Good Eats, Long Rides, Big Air and Skillz at Passion Trail Bikes

We have an extra special Wride planned for this week, with Jay cooking up some awesome good eats, Tom doing an extra long wride starting early, Scott bringing his bike and going BIG at Carlmont, and Patty offering up some free coaching for those who want to improve their skills. So, here’s the latest, for June 8, 2010.

1. Wednesday Wrides: Tasty, Long, Big and Skilled 6:30pm
2. Female Friday: July 2, 6:30pm
3. Ecocyclist: Oooohh, That Smell: The Pea Family


1. Wednesday Wrides: Tasty, Long, Big and Skilled 6:30pm
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Sunset is at 8:30PM this Wednesday 06/09/2010. Twilight ends and near-darkness falls right around 9:15pm.
PAY ATTENTION! WRIDE TIMES AND DESCRIPTIONS BELOW ARE UNIQUE THIS WEEK

As mentioned above, we have an extra special Wride planned for this week.

Jay is COOKING. He says “Jamaican Jerk Pork and Chicken with Red Beans and Rice and Chutney.” We are sure there will be more to it than that. YUM! Bring a tenner for your plate and some ones for your brews.

Tom is leading a LONG FAST EARLY WRIDE. Bring fresh legs and be ready to launch at 6:15 for a tour of at least four local parks.

Scot is leading a BIG BIKES WRIDE. Bring long travel, full face, armor, and maybe a shuttle vehicle.

Patty is planning on COACHING. Bring beginner-intermediate level skills or complete lack thereof. Not much mileage but you will learn something. Expect to “session” a few key points on the trails.

The supply of Chris King headset spacers we have in one of the drawers in the back

P. L. E. A. S. E. . . . P. U. T. . . . L. I. G. H. T. S. . . . O. N ! ! ! !

Please remember to put a light on your handlebar and have a blinky ready for the ride back to the shop! CA vehicle code requires it. Don’t get caught out on the streets in the dark! Also, a reminder that we need to be super conscientious about stopping at stop signs and lights, yielding to pedestrians, and operating our bikes predictably and responsibly while on the roads and trails. Let’s be safe and kind out there.

For all the details about what makes each group listed below unique, please refer to this webpage. If your questions aren’t answered there, you can also email us for info at info@passiontrailbikes.com.

All rides start pedaling from the shop: Passion Trail Bikes, 415 Old County Road, Belmont, CA 94002 650-620-9798.

The TOM’s LONG FRISKY ride will go out at 6:15 PM.
The REGULAR rides will go out at 6:30 PM.
The BIG BIKES ride will go out at 6:30 PM.
The WHITE SOCKS AND FBG or Fat Bottomed Girl ride will go out at 6:35 PM.
The STRAGGLERS ride may form and start chasing around 6:45 PM.
For future planning, we have the upcoming start times each week for the first wave of the REGULAR ride posted on our Community Calendar

Note we may not have leaders for each ride but usually someone knows their way around. All groups will meet back here at Passion Trail Bikes right around dark for the usual story telling & beverage enjoyment. We will have stuff to eat plus chips and fatty snacks and EANABS to pair up with the Devil’s Canyon Brewery’s Full Boar Scotch Ale, Silicon Blonde Ale, and Little Devil Root Beer. We will hang out until about 10pm, so come on down, even if you can’t make the ride! Passion Parties are better with YOU in the mix!

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2. Female Friday: July 2, 6:30pm
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Save the date. We will be having our famous Female Friday Fandango on July 2nd.

Women Wriders gather at a Female Friday Fandango, ready to shred

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3. Ecocyclist: Oooohh, That Smell: The Pea Family

Recently while riding up a neighborhood trail towards Waterdog, I was enjoying the sweet smell flowing off the hillsides from a number of flowering plants in the pea family, and remarked to Charles that the vetch would be snapping at us in a month or two.

