Niles Sprint

Friday afternoon, when it had already been raining for 5 days straight, I get the usual phone call from Vandenbusch to confirm the Saturday morning ride.  Even though it had been rain rain rain for the last 100 hours, we decided that if we woke up Saturday morning and the ground was dry and the skies were clear, we were riding. I figured no way in hell that we would be riding. Go figure! When I woke up at 6:30 to let the dogs out, the ground was dry and the sky was (somewhat) clear. But the wind was blowing. Blowing hard. DAMN!

Now file this one under \”something you don\’t see everyday\”.  I\’ve been to mile marker 11 and the end of the creek trail maybe hundreds of times.  Always see something new or different.  As we made our way out on this day, I couldn\’t believe my eyes!  The Tahoe Queen had washed ashore at the end of the creek trail! As we got closer, we realized that the what looked like an old paddle-wheel boat was actually a \”dredger\”? I guess thats what you would call it. Thats what it does.  Pretty big rig.  They must\’ve floated it in during the last high tide. I\’m guessing that the latest storm caused some damage to the levee road, and the dredger was going to shore things up.

Never in my wildest dreams would I ever had imagine that something so ENORMOUS would sit itself right in the little pond that sits at the edge of the bay. An incredible sight.

After a relatively easy 9 mile ride out the end of the trail, we decided to skip Coyote Hills and just cruise the creek trail back down to Niles. What sounded like a good idea at first turned ugly when the wind blew (and blew hard) in our face most (all) of the way back. Struggling to maintain 10 mph in the worse parts and windy the entire 11 miles to Niles.  The creek was flowing muddy brown the whole way back.   We took a short rest at mile marker 0, took a picture of creek flowing out of Niles Canyon, and headed back to Starbucks. At the end of the day it was a 26 miler. No hills but tons of wind. And definitely not a sprint. My legs are still aching.