The Pain Gang

Saturday’s club ride was an old favorite with a new twist: Jesus Maria Road from San Andreas. I’ve been up that road over 20 times, but always starting from Valley Springs. There are various ways to make the ride shorter or longer but none of them are easy. The JM Road climb sees to that.

Our long time SBC regular Fearless (Frank Fiore) lives in Manteca and rides with some other groups, and he invited ‘The Pain Gang’ out of Modesto to join our club ride. It is more like SBC was joining them, since they had us outnumbered. They seemed a very nice bunch of very strong riders. They also had something we never have on SBC rides, a sag car! The driver offered to carry extra clothes or gear, and he had water and Gatorade available.

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We made up a big group of over 20. I am always very careful riding around people I don’t know. I’m sure they felt the same. Good thing I was paying attention. On the first gentle hill a rider (not from SBC) jammed his/her gears. The rider slowed which caused the rider directly behind (also not from SBC) to veer sharply left and into my line. I eased to the left and sighed under my breath. When it was safe I passed them both going uphill.

The so-so climbers turned out to be aggressive downhillers, so they both passed me. But when the road turned up again I caught them and decided to sit on them, and the same thing happened: another gear jam, another swerve left. That was enough for me; I backed off and headed for safer, less occupied tarmac.

I had never ridden Hwy 49 from San Andreas to Mokelumne Hill. Everyone assured me it was rideable. There is some shoulder that varies from 10 inches to almost 3 feet. But Caltrans has put rumble strips on the fog line, which means cyclists must choose between a tightrope to the right when the shoulder is narrow, or cross the bumps and ride in the lane. This is hard enough when you are in a small group, but very tricky when there are many riders in close proximity. Between the wind and the cars and the rumble strips and the other riders, for me it was a tense 7 miles to Moke Hill.

Jesus Maria used to be extremely bumpy, but the fire there a few years back destroyed what pavement there was, and recovery money included funds for repaving. And what a treat the new asphalt was! Incredibly smooth.

The group started together, but spread out on the climb. This was the hardest section of road I’ve done in a long time, and I think I did okay. Of the 20 riders there were three ahead of me and one with me when I reached the top. Strava says I averaged 211 watts for 31 minutes and 144 bpm average heart rate. Back in 2016 I did the climb in 29 minutes averaging 226 watts and 143 bpm. I know I was in better shape back then but I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t gone further backwards.

After the climb we rode on Rail Road Flat Road into Mountain Ranch. This is kind of a busy road with occasional motorists whose idea of ‘share the road’ includes laying on horns and doing a turbo diesel ‘smoke out’ to make sure the cyclists know who is boss. There were only two such occurrences on Saturday, which is about par.

We took a break at Sender’s market, and I must say most people there were quite friendly and asked where we were riding and advised us to ‘be safe’. I’ll try if you will too!

I was a little concerned about the descent back to San Andreas, because I assumed we would take Mountain Ranch Road, which has a lot of high speed traffic. But a most pleasant surprise awaited: Old Gulch Road! Narrow, completely smooth and nearly devoid of cars. Also delightfully twisting and mostly downhill. There were lots of grinning faces at the finish back at the Government Center. The sweet descent make the difficult climb up Jesus Maria well worth the effort.

I know I write a lot about the wonderful cycling roads in France, which after two years’ absence are starting to fade from memory. But on Saturday’s ride there were about 20 miles of French quality cycling. Jesus Maria and Old Gulch are right up there with the Malaucene Metric I love so much. Now if we could just do something about those rumble strips…