Since its inception I have ridden the local annual century ride for Habitrail for Humanity, but in 2020 as we were still dealing with the lockdowns, the event became a DIY affair with riders designing their own routes and riding on their own.  This gave me an excuse to do a ride I had long wanted to do on some little traveled roads to the south.  My route was essentially a trapezoid: east to the San Joaquin Valley, south along the California Aqueduct, west into the mountains, and north back home.

The start of the ride was uneventful as I rode east to the big valley and got on the trail next to the California Aqueduct heading south.  Before long I hit a locked gate across the trail.  There used to be an opening that allowed people to go through, but that was gone.  I took a chance that the trail would still be open past the gate and climbed through the barbed wire fence on the side, which reminded me that I needed a tetanus shot.  At one point the trail dead ended as it passed under a freeway so I had to backtrack a little to get onto some farm roads, an unexpected but minor inconvenience which added a couple miles by the time I got back onto the aqueduct trail.

Aqueduct Trail

About mile 35 I noticed a pair of sporty black cars pull up through the orchard at the base of the aqueduct about 40-50 feet below where I was riding.  Out climbed some young hombres carrying pistols.  One of them might have been named Palomitas de Maiz.  Hopefully they were just there to have some fun shooting cans or something, but I didn’t want to stick around to find out.  If I happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time it would have been easy to push my body into the water to dispose of any witnesses.  Even though I’m pretty sure they saw me when they pulled up, I edged closer to the water side of the trail where I’d be less visible and pushed the pedals a little harder to put some distance between us.  When I figured I was out of range I breathed a sigh of relief and slowed my pace.  I suppose if push came to shove I could have fended him off with a rusty bike chain.

At mile 45 I pulled into the town of Patterson for my first rest stop.  Nearly halfway.  So far it had been easy, and it had only taken me about 3 hours.  But to this point it was flat with little wind.  I had a nature break at the gas station, filled up my water bottles and grabbed a coffee.  I didn’t linger long as I had a 2900 foot climb over the next 20 miles, and I wanted to get going before heat and headwinds had a chance to kick in.  Back on the road I turned west to head into the mountains on del Puerto Canyon Road.  Before long I was into the blackened hillsides that had burned during the big fires in 2020, the same fires that turned the sky black in the Bay Area.  The first part of the road is along an old railroad grade, so just a gradual uphill as it winds up the canyon.  About 2/3 of the way up the road, close to the end of the easy part, there’s a mysterious hole in the rock covered by steel doors.  Inside is just a room so it’s not part of any mine.  I assume it’s somehow related to the old railroad but I haven’t been able to find details.

Mysterious Bonus Hole

The railroad supported the magnesite mines that operated in the mountains in the first half of the 20th century.  Magnesite is used as a refractory material and in flooring and they even attempted to make decorative products like window sills and fireplace mantles from it due to its bright white color.  There were two ways to bring the material down off the mountain, either by rail to the east or by road to the north.  The rail line to the east was more reliable, but a much longer distance to market.  An aerial tramway brought the magnesite off the mountain to the rail head, the trains took it out to the San Joaquin Valley before going north then west to the Bay Area.  The road to the north of the mines was more direct, but could be a muddy mess in the winter as the heavy trucks chewed up the dirt road.

Magnesite Mine

A little further up the road where it starts to get steep is Adobe Springs, which advertises itself as high magnesium, high health water. Unbeknownst to me at the time there’s a public tap where people can fill up their bottles.  I wish I had known at the time, because I could have used the electrolytes.  They’re what legs crave during a long climb.  As it was, I bypassed the springs and started the steep part of the climb, about 1.5 miles at 10% with pitches up to 16%.  I could feel my legs on the verge of cramping so I took a couple breaks on the way to the top.  

Over the top and into the San Antonio Valley signs of human habitation reappeared.  Widely dispersed homes were still standing in the midst of the burnt landscape.  The firemen did a pretty remarkable job saving as many structures as they did.  A couple miles of coasting brought me to my lunch break at The Junction, a restaurant in the middle of nowhere popular with the local ranchers, cyclists, classic car enthusiasts, and bikers.

