Tour de Cafes

I've written before about how cafes seem to be either the destination or the middle of most recreational bike rides.  Some cafes become "known" as being cyclist friendly and begin to attract even more cyclists as the years go by.  How does one "know" that a cafe is biker friendly?  Do you see bicycles parked every which way in front of the cafe?  Do you see a lot of people in colorful shirts and funny looking shoes?  If you answer yes and yes to a cafe as you ride by, then mark that shop and pay a visit next weekend.

Here is my list of independent coffee houses that I frequent on a monthly basis.  I don't include the chains like Schtarschmucks, Peatbog's, or Coffee Been There because, well, two reasons: 1) You may pass several of these on one bike ride, and that just seems unfair to the other guys, and 2) I'm a coffee snob.  Oh, I'll go in, and give them money, but I'd never go in by myself or if there's an alternative that I know about.  There's still that one time in Claremont that I went to Schmuck's just because this old dude and I were playing Stoplight time trial, and I saw him go to the independent up the street, so I went to Schmuck's.  I hate it when old dudes are faster than I am, but what you gonna do except train and keep in mind that they'll die before you anyway.  Let's see how fast they are then, huh?  Anyway, I'm being a little petty, but this is my opinion and my personality, so there you have it.

So, I've structured this tour as if I were planning a ride and the point was to hit each of these cafes.  I figure the ride would end up being about 65 to 70 miles, starting from Pasadena.  Hold on to your coffee mugs and if you start to shake, that's not rough road, that's just caffeine.  From Pasadena, we go east.

1. Mary's Market in Sierra Madre.  I have no idea how my buddy Mike found out about this place, but getting there is just as fun as having a latte and croissant.  Here's a few pictures of the entrance:

 

 

There's a neat little climb that deadends at a little dam, but you do have to watch your speed coming back down because that street is really a glorified private driveway.  There's Richard having fun with his brakes:

 

I'm that little bunch of dots behind Richard.

 

After coming down from the foothills of Sierra Madre, we enter downtown Sierra Madre, and stop at

2. Beantown.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this place because this place is kind of close to my house and I don't do a lot of hanging out there anymore. 

Update: 2006-03-25 - Pictures now available.  Check these out.

 

There's the brand new sign for the old coffee bar.

There's an old sign from the old coffee bar.

 

Well, take that hippies!  I wonder sometimes what Sierra Madre was like in the 1960's and if Bean Town was there at the time.  I'm not so sure I would have fit in.

But it beats the Schmucks that's on the corner where all the Montrose guys hang out after their ride.  The Montrose ride starts, naturally, in Montrose every Saturday, rides out to San Dimas and then back.  There are about 80 riders going all-out in a peloton at about 30 to 35 miles an hour.  Very cool to see them as they zip across Monrovia and Duarte.  Speaking of Monrovia, the old town there has the next cafe.

3.  Monrovia Coffee Company.  I had some pictures of this place, but I was there too early in the morning, and the sunlight at that angle washed out everything.

Update: 2006-03-25 - New pictures available.

 

Here's the view from an outside table.

Hmm...Ice Cream...

 

This place has some very nice tables outside to watch your bikes as you sip your latte.  After Monrovia, the next stop is in either San Dimas or Laverne, which is fine, since I think you should have enough caffeine in your system to last you til then.  They don't have any coffee at the next stop, but I like stopping there anyway for juice or fruit.

4. Starberry Farms.  This place is, for lack of a better word, cute.  I know, a manly man like me (ha!) should be able to come up with something better than that, but, the place is cute.  Take a look:

 

I wrote about them earlier during Christmas season. See? Cute!

 

Now, I've purposefully left out another cafe that you could get to before San Dimas, but it entails climbing Glendora Mountain Road and the coffee is not good enough to warrant a 35 mile loop with 2500 feet of climbing.  Their hot chocolate, though, is simply heaven, but that could be just the altitude affecting me.  I don't even know what the place is called except "MARKET & CAFE."  I took a picture of my Solvang ride buddies Jerry and David from last November, so you can see what the parking lot looks like if you go to my second to last blog.  From  San Dimas, we make our way to Laverne and our next stop.

5. Coffeeberry.  Again, Mike tipped me off to this place and I'm not even sure he remembers how he heard about it, but it's got prime location across the street from the University of Laverne.  Unfortunately, I'm usually there on a Saturday morning and that's where the college kids (and the eye candy) ain't.  See, real crowded:

 

 

This place is the destination for my 50 mile rollers ride, so when I tell my buddies that I'm doing my Laverne ride, they know there's going to be short climbs, rolling hills, "The Wall" in Glendora, and a latte and croissant in Laverne.  "The Wall" is conveniently placed at the driveway of St. Lucy's, the Church of the Open Door, run by Franciscans, which just cracks me up every time I finish that short, steep climb.  12 years of Catholic school, now you know why I'm a little strange.

