Foxy's Fall Century

Foxy's Fall Century, put on by the Davis Bike Club, is a beautiful ride through Solano and Napa counties. Tricia and I joined a group form NorCal Bikeforums.net for the one hundred mile ride and had a ball.

The ride starts out meandering through the very very flat farmlands of California's Central Valley. Some find it dull, but I loved the early morning light and drafting behind Chris and Deborah's tandem.

After we'd ridden under the just-launched hot air balloons and past a large whimsical bicycle sculpture we finely got to some hills, though nothing too hard. We rode through the aromas of California laurel, sage and tar weed.

After lunch there's a bit of a climb near Lake Berryessa. It's called "The Wall," but mostly it's an optical illusion. It looked intimidatingly steep, but when we rode up it, it wasn't nearly as tough as it looked from a distance. From there it's a long, ever so slight downhill back to Davis. There's nothing like an invisible downhill and a drafting a tandem to make you feel really fast. A grand time was had by all. Here's a short Flickr slideshow. I had a reasonably good day with my point & shoot.

By the way, I'm very happy with the photo at the top of this story. I'm thinking of making a poster from it. Click it to see the large version.