DanaPellerin.com

In the past 7 years since I bought my motorcycle I’ve covered a lot of road. About 45,000 miles worth. There’s a lot of places I love to go again and again because the rides are just so mesmerizing. Today I wanted to go somewhere I hadn’t been yet though. As I was looking on the map, I noticed a small lake waaaaay up in the Sierra’s called Lake Thomas Edison. It looked pretty cool, it had a paved road, and it was close enough to go there and back in one day, so I entered it into the GPS and took off on my adventure.

To get to Edison you have to go through Shaver and past Huntington lake, both places I’ve been to many times. The ride up was nice a cool, with little traffic. A perfect ride. So I get up to the turn off to go to Edison and the road narrows down to a small two laner that begins to wind up into the mountains. No big deal, I’ve ridden a ton of mountain roads and this was expected.

After a while (I’m not sure how many miles because it’s hard to judge on these slow winding roads ) the road narrows to a single lane. Now this is not a huge deal, but still it makes you a little nervous because these are mountain roads which means there are no shoulders so it makes passing other cars kind of difficult. I’m getting worried.

A few miles later, the road degenerates into something that can only be loosely described as a road. It was more like a trail that somebody just poured some quick-crete over. This road was BAD! Barely the width of an economy car, the road snaked through the mountains, up and down, back and forth. Long portions of it were walled on the right with solid granite and dropping off to my left into oblivion. No guard rails here. Just about 8 feet of patchy, sandy concrete to ride on and one wrong move would take me into the abyss. This was some scary stuff.

The worst part of riding a horrible road is just not knowing what’s ahead. Will the road end all together? Will it turn to dirt? if it gets too bad how will I turn around? On top of that, it was such a treacherous pass that I couldn’t get the bike above 10 miles an hour for most of the 15 or 20 miles. So it literally took me FOREVER to get to the end.

I was determined to get to the lake though, even though a bike like mine should have NEVER been on that road. But I focused, and eventually I got there. The trip back was a little easier. Amazing how that little bit of familiarity helps with the nerves. The traffic was way busier though with people heading out to camp and fish, so it was really hard passing cars on that tiny road. I finally made it out to the main road after an hour or so and it felt so good to be on wide, smooth concrete again. I stopped in Shaver for a few beers and some relaxation and then headed the rest of the way home.

Quite an adventure. Check out the pictures here.

The big day for me anyway. I’m riding the Millerton Metric which is a 70 mile ride through the Sierra foothills outside of Fresno/Clovis. It’s actually part of a longer, more strenous ride called the Climb to Kaiser, which is about 150 miles and features some insane climbing. But hey, you gotta walk before you can run.

I bought my bike just over 8 weeks ago. Before that I had not ridden a bicycle in years and had never ridden any sort of distance. I bought it to exercise and immediately I discovered many people I knew were avid bicyclists. My buddy Dave, who plays percussion at church, invited me to ride with him and some friends who were training for the Millerton Metric and so I started riding with them every Saturday.

Though I enjoyed riding, I decided I needed a goal to reach for. It’s not enough for me to do something just for kicks. So I set a goal of riding a 100 mile ride within 60 days. The Millerton Metric fell into that timeframe and is roughly 100 kilometers…. heck, that’s close enough right? So I decided that would be my goal.

So tomorrow is the day! I’m excited and worried all at once. I’m worried about having to stop on the hill climbs. In training I’ve just not had enough strength to get up those hills in one go. But hey, I’m 41 years old and I’ve only been riding for 8 weeks. My goal tomorrow is to finish, and do it in a reasonable amount of time. If I can do that, I’ll be a happy man.

Say a prayer for Doug, Dave and I.