I haven't mentioned much biking this year.  In all honesty, I haven't got much in on my road bike for two reasons.  The first is that I've been limited with preparations for the Version 5.0 delivery that have cut back on my Saturday rides and just generally with teaching etc. I've been too busy and or unable to ride to work.  With V5.0 delivery due by May 5th that will resolve itself, in fact I have a couple weeks of vacation coming after delivery so that should help.

The second big reason is I've been getting more riders at work out on mountain bikes.  We've gone from a group of 3 regurlar riders (Tim, Adam and I) to a group of 5 regular riders with a few others either waiting in the wings or claiming they'll be joining us 'someday'.  So I've been doing more Mtn. bike rides and getting some people started.  This continued this past Thursday when I had two potential new riders who were going to head out into the area around Lake Calaveras with me.  (This is out in Carlsbad and basically we head in from the farm side at the intersection of Canon and College heading North on the Farm road then turning East.)

Unfortunately both ended up cancelling at the last minute so I ended up heading out on my own.  Rather then just doing a regular ride I figured I'd do some exploring so I headed up a fire road I've been meaning to check out for it's beginner ride potential.  (It could work, but I think it would be too much for most beginners...) Basically following the normal route to the base of the spine but from there I headed up the fire road instead of up the single track we call the spine. 

The fireroad eventually heads up on the area you see in the picture above.  There is a trail (not quite visible with my phone's lousy resolution) about 2/3's of the way up the fire road heading to the South or going right as you are looking at that picture.  I followed that trail around to just above what we call the 'Office'.  The office is located above and slightly right of center near the peak of the hill shown in the picture below.

From there I headed back to the large white building seen in the first picture and came back down the fire road to the trail you can just see in the bottom of the first picture heading to the left of the fireroad and off the bottom of the image.  This took back in above the lake and I came around in the reverse direction on our 'regular' route through Calavera.  When I got to the base of the peak (top of the spine) instead of heading down and out I went up to the top of the main peak.  That's where I took my photo's from including the next one looking down on the lake and a portion of our normal beginner route across the burm.

As you can see this is just above the old strip mine / quarry site that is cut out of the main peak.  Down along the portion of the lake you can see, is the burm which makes the lake and that is part of our normal beginner route... above that you can just make out a short portion of our regular route that is above the spine.  At any rate it was a beautiful day for a ride.  I also got out on Saturday for a brief ride in Flightline but that's another post.