I figured today was a good a day as any, actually better, to drive somewhere to ride, seeing as anyone clogging the local freeways to get out of town or come back would be nowhere in sight. And seeing as San Francisco is friggin' cold again, I chose to drive down to the Dublin/Pleasanton area where temps are summer-like. I could have swooned. And I was right about the freeways.

A nice, hot ride starting at the Dublin/Pleasanton BART, and going 34 miles through god-knows-where-except-that-it-went-through-some-podunk-town-called-"Sunol". I still don't know what the "Sunol grade", that I hear frequently on traffic reports, is. It was totally fun, but I'm totally zoning now. It was hot, I've been avoiding meat lately, which I can't imagine is great for cycling, I'm still adjusting to new sleeping hours that are more "normal", and the hills weren't really hard, but I was going down to my small chainring and going below 8 mph at times. Otherwise it was a really fast course, rolling between 20-24 mph, and there was one protracted, straight downhill that I was holding steady at 44 mph for quite a while. Usually going that fast, I can only glance down at my speedometer, fingers itching to brake, but today I was looking at it for seconds at 44 mph thinking, "oh, this is interesting".

I hate coming back to San Francisco. You spend all day out of town in the warm, in shorts and t-shirts, and then you get back to San Francisco and step out of your car or out of a BART station and you're greeted with a blast of chilly air and fog rolling in. Parka weather.