449 km

What happens when a bunch of riders who like to go on really long bike rides gets together and decides to host their own events in order to give back to the cycling community? You get the Quack Cyclists , and their annual Devil Mountain Double (DMD) and Knoxville Fall Classic Double Century (Kx) rides, that's what. Plus, not only do you get two local Bay Area doubles in which to participate, you get two high quality local doubles in which to participate, and life, you will say to your self, hardly gets better. The DMD is held in mid to late April each year and the Knoxville is held in mid to late September each year, and while the Knoxville is clearly the easier of the two, the Knoxville Double is clearly not easy . I have fallen into the pattern of volunteering each year for the Devil Mountain Double and then riding as a participant in the Knoxville Fall Classic Double Century. This year, I completed my seventh Kx Double and 21st Triple Crown certified double century. My riding...

The day before the Knoxville Double Century, my riding companion for tomorrow wrote an email to let me know he had been in a collision caused by a driver making an illegal move. It brought to mind a similar experience I had a few years back, which I first wrote about here on the Internet Bridgestone Owners Bunch list. Below is the text from that posting to ibob. ---------------------------------------- One less MA 2 rim in the world. Flush with the promise of the impending weekend, Fridays are supposed to start out better. Stuff like this is more suited to the cliche of dismal Monday mornings. What can I expect though, when Thursday didn't really end on a high note. I got a late start out the door under the fog of the coastal marine layer. On San Pablo Avenue the construction crews were redirecting cars on the other side of the road away from the new layer of pavement being laid down. The outside lane on my side had been done a few days before so that was a small plus. Th...

The San Francisco Randonneurs will be holding their first Populaire event. Details can be found here Quite a number of riders don't jump feet first into doing 200km (and longer) rides, but instead build up with a series of shorter rides. The Populaire event is meant to offer a shorter distance ride with all the aspects of a brevet, including brevet cards, controls, mass starts, time limits and the usual reliance on rider self sufficiency for route finding and dealing with pitfalls a rider might face out on the road, such as flat tires and having food and water enough to reach the next control. As mentioned, this will be SFR's first time holding this event. We expect to learn a lot and use that knowledge for the next time we hold this event in 2010. If you read this and are interested in participating or supporting this event, please send mail to rba@sfrandonneurs.org. Thanks for reading.