Nice 40-mile ride

I had a plan for quite a ride today, starting at 7am. Recently I had my annual physical, and the doctor ordered some blood tests, for which I have to go to the clinic 5 miles away "npo," fasting. Also I wanted to deliver something to Campbell, 19 miles away. So the plan was to start at 7, give the blood, have breakfast, and ride on to Campbell.

Well, the temperature at 7am was 35f, which made me rethink. Come to find out Marian needed to have a blood sample taken also, so we drove together to the clinic, gave up our red cells, and drove home for breakfast. When a reasonable (55f) temperature arrived at 9am, I set out on the ride to Campbell.

I had charged up the BionX battery beforehand, and I am happy to say that a ride of 40 miles (well, alright, 39.6 miles) used up only 5 of the 8 bars in the battery-state indicator. That's using assist level 2 about half the time, and level 1 the other half. There's plenty of juice for the 20-mile round trip to the gym on Wednesday. I think. We'll see.

This was a ride along familiar roads: Foothill Expressway, Homestead, Stelling, Prospect, Campbell.The streets, even busy ones like Campbell Avenue, were very quiet. There were many colorful Maple and Pistache trees along the streets. The sky was brilliantly clear; it was one of those winter days when cold Pacific air blows in from the Gulf of Alaska and makes every detail of the Bay Area hills stand out in glittering detail. Here is a view from Cupertino, east toward the Mt. Hamilton Observatory which is over 30 miles (50k) away.

Here are the exact pixels from the middle of that picture.

If I had started riding toward those so-clear little domes, it would have taken four hours to reach them, or 90 minutes to drive it.

I had stopped to take pictures of the Mary Avenue Bike Bridge. This new bridge was built in 2009 to give easy foot and bike access over I-280. It's a very nice cable-stayed bridge. Today I noticed the sun eclipsed by the north pylon:

At the south end of the bridge is a charming bronze sculpture of california quails, overlooked by an ominous red-tailed hawk.