As it was The Junction’s last day, it was pretty crowded.  Between the remote location, the fires, and the lockdown, they couldn’t stay in business.  The management at The Junction changes hands pretty frequently.  When the old management calls it quits, someone else decides to give it a go.  The quality of the food varies wildly depending on who is running the place, ranging from great to horrible, so check the most recent reviews before you go.  This year’s rains washed out the road and once again there’s new management, maybe the third since the pandemic. The only one that seems to make out on the deal is the guy who owns the building.  

Fire Damage up to Edge of Parking Lot

The Junction is so named because it stands at the junction of three roads.  To the east is the road I just climbed out of the San Joaquin Valley.  To the south is Shanti Ashrama, a Hindu retreat built not for the Indians in Silicon Valley, but for American ”spiritual but not religious” types who were followers of Swami Vivekananda over 100 years ago.  Further up the road on top of Mt. Hamilton is the Lick Observatory.  No, that’s not a porn studio.  This isn’t the San Fernando Valley.  However, it does have large telescopes pointed at Uranus.  Eventually that road ends in San Jose.  To the north is Mines Road, which was the more direct route to take material out of the mines, and also was my route to take me to the end of the ride. 

The roads north and south roughly follow the old Mexican road, La Vereda del Monte.  If you’ve driven Highway 101 you are probably familiar with El Camino Real, which connected most of the missions in California during Spanish times.  If you’ve driven I-5, probably without realizing it you’ve roughly traced the path of El Camino Viejo, which was a shorter but hotter and dryer route between LA and the Bay Area.  La Vereda was the route between El Camino Real to the west and El Camino Viejo to the east through the rugged mountains.  It was the route to take if you didn’t want to be noticed and was popular with horse thieves like Joaquin Murrieta on their way to Sonora in Mexico.  The names in the area attest to its wild history: Hideout Canyon, Horsethief Canyon and Murderer’s Gulch.

Joaquin Murrieta’s head before it went into a jar.

Fortunately the horse thieves and bandits are long gone, and while there have been bike-jackings in other parts of the Bay Area, there have been none here.  I stopped at the Cal Fire station to fill up my water bottles.  Most fire stations typically will have publicly available water, at least in California.  There were two last substantial climbs, about 1000 feet in total, before a long downhill run toward home.  Evidence of the fire was still everywhere: charred landscape, a handful of burned structures, and also the disappearance of a cryptic sign at the top of the hill that had read, “Now we’re in our world Ruthy”.  I’m not sure if that sign was a memorial to some Ruthy, if it was some kind of welcome to the people coming out to the sticks, because it really is a different world from the metropolis just a dozen miles away as the crow flies, or if it was an advertisement for Ruthy’s Trash and Treasure, which is mostly a bunch of trash in someone’s front yard down the road.  

What does it all mean?

At the bottom of the long 18 mile descent I stopped to take a leak and to check my phone to make sure I was closing in on 100 miles as planned.  Oh crap, the battery was at about 5%, probably due to being without a signal for so long, which seems to drain the battery.  Forget about checking mileage, I just need to get home to charge the battery.  If the battery dies, I might lose the record of the ride and it will be like it never happened.  Luckily I made it home in time to save the ride.  

According to Strava I did 188 km or 117 miles.  At first I felt pretty proud of myself.  It was a new personal record.  Then I thought, well shoot, I was feeling pretty good.  I should have just gone the extra 12 km to make an even 200.  Then I noticed the trace on the map looked all screwed up.  The low battery must have caused a problem with the tracking.  I did a manual calculation and it came out to a little over 172 km or 107 miles.  I had still achieved my goal and it was still a personal record, but now my Strava record was a lie, a lie out there for all to see.  I was going to have to remedy this.  I was going to have to ride 200 km to clear my conscience.  But that’s for another day.