Vetch snaps at you? Vetch is like a miniature version of a sweet pea. In the summer, its inch-long seed pods snap open violently as it dries in the heat, expelling seeds many yards away from the roots of the mother plant. We first encountered this on a ride in the Harvey Bear portion of Coyote Lake – Harvey Bear Ranch County Park in Morgan Hill, where we pedaled along a ranch road through a meadow under a blazing sun and were surrounded by snapping and popping noises for half a mile, feeling seeds bouncing off our shins and hearing them ping off our bikes’ frames. It was a very memorable experience! Vetch seed pods develop tremendous tension in the pod as certain long fibers in the husk contract as they dry. Eventually the tension in these long fibers overwhelms the short connective fibers that hold the pod shut. The connective fibers snap, and the husk splits open rapidly, hurling the seeds outward in the process. For vetch, the seeds can be flung more than 100 times the length of the pod. Botanists call this seed dispersal process “ballistochory.”

Vetch is a very distinctive plant and easy to identify when it blooms. The type I saw has small vivid purple flowers that droop from a central stalk, and slender pinnate leaves. It has curling tendrils that grasp onto other plants, and so it can climb up above dense stands of grass, or into shrubs or low tree branches. Its blossoms smell sweet, like sweet peas. Different varieties of vetch may have lavender, blue, or pink parts to the blossoms, and some species are yellow, pink, or other colors. But the flowers are always pea like, and they smell very nice.

Pea blossoms have a top, bottom and sides. They do not have uniform petals arranged like pie pieces around a central point like a daisy. They are characterized by a hood (or bonnet) petal that stands up in the back, a central or low tube-like keel petal which envelops the pollen producing stamens that is horizontal or drooping downwards in the front, and two wing petals that are on either side of the keel petal. Different species of plants in the pea family have variations on this flower structure, but generally they are easy to identify as pea-like. The picture to the left is a close up of deer weed (see below).

Other members of the pea family I have encountered recently include several varieties of lupine, as well as chaparral pea, deer weed, and French broom.

Lupine grows in several different forms and colors. There is an annual low grassland species called Sky Lupine, that is often mixed in with poppies and buttercups and is what you typically see covering the hillsides in Fort Ord during the Sea Otter, and their scent is spicy sweet. In Henry Coe, the annual variety is often Miniature Lupine, growing in thin soils on exposed slopes.

Annual lupines die back each year in the late summer when all the soil moisture is gone, and sprout fresh from seeds each winter as the rains start. Bush lupine are perennial shrubs, and have woody stems and branches and deep root systems that allow them to survive the summer draught and maintain some green leaves through the year.

There are several different perennial species of lupine; around here they are typically blue, lavender, or pinkish in color. In Pacifica you will often see the yellow coastal variety of bush lupine growing on Sweeney Ridge or along Old San Pedro Road. You can also come across lupines that are sown from wildflower seed mixes in various shades of red, yellow and blue that are not native and resemble lupines you might buy at your local nursery. Lupine have very distinctive whorled leaves, with five or more leaflets radiating out from the central stem, and of course, a beautiful upright stalked flower.

Chaparral pea is often seen blooming along the Aptos Creek Fireroad, as you climb up to Mt. Rosalia and the start of the Ridge Trail in Soquel Demonstration State Forest. Its large singular magenta flowers are very showy, contrasting on the spiny branches and grey-green foliage.

Deer weed is a native plant that deer like to eat, and grows in many places, but almost always in full sun. It’s a low rounded bushy pincushiony plant, usually between 1 and three feet tall, with yellow flowers on long straight stems that have very few small clover-like leaves. You can find it on the Upper Creek Trail in Waterdog, as well as many other sunny spots in that park.

French Broom is a non-native invasive plant. It’s one of the plants I love to yank out of the ground in the spring. Upper Rambler Trail in Waterdog has sections that we have been working on clearing broom from for quite a few years. This picture of a mountain unicyclist in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park, threading his way between dense rows of broom on the Chaparral Trail, is courtesy of Tom Holub. Don’t blame me if you get lost in the photographer’s page here.

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Read back issues of the Passion Trail Bikes Community e-Newsletter on our website.

To contact us, email us at info@passiontrailbikes.com, or call the shop at 650-620-9798.

Happy Trails, from the PTB crew
Charles, Patty, John, Bret, Sterling, Pancho, Will, Derek, Matt, Peter, and Reba