Friday, May 20, 2011

Some things never change

The Crippler while always be The Crippler.  Many years ago I recall searching rural gravel roads surrounding CoMo for the steepest climbs.  Yesterday we rode Mt Baldy, and when we return to his place he showed me a book ranking the toughest climbs in the U.S., and Baldy was 5th with the last 10 miles at 7.6%.   Key word here is the last.

As always The Crippler dissapeared into the mist and maze of switchbacks as soon as the pitch got steep. 

The next morning we rode another part of the climb.  The fireworks of our ride were predictable with The Crippler motoring away. Tomorrow's race to the top should provide some fireworks as the big boys tackle the climbs.  Wonder if Horner is really going to be the best climber other than Contador. He should be concerned about The Crippler next year.

1 comment:

byron said...

This brings up a good point. A lot of cyclists have looked straight at me and said, "There are no climbs in California that rival the Tour climbs."

Really? Really?

Well when I do the math and compare my legs after sitting on the riding up grades like Ebbets, Cisco, Wilson, Palomar and a few others I've forgotten that the Euro-bias is just still alive and well. I've heard of pretty evil stuff in places like Georgia and even Hawaii as well.

I guess we are too eager to feed the hype machine. I remember sitting at the bottom of one climb when a doper looked over at my cassette and told me, you better have a 27 back there. 'Cause mine's the only way I get over this one."