Beyond Laverne is Claremont, but my group usually stops at the Schmucks that's down there.  Next time we're down that way, I'm going to insist on the independent that's up the street.  Okay, so now we make our way back west.  The next 3 stops are in South Pasadena and are all within a block of each other.

6. Kaldi's.  This was a frequent destination for our lazy Sunday recovery rides back when we started in Pasadena instead of South Pasadena.  This place is very popular with cyclists because there's plenty of outdoor seating, plenty of places to lean your bike against, and there's not a lot of cars to watch out for.

 

Cozy and Inviting

 

Velo Monrovia, ahem, Stan's Bicycles organizes their own Sunday ride and this is where they stop before turning around.

 

Look at all the bikes, look at all the coffee!

 

I love this place, not only because I've been coming here since high school, but because it's got personality, which is another reason I support the independent coffee house.  This is the place with the "wee" and "not so wee" cup sizes instead of those italian window sizes they have at Schmucks.

 

Better drink that coffee before the croc gets it all.

 

The next place is South Pasadena is just a block away, and is another place I've been going to since high school.

7. Buster's.  I'd mainly gone to this place for ice cream and coffee in the afternoons before I was old enough to cause trouble in bars, but sunning yourself on a Sunday morning and meeting friendly dogs is good too.

 

I should shut up and drink that coffee!

Okay, last picture, then I have to drink that latte.

Still not drinking that coffee.

 

And next, we cross the street and the metro tracks to get to the next coffee house.

8. Heirloom Bakery.  This place is the current start and finish for our Sunday recovery rides, because they serve brunch!  Well, they don't serve it very quickly, but the food is very tasty.

 

Come on in, but order the omelet before 11:30.

Look at the coffee carnage! Oh, the humanity!

Now that our bellies are full and the coffee's sloshing around, it's time to climb up into Altadena, but if you need a quick jolt after all that coffee and heavy breakfast fare, I know a little place at the Rose Bowl that can help you out.  But don't blink, or you'll miss it.

9. The 10th Hole Snack Bar.  Brookside golfers know about this place, and lazy walkers too, but this place opens at 8:30, so this is all I have to show you:

 

There was already a line, at 8:25.

 

Yup, I was there at 8:25, but they weren't rushing to open up.  I took an extra lap around the bowl, but when I came back it still looked like this.  So, no coffee jolt for me.  Finally, we hit our last spot in northern Pasadena, after working up an appetite by climbing our way up to Altadena and coming down Altadena Drive.

10. Cafe Culture.  There's the front door:

 

Only a mile from my house.

 

This place reminds me of this great place in Berkeley called Coffee Source, where they concentrate on the different kinds of beans that are grown around the world, not just some cheap blends of arabica and robusta.  I mean, what's up with that?  I want pure bean.  Don't tell me your dark roast is some Sumatra and Kenya blend when I know that over 50 percent of it is robusta, the same crap that's in instant coffee.  Okay, there goes my coffee rant.  Seriously, don't get me started.  I'm even worse about beer.

So, let's call that ride the Jittery Java Tour.  Guaranteed to get your heart rate up without even pedaling.

Willkommen til Solvang!

Well, I made it back from Solvang alive, but at times I felt like I was in a US Postal Service commercial: braving rain, hail, sleet, snow, lightning, and 40 mile an hour gusts.  But, it was only bad for about an hour out of the ride, but I'll get to that.  Let's start at the beginning.  First of all, here's a map of the Solvang Century route:

 

Solvang is in the lower right hand corner

 

I met my buddies Jerry and David at the start, but we left a little later than we wanted.  My parents were with me because they've never seen one of these "century things" that I do on these traveling weekends and wanted to see what it was all about.  Well, older parents always need a little bit more time for everything, but we got under way and left Solvang about 8 o'clock.

The first hour was great.  The route goes clockwise on the map above, so were making our way to Lompoc through one of the back roads.  We were feeling pretty good, starting to leave a few people behind us whenever we went up a small climb, and then David got a flat.  It was alright, but the cows were already up, and they were starting to get talkative.  I think they were complaining about those horses getting the best view of the riders:

 

The cows were somewhere up that road.

