When your rich...no one can hear you spell.....

So,  once upon a time, in a desert far far away, there was an area on the side of a mountain known as the Hawes trail where good old Mountain Bik'n boys had their fun in the dirt.  All was swell, until one day.... someone thought that would be a great place to build a collection of ritzy housing developments.  How ritzy are they?  Well you know it's a high class area when they don't spell things like the common folk,  for instance,  take the word park.  That's just a good old joe term for something quite simple right?  Not a lot of places to go to make the word park sound glorious right?  Well,  you just don't know nothin man!  Take a look at this fine example of the sophisticated possibilities for this seemingly common word---

Desert Foothills Parke

I didn't realize what a country bumpkin I was until this morning when I chanced upon this parke' .  I knew folks in this neighborhood were pretty flush but I didn't know they had there very own parke'  .

Then,  after I had finished my first trip up to the top and was on my way down the other side I stumbled upon the high and illustrious "Pin Cle Poin".   I think it's french or something.  Kind of felt silly riding past all these ritzy digs on my bicycle.  I felt like I should maybe be styling a suede seat, a sealskin tire, or a mink helmet or something like that.

The famous "Pin Cle Poin"

After climbing bottom to top three times I figured I ought to get my white trash keister out of this haven of exotic and sophisticated spellers, and make my way over to do some repeats of the backside of Usery Pass (yeah I overslept again,  it's been a rough week)

The Amazonian Mountain Maidens of pedalling fury.



So,  I notice there are quite a few people climbing the other side of the pass.   Come to think of it,  there are a lot of female type people climbing the backside today (um,  perhaps I could reword that).   At the bottom is a global bikes truck with a mechanic out tuning up some girl's bike.  Yup,  I'm pretty sure this was the "Girls Gone Ridin'"  ride I had stumbled my way into the middle of.  What a day to do repeats.  Most cyclists of the female persuasion are very nice people (with the exception of the one that called me a moron on the indian bend bike path when I was with the scouts a few weeks back).  All of them seemed to be in good spirits despite the occasional rain shower here and there.

I didn't mention the rain did I.  One of the reason's I had a tough time getting out of bed was the weatherman said the rain was going to be coming down in sheets and the wind would be blowing nanny's through the air with umbrellas, and other mass carnage.   So,  figuring the Brumbys would not be out anyway I stayed in bed a little extra.  Imagine my surprise when I woke up and found dry pavement outside!   At least all the good folk on the brevet would get to start with good weather.  We got a good 3 hours of fairly good weather.  Whats a little rainshower here or there?

I decided to call it quits when I hit 3000 feet of climbing and got ready to glide all the way home down the big hill between the top of Usery pass and my house.   Hmmm.   Hill isn't too spunky today.  I was only able to hit 17 when I should be well over 25.  What?  What's that you say?   I can't hear you with all this wind in my ears,  oh, maybe that has something to do with it.  Yup.  I toasted my legs and hadn't counted on the strong winds that fought me all the way home so I did get a better workout than I had intended.  What's the only thing worse than rain and strong headwinds?   Rain and strong headwinds when you have 240 miles ahead of you. 

Incidentally,  I should add that I have signed up for the Route 66 300k.   I guess I will be doing some brevets this year after all.  This stuff just gets in your blood.  I need a good epic ride in a bad way.