It was a long and leisurely ride on over to Del Valle on Saturday. We went inside for the observatory tour. We ended up staying at the summit for over an hour and then kept our small group together from there. It was me, Drew Townsend, Jim Seyfert, Doug Gillison, and Leo Jed. At the bottom of the hill we stopped to regroup, and so I went down and played in the water. After a long time, still no Jed, so I decided to unhook my trailer and go up looking for him. I found him up near the cattle guard just finishing fixing his 2nd flat tire.

We finally got to the Junction at 2:00 and had a good lunch. I got the Jerry's Burger again, but this time I got all of the options. We started off again by 3:00 and I hung back with Doug while the others went off the front. We finally got to Del Valle at about 5:10, which was fine as dinner was going to be late. So I set up camp then went off to swim for awhile, then came back and showered, and was still early for dinner.

The next day I was again going back over Mt.Hamilton pulling my trailer. Since I didn't have to meet my gear in Milpitas, I wasn't in any hurry, so we stayed until the last people were ready to go. Paul Greene rode with me, and then Grete Johnson came and sagged our route in her car so she could check out the flowers.

We were at the Junction at 1:00, then at Isabel Creek at 3:00. I again went down to play in the water and even found one section about 2 feet deep and 10 yards long, so I got some swimming. It took me just over an hour to climb up the backside, and Grete had an ice-cold coke waiting for me at the top. Paul ended his ride there and they were to drive on home. I left the summit at 4:30, and made it home just before 6:30. I stopped at the steep switch-backs on the Quimby downhill to call Diana, so that way she wouldn't begin to worry about me.

My cyclometer stopped working half way through Saturday's ride, so I don't have my miles or average speed, but I figure I got about 95 miles on Saturday and maybe 80 on Sunday. All with lots of really slow, hard climbing. I was doing about 2 gears lower, and was very happy to be in my very-low 1st gear all of the way up the backside of Mt.Hamilton.

-Donny