 

So, we got back on the road and not fifteen minutes later, the sky got really dark, and it began to rain.  Then we started to hear, "Ow, ow," from the riders behind us, then we figured out why: hail.  And not little hail either, marble sized hail.  Ice was getting into my helmet, building up on my thighs, hitting my cheeks and nose, and landing in my eyes.  Try steering a bike with one hand, the other shielding your face, on a slick road, avoiding other cyclists.  Not fun.  Well, ten minutes later, the hail turned into sleet, and all the ice that had been bouncing off my thighs, turned into a waterfall straight down my legs and into my shoes.  I didn't need to feel my feet anyway.  I mean, I'm clipped into the bike, so as long as I can feel my ankles, I should be okay.  Finally, the sleet turned into just rain, but the damage was done.  It was just above freezing, all the non-water proof stuff was wet, and we were not yet to the first SAG (Support And Gear) stop.

The first stop was in an abandoned warehouse (at least it looked abandoned), so there was some shelter from the rain.  But not being able to dry out was the biggest problem for the next hour.  That fifteen miles from the 1st to the 2nd SAG stop was the worst I have ever felt on a bike.  I've already told you that my feet were frozen and the wet socks added weight that I didn't need, but I could deal with that.  The problem was in my hands.  My gloves were totally soaked and in that cold, they were not going dry out anytime soon.  I could no longer feel my fingers, I had to concentrate to flex them, and I also had to visually confirm where my fingers were to shift and brake properly.  An old mantra from my thermodynamics class from college crept into my mind: Evaporation is a cooling process.  Wet gloves with a 20 mile an hour breeze would cause some evaporation, but not enough to dry them out, because it was still raining.  So, frozen hands.  It got to the point where I welcomed every little climb, so I could get hot blood pumping into my hands.  But what was strange to me was that my right hand was doing much better than my left.  Remember, I've got 5 steel screws in the middle of my hand, and when it's cold, I can feel them in my bone.  But my left hand just got no circulation.  But the climbs offered no real relief because whenever I crested the hill, it was time for the descent, and at 40 miles an hour, the numbness returned very quickly: Evaporation is a cooling process.

The rain finally stopped during this hour, but there was snow on the side of the road.  We were in a higher elevation now, just getting past Vandenberg Air Force Base, so when it had hailed earlier, this part of the route had gotten snow.  My cold hands were such a distraction that I couldn't keep up a good pedal cadence, and I lost contact with Jerry and David.  I met up with them again at the 2nd SAG stop, but they were held up waiting for me as I was trying to get my cold hands dry and warm by sticking them underneath my armpits.  Then I began to shiver.  Just when I thought the rest of my day was going to be really uncomfortable,  my friend Jerry Rossiter walked up and said hi.

Jerry was driving one of the SAG vehicles for the Solvang Team in Training and had just seen some of the team members off and was about to get back into his minivan.  He asked if there was anything he could do for me, and jokingly, I said, "Not unless you can get the feeling back into my hands."  He said, "Wait, I've got just the thing."  HEAT VENTS!  Ohmigod, such pleasure and pain.  Pain from the nerves coming back to life, pleasure from the warmth and hot blood finally circulating through my left hand.  I told Jerry and David to go on without me, because I was definitely going to be a few minutes.  It was only 64 miles to the end at that point, and I do that kind of mileage by myself almost every Saturday, so I knew I would be okay.  But my gloves were still wet, and Jerry didn't have a clothes dryer in his back pocket, and as I began to think that the relief was only going to be temporary, Jerry said, "Here, put these on too."  Surgical gloves.  Oh yes, a mini wetsuit for your hands.  I was feeling great, and it was time to kick Solvang's ass!  Well, Solvang had something else for me, but I'll get to that later.

So, on to the 3rd SAG stop.  Along the way, I ran into the coach for Team In Training's Solvang Team.  Micah was sweeping and at that point, he was chasing down the "fast" group.  Apparently, the fast group was furthest back because they had already 7 flats along the way.  I had started about an hour after they did, and I was catching up with them in about 3 hours.  That's a lot of flats.  Sure enough, Micah and I found them on the side of the road, fixing another flat.  I said hi to my friends in that group and then took off for the next stop.  The 3rd SAG stop is traditionally the "lunch" stop because it's at about the middle of the ride, it's when you should have your heaviest meal of the day, and you should relax a little bit there before you move on.  I encouraged my parents to try and meet me there if they wanted to see me during the ride, and sure enough, they were on the best corner to see all the riders come in.  You see, we're from Pasadena, so we know how to stand on the sidewalk and look at things go by, thank you Rose Parade.  So I saw my parents on that corner, rode up to them and said: Hiya!

 

See Mom, not a popsicle!

