| I was offered an alternative by Norm Moyer to riding the Palm Springs Century on February 7th. His offer was to ride there instead of doing the organized ride. I have never heard of anyone riding to an organized event like that, so true to my curiosity, I said yes, and I was glad I did!
My house was chosen as the starting place since I live close to the river trail. Our group included: Norm, Roberta and Genay. The faster riders, Ed Bates and Doug Browne, left us in their dust in less than a mile. We were later passed by Rhonda Norman and Ron Callaway riding a tandem, and Wayne Chang, wearing a headlight for a possible night trip return.
We traveled as far east as the river trail allowed, stopping only once to take off our arm warmers. Then we headed east through Corona and Riverside. Beautiful willow trees and giant oaks enveloped Victoria Street for the 7 miles to Riverside. We continued on Allesandro Blvd. where we stopped for a refreshing lunch at Subway. While chatting at lunch, we discovered we all woke up too early due to the excitement of doing this ride. After lunch, we continued our trek as far east in Riverside as possible. We passed farms, orchards, wineries and many other interesting sites. The best possible way on to Palm Springs, at this point, was a little known trail called Jack Rabbit Trail. It was unmarked and hard to find, which some unfortunate members of BCI discovered. I lucked out since I had Norm as my trusty guide.
Jack Rabbit Trail stands out in my mind as the most memorable part of the trip, and probably one of the greatest challenges of the adventure. I suggest for those who did this trip and missed this trail, to redo the trip just to experience Jack Rabbit Trail. There are no signs or markers with the trail's name on it, so it is very easy to ride by it. But there was a sign informing the traveler that the trail was not maintained at all by the county or city. The rider has to keep a vigilant eye on his odometer to know exactly where the trail begins. We carefully rode up this challenging climb for 4 miles, 2000 feet, dodging crater-sized holes. Seen along Jack Rabbit Trail: a place where the road was washed out, a large mud puddle that covered the entire width of the road, and the spot where a car burned up. This trail reminded me of a teenager with a really bad case of acne. A mountain bike would have been preferable on this trail, but my new Trek with skinny tires did just
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fine. I was surprised to see that once we arrived at the top, the bumpy ride was worth it . We had a sweeping view of all of the surrounding hills, and an awe-inspiring view of Mount Gregornio's snow-capped peaks in the distance. As far as the eye could see, there was an overwhelming view of beautiful landscape, barren in some places, but beautiful to behold.
After resting a few minutes and enjoying this fantastic view, we headed down onto the 60 freeway for 2.9 miles. We exited the 60 Freeway at Beaumont, continued our journey through Banning, and then passed the Morongo Indian Reservation. Throughout our journey, we were dwarfed by an exhilarating view of Mt. San Jacinto, changing positions and becoming larger as we neared it.
We were supposed to enter the 60 Freeway again for our final leg of our journey, but we chickened out when we saw a large sign that said that bicycles were strictly prohibited from entering. So, we decided to look for an alternate route to Route 111 to Palm Springs. We couldn't ride south of the 60 Freeway since Mt. San Jacinto was hogging the entire space, so we decided to look for a parallel road to the north of the 60. A parallel road, I soon discovered, does not exist here, but plenty of bumps and rock-strewed roads do exist. Once again we were at a dead end, until we viewed an empty aqueduct! We carefully clamored down into the aqueduct and followed it under the 60 freeway; we were now paralleling Route 111. Once again, we hit a dead end. We could see Route 111, but were frustrated as we did not know how to get on it. With BCI fortitude, we trudged on until we found an entrance on the Route 111, and into Palm Springs.
Altogether, by the end of the ride, we had climbed about 4000 feet, rode 95 miles and were in our saddles for 7 hours and 45 minutes. (That is the main reason why I immediately went to my bike shop near my home and bought a new bike seat!).
Ask me if I regretted doing this trip. “HECK NO” would be my response. Ask me if I would do it again. The answer would be: “WHEN?” I saved my route slip so that I can repeat it, and I DO remember the beginning of the path to Jack Rabbit Trail.
Many thanks to Norm Moyer for organizing this trip, keeping it down to my speed, and energizing everyone with this fantastic adventure. Norm, keep the ideas coming! |
