They are among us.
The past couple of years I’ve lived on a beach in Southern California. Pacific Coast Highway was 2.5 miles from my garage. I did probably 90% of my rides up and down PCH. Looking back now, it was a great waste of time. Traffic signals everywhere required my rides to be patterned more like intervals. There were/are thousands of vehicles lining the road, all of whom only remember the 1 out of 100 cyclist who is a complete ahole, and therefore they decide they’ll return the favor to all of us cyclists. A shame. Well, if I could take away all of the cars and all of the traffic signals PCH would still not measure up to what I’m currently riding day in and day out; not even close.
My new playground is the Angeles National Forest in general, and highway 39 in particular. It’s magnificent. Much of the road is closed to vehicle traffic right now which makes the place even more surreal. I see more wild animals than I do people. In fact today while descending I almost T-boned one of four deer that was loafing around in the road. Those things are really intimidating when you have come to a violent stop and are just 5 feet away from them and neither party is moving, with eyes locked in a stare. Again, surreal. They don’t just stare at headlights folks, I swear this one was staring me in the eye up until I stopped, and then for just another split second after when it then bounded off the road into the forest.
The road is dilligently maintained by the department of transportation and the forest service, which are two of the only types of vehicles I see. There were major storms this past week, as Dan E talked about on the front page, and it led to some pretty awesome slides that washed out the highway. Already the crews have cleared the road so the entire thing is passable on bike. Heaven is a place on highway 39, i’m convinced. I can’t help but think that if this had been my regular stomping grounds instead of PCH over the past couple years I’d be a much stronger athlete overall, if I hadn’t been washed away by falling rocks or mud of course.
If you are getting the vibe of what I’m talking about please share with us where these champion forging roads lay hidden. Here is a mapquest view of HWY 39 http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&countryid=US&addtohistory=&searchtab=address&searchtype=address&address=&city=azusa&state=ca&zipcode=&search=++Search++ for those that are in striking distance. You’ll notice the city of “Valyermo” at the top of this map. Sound familiar? Maybe Dan E. can chime in, or better yet; delete this post, steal away the idea and write a mini-masterpiece on “Roads That Carve Champions” and get the ST community to reveal where these roads are hiding all across the world.
I’ll provide a picture of this road after my ride on Sunday. Please do the same if you have a picture of “your” road.