Busy day in the neighborhood & Tam

For people who have a lot of money to donate to the California Academy of Sciences they had a special preview night on Thursday with one valet parker for every patron.

It was quite a different scene today as it was the opening day for the public and admission was free.  I've lived in this neighborhood for 12 years and never seen this many people here.  Driving home from Tam (report below), I decided to go an extra few blocks south on 19th Ave to try and circumvent the gridlock, but virtually every street in the neighborhood (Judah, Kirkham, Lawton, Moraga, etc) was packed with cars, which I've never seen happen.  I had to park up on Noriega, which is the farthest that I've ever had to park.  At least I had my bike with me to ride home.

I had to post the above picture to show how stupid some people are.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen people park on this corner with the front of their car crossing the dotted line on the pavement marking the outside line of the path of muni light rail line.  The muni driver will just sit there and honk his horn, while traffic backs up behind, until the idiot comes back to his car.  I think the muni trains should have cattle guards on the front and they should be allowed to push cars illegally parked in their way off the road.

Anyway, getting back to Tam.  It was as hard a race as ever.  The 20 of us in the P/1/2 race couldn't really get organized on the Hwy.  There were no designated workers for the flat first 4 miles, so Nate English pulled for about the first mile, then Doug Merrill took a long pull, then me, Paul Mach and a few other guys tried pulling through, but only about 5-6 of us were willing to take a pull, so gaps would open up, we'd slow down.  Mark Weir took a couple particularly hard pulls trying to speed things up a bit, then Nate pulled for most of the last mile and we hit the turn in 9:45, not bad, but nowhere fast enough for a course record.

Most of us were together at the start of the climb, and I was about 8 wheels back.  Then I saw Nate moving up real fast on the inside and I knew that was the wheel to go with.  I don't have a power meter, but I'd guess that Nate was putting out somewhere around 500-600 watts (maybe more) and guys were dropping left and right.  Within about 4 minutes it was just Nate Paul and me, and I only held on for another couple minutes before I had to settle into my own pace.  Nate and Paul pulled out of site quickly even though I was going about as hard as I could trying to get out of Greg Remaly's view.  I could see him behind me on the next few switchbacks before I pulled far enough ahead.  Near the top of Bo/Fax I caught sight of Paul and was about 10 seconds behind him as I hit the summit in 28:25 (18:40 split), Nate was still out if site.

I basically just TT'd the 7 sisters.  I caught Paul on the 2nd climb and he rode with me until the 4th where I was able to pull away.  I didn't want to ease up at all since I was fearful that Greg may have been closing in on the rolling terrain, but I was able to hold on to 2nd finishing 56 seconds behind Nate (39:42) in 40:38 (12:13 split).  Paul held on for 3rd with Greg in 4th.

Congratulations Nate, that's faster than Euser rode the last 2 years!