Dror Bar-Natan: Album: 2025.03.07_San_Gabriel_Mountains

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68.7km, with 1,550m of climbs, on a bike I borrowed from Helen, a day before giving a talk in a Saturday conference in Pitzer College. I was meaning to take the Glendora Ridge Road further to the west, ride along the San Gabriel reservoir, head south to Azusa, and return to Claremont on city roads. But things don't always work exactly as planned.

When I reached the little town of Mt. Baldy, I found a closed gate (easily trespassable) and sign saying that the Glendora Ridge Road is closed. I was about to turn and head back down to Claremont, but then a truck came from the other side of the gate, belonging I think to some contractors who were doing road work in the closed section. They re-iterated that the road is closed, and yet implied quite clearly that nothing terrible will happen if I'll cross the gate and continue along the road. I think they meant well, but they didn't realize how much further along the road I was meaning to go.

At first, things were great! The road was in sufficient condition, the views were amazing, and I had both of them mostly for myself - with the occasional road works machinery as the exception.

Around 15km and a few hundreds meters of ups and down later, there was another roadblock. This time it was manned and the man there was very definite: "go back!". So I backtracked to Claremont; my longest backtrack ever. (Not that the ones near Beijing and near Owen Sound were any fun).

To top it up, about 10km before the end it started to rain, and about 5km before the end it turned into a thunderstorm, with some hail to make it even more fun. (Rain in California is exactly the same as rain in Canada it gets you wet).

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