 

And my dad was there too:

 

No Dad, I'm not normally this muddy.

 

Well, I also ran into a whole bunch of my riding buddies from the San Gabriel Valley at this stop.  My mom is still learning how to use her camera phone, so while I was commiserating with my buddies about the hail and the frozen hands, she took these shots:

 

Those are my legs at the top, that's Mike underneath all that gear in the middle, and that's the view of the Radisson's wet parking lot.

 

I never saw Jerry and David again, but I talked to them after I finished.  They stayed about a half hour ahead of me the rest of the way, which means that I stayed at about their pace.  I kept running into my friends at the stops and kept staying a little longer while chatting.  The climbing at the end of the ride was actually no big deal.  I guess the training on all the mountain roads during the last six months really helped.  But, there was one more thing that Solvang had to do to me to make it harder: I stopped being able to clip into my pedals.  The rain had turned all the stops into such muddy muck, that my cleats were totally jammed and frozen, that I couldn't clip in, and when I did, finally, I couldn't clip out.  I'm used to climbing these hills dancing on my pedals, but I had to sit down and push, not fun and not fast.  At the last stop, I couldn't clip out of my standing leg and almost fell over because I clipped out on my other side, starting cramping because of the cold and had to ask another cyclist to help me clip out.  It took that guy two hands to push my left foot out of the pedal.  I know speedplays have a lot of float, but that was ridiculous.  There was a climb right after that SAG and you could see the riders like little ants climbing that thing.  Normally, that kind of climb would not be a big deal because I'd get out of my saddle and stairmaster my way out of there, but I couldn't clip in, so I had to gingerly push down on the pedals, making sure my cleats kept contact.  No pulling, only pushing.  After that, I was able to clip in and it was all downhill from there, except for one messed up little ranch road, but it was okay.  Then we were all back in Solvang.  Here's a little photo montage of the finish:

 

Okay, one with everybody.

One more, just for you Mom. See, still smiling.

All back, safe and sound.

Needless to say, most of us were tired after that.  I heard some fun stories from people who went to the Chumash Casino that's near there, but that was at brunch the next morning.  Here's Alan and I playing checkers while we waited for our reservation:

 

It's okay Alan, you'll win next time.

So, we all ate big, and it was time to go home.  Some people hung out in Santa Barbara on the way back, others took a nap before saying "Farvel" to Solvang.

Loyal Companions

Well, gang, blogging here is going to be a little sporadic for the next week or so because I'm going to be very busy preparing for this weekend in Solvang. I'll be traveling too, so I won't want to use a computer until Sunday or so. That's right, this weekend is the Solvang Century, 104 miles of thigh-burning fun. This ride is given 5 out of 6 stars on the Bicycle Ride Director's Association of America's difficulty rating. Here's the elevation profile graph to give you an idea of what I'm subjecting myself to:

Wait, the climbing happens after 80 miles?

Yes, that is correct. Almost all of the 5000 feet of climbing on this route, happens after you've been riding for 80 miles. It's a good thing that cyclists are masochistic, otherwise we couldn't stand sadistic tour organizers. So, how do you make it through a hundred miles of torture? Why, with at least one good riding buddy, of course. I met up with one of my good riding buddies last Saturday in Bradbury:

Hay! Can I try some of that grass? Neigh?!

I always see this guy and his friend at the top of this hill in the Duarte, Bradbury area. But I'm talking about different riding companions. A good riding buddy will have about the same fitness and speed level as you have, will know your riding habits, will be able to talk you through the tough parts of the road, and has to have a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, my riding buddy from Palm Springs, Sebastian, had to cancel on Solvang, so I was looking at riding this thing by myself. Now, I've ridden 80 miles by myself, but the time you need a companion is anytime after the 75 mile mark. Honestly, for ten miles, you just want to quit. After you get through that, then the ride's only got 1 hour to go, and you can handle that. It's just the thought of 2 more hours of pain after 4 or more already. That's why you need to have a buddy.

Well, thanks to my cycling group on the web, I was able to find out that 2 of my other riding buddies are going, and I didn't even know. These guys are monsters on their bikes, and they're really going to push me. The last time we rode together was in November, climbing Glendora Mountain Road on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Jerry and David let me tag along, keeping our little group together as we climbed 2200 feet in just 9 miles. Here they are on the backside of the climb, after drinking some very necessary hot cocoa:

That's Jerry on the left and David on the right.

So, I think I'm going to be okay, as long as it doesn't rain like the 5 day forecast says it will, with 19 mile an hour winds to boot. Could be a long miserable day. But it won't be so bad as long as the feet and the pedals are turning.