New climb

The "10 mph Turn" sign always marks a good climb.

Bill and I took a ride today. We climbed the hill from Valley Chapel up to Mt Hope. If you are a roadie rider, then you no doubt have climbed this many a time. But for chumps like me, this was a first. It was a nice climb and I look forward to climbing it more in the future. It's a perfect hill in its commitment to a consistent grade.

The hill is also way closer than I thought. In my mind, this climb was like 30 miles out or something, but in reality it's around 12 or so. As a bonus, I think I may be on the cusp of a game-changer in the climbing-technique-department. Bill suggested that I put my weight back a bit when I stand on climbs. Right away, stuff happened: mainly, less weight was on my hands/wrists (duh) and also, there was some weirdo efficiency thing going on as I put more weight directly over my pedals.

Whatever. This kind of nit-picky theory is not my deal, but some little thing happened there that will fun to experiment with over the next few months.

After the climb up to Mt Hope (that's what I'm calling it -- if there's a proper name for that area, feel free to educate me), the famous Palouse wind kicked in. Blech. I hate the famous Palouse wind.

Pictures cannot do justice to lame Palouse rollers + wind.

So we did rollers for about 10 miles into a wind that was about 40 mph... well, maybe it was like 15 mph. But whatever. That part sucked.

Otherwise, the ride was good. We took a chunk of the midnight century route out of Spangle -- on Jennings road, which is in way nicer shape (even a tad wet) than it is in August when it's washboarded and gravely.

Jennings Road.