gated road that has no access to vehicles. It’s a little primitive, but super cool.

It is June Gloom out here with a marine layer pretty much covering the first 5 miles of the coast. It is pretty cold, never getting much above the 60’s. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people out here. And if they planned their vacations to come to the beach, by God, they are going to be at the beach. It is weird riding by, nearly wearing arm warmers, and all these families have their beach towels and tents all set up for a full day beach adventure. The State Fair is also going on in Del Mar, so there is a lot of traffic on the coast because of it.

I’ve been downloading my Garmin to Strava. The link above shows the information for the Kitchen Creek ride. I’ve never really paid much attention to rides after I do them, but these segment things are kind of interesting. I rode back up Torrey Pines climb from Del Mar to the top pretty hard a couple days ago and when I downloaded the ride, there were probably 3 different Strava segments for the climb. I wasn’t even close to going up the hill the fastest. Here is a link to the Arnie Baker Torrey Pines Strava segment. It totally cracks me up, that name. I have to assume that Arnie created the segment and named it. I’ve known Arnie for along time. If the name sounds familiar, he was deeply involved with the Floyd defense thing. Deep enough to get charged by the French authorities for computer hacking or something or the sort. I haven’t seen him since that all went down. Anyway, I didn’t go all out up the climb, but was surprised someone went 6 seconds faster. I’m not going to do it again. It would be weird getting caught up doing Strava segments while out training, all over the country. But, I know it happens everyday.

I’m flying back tomorrow for the Tour of Kansas City, which is this weekend. Then the Tour of Lawrence, link above, is the next weekend. I’m a little worried that the temperature acclamation is going to be a problem. Okay, below are a few photos from the last couple days.

Most of the gated section of the Kitchen Creek climb looked like this.

The views on the descent were pretty great.

You don't have one of these pull up during a ride in Kansas.

A guy on the ride was on this, a RB-1. Classic bike.

I ran into John Howard and Gina Poertner at the Pannikin a couple days ago.

This is an example of what the weather is like around here on the coast.

This aint' how they serve pancakes and eggs in Kansas.

Gas is a tad expensive out here.

I went up to Shimano and visited Wayne Stetina and the gang up there. It is always super enjoyable catching up with Wayne. He’s a pretty smart guy that sometimes has a different perspective on subjects than me, which makes me think more about my perspective.

Anyway, as usual, I was drooling over the new stuff, which I don’t have. I rode Wayne’s bike which was equipped with a 11 speed Dura-Ace mechanical group. It was unreal. The shifting and braking power is substantially better than anything they’ve ever produced. By miles. You can pretty much shift with your little finger. It was so easy to shift, I originally thought I was riding electronic shifting. The front derailleur will shift from the small ring to the big under full pressure easily. The best thing about the whole thing, and the reason I think it all works so well, is that they have some new, super slick cables that really reduces the friction in both the brakes and derailleurs. That is going to be an easy upgrade for all groups, no matter what you’re riding. Wayne says he has close to 3K on the cables, and chain, and it worked incredibly well. Better than any new parts I’ve ever ridden. I didn’t manage to make it out of there with the new parts, but I got some shoes, wheels, super slick cables, and best of all, hopefully on a list that is going to get some of these parts, sooner, rather than later.

It is really amazing how much the technology of the components have improved the last few years. It really is a fun part of the sport, if you’re into the mechanical aspect.

I met up and rode with my friend, Greg Demgen yesterday. He’s the guy in the Nevada City photo below. I’ve known Greg since I was 14. He drove down to Lawrence Kansas, from LaCrosse, Wis, for nearly the first race I ever did, and beat up on me. So, it is getting close to 40 years of riding with Greg. Pretty cool. He’s doing good. He works for Squadra, custom cycling clothing, but is really a chauffeur for his son, Chris, who is an awesome baseball player and seems to practice more hours than I ride my bike a week. Anyway, it was nice catching up some.

So, I’m flying back to Kansas later this afternoon. I know it is just about the first day of summer, but it already came to Eastern Kansas. The temperatures have been in the upper 90’s all week and it doesn’t look like they are going to go down anytime soon. The Tour of Kansas City historically has super hot temperatures, so this will be the norm. I’m going to suffer like a dog.

Wayne isn't in the office that much. Even when he is, he's on the phone a bunch.

The new cranks might look a little unorthadox, but they make a ton of sense from an engineering perspective.

Wayne, after special ordering me some shoes. Not the best photo, but he is super light right now. Really skinny. I'm not sure how he does it being on the road so much.

The Shimano warehouse is huge and very impressive.

Here is Greg's saddle, an old Turbo. He stock piled them, realizing it was his favorite saddle of all time.

I was riding South along the coast highway and my friend, Brent Prenzlow, was riding North, pulled a u-turn and rode with me for awhile. He is wearing the winner’s jersey from the Waffle Ride/Race, from back in April.