A nice day in the mountains, but a minor disaster
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Today’s ride was one of my favorites. Up San Gabriel Canyon, right on East Fork, and then up the back of Glendora Mountain. I met Gene at the park in Pasadena, and we rode out to Encanto Park in Duarte to meet the rest of the group for the ride. My little GPS said that I started at 825 feet at Victory Park. At Encanto, it said about 600.
We headed up the bike path to get to the bottom of the canyon. Then we started up the mountain. It’s a nice climb. There were more up-and-down sections than I remembered, but it was still a nice climb up to the turnoff for East Fork.
A little ways up East Fork, there was a turnoff for Shoemaker Road. I’d read about this before, and since I was a couple minutes ahead of the main group, I turned off to do some sightseeing. I rode up a short distance to a nice overlook. I thought it would be a nice photo location, so I propped the camera up on the stone wall by the side of the road. I set the timer. But when I went to go sit in front of it, the velcro on my glove caught the camera strap and pulled it off the wall. It fell on the ground, hitting lens-first. The lens got knocked crooked, and when it tried to move, it just made pathetic little electric motor noises.
I rode back down the hill and into Camp Williams. While we waited for the rest of the group to arrive, I got the camera to boot up. But the lens was out of alignment and couldn’t focus properly. So that’s about it for my trusty old Canon A70.
The GPS read 1711 feet at Camp Williams. Then we started up the main hill. There were a lot of motorcycles out on the road. The noise was pretty annoying. But on the good side, they tend to travel in packs, so it’s quiet for fairly long stretches between groups. It was a nice, steady climb up the back of the mountain. At the top, I stopped an talked with a couple of other riders for a few minutes. The GPS read 3423 at the top. We’d climbed about 2,800 feet (about 850m) on the ride. When Gene got to the top, he just kept going, so we headed down after him.
The ride down the front side of Glendora Mountain Road is very nice. The road surface is good, with nice sweeping turns and good views. The last time we were up there the road was closed, and the time before that it was cold and raining. This time it was just perfect.
When we got to the bottom, we all decided that we were done for the day, and we headed straight for home by the most direct route.
Aside from the broken camera, it was a very nice day.
64 miles.
