It seems that our cycling trips from San Jose are destined for failure. This morning we drove to Joseph D Grant Ranch Park which is situated in the eastern foothills of Santa Clara Valley. I wanted to go back to the very lovely Almaden Quicksilver and had planned an excellent route whilst drinking my coffee. This would have involved almost entirely new trails with only a slight duplication for the first and last half mile or so from our run on Friday. However, Martin wanted to go somewhere new........
After some navigational difficulties we finally arrived and I realised that we had been to this park beforehand on our first trip to California in 2008. We had stopped there en route to San Jose from Tahoe looking for somewhere to run. It wasn't a big success on that occasion either..........
We picked up a trail map and worked out a route, then set off. Firstly we had to cycle a mile or so on road in order to reach the trail we had chosen. When we got to the trail head there was a sign saying "helmets required". Although we had brought helmets we had very sensibly left them in the car. We set off down the trail anyway. It was basically a fire road covered with stones and gravel which made it treacherous for cycling, no fun downhill due to the risk of skidding and impossible to cycle up. As soon as there was any gradient my tires lost traction and began spinning so that I was effectively cycling on the spot. It was also not particularly scenic - cattle grazing country with a sparse sprinkling of trees. After a couple of miles during which the enjoyment scale plummeted to no more than a 2 we decided to blow it off and return to the car.
By now it was 12.30 and my caffeine levels were dangerously low so we parked the car and decided to get some coffee before cycling any further. I'm not proud of what we did (it wasn't my idea but I went along with it). Finding ourselves outside the Los Gatos cafe, which was, predictably, very busy, we put our names on the list for a table, helped ourselves to the free coffee whilst you wait and then "changed our minds" and left. Absolutely disgraceful behaviour........
Next stop was to pick up a sandwich and try to find the creek trail. The sandwich proved easy enough, the trail was a different matter. We found ourselves in the park from hell, crowded path, model railway, kids on tricycles wobbling about everywhere....... eventually we got on a bike trail which we thought was going around the lake and joining up with the Los Gatos Creek Trail. We should have known better...........we soon found ourselves at another busy road junction so we got to turn around and ride back through the nightmare park since it was such fun the first time. I had long since lost any interest I'd had in biking anywhere so another (worse) domestic followed, the bikes went back in the car with even less ceremony and once again we found ourselves on the road in stony silence.
It was a total waste of a day but I suppose you can't expect every day of a 7 week holiday to be perfect.
After a bit of sulking (well quite a lot on my part) we pulled ourselves together and had a nice evening thanks to the company of Sherry and Rich. We spent some time packing up our gear ready for our big three week road trip (no idea how we are going to get it all into the car since we are taking the bikes this time too) and then we had another really special meal. It's going to be hard swapping Sherry's cooking for camp stove delights! On the menu tonight was a Thai style fish stew: rock cod cooked in coconut oil with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, carrots, brocolli and pineapple in lemongrass and basil sauce. And as if that wasn't enough check out the dessert!!
And afterwards she whipped up a tray of cup cakes - claiming that they were for a work colleague's birthday but I think she was just trying to tempt us to stay in San Jose so she could feed us up a bit more!
No comments:
Post a Comment