Mt. Tam Ride!

I decided that Tim and I were going to pack our road bikes into the car, drive over into Marin, and bike from Stinson Beach to the summit of Mt. Tam. The map of the route is here and it is about 25 miles with something like 2800 or 2900 feet of climbing. We woke up early to beat the heat, took the dog for a nice walk, packed our bikes in our car, and set off! We drove over the Richmond-San Rafael bridge into Marin, and drove down a very windy set of roads to get to Stinson beach. It is so twisty turny that if I drove, we would never arrive, because I would be driving so slow. We found a nice place to park our car and the best part was there wasn't that much traffic. That area gets really crazy sometimes, so it was really good we got there early in the morning. We got on our bikes and rode through the town of Stinson and watched the waves on the beach. We found the road we had to turn onto, which was an umarked road with a metal gate, and we started our endless climb. We climbed up, and up, and were passed by many bikers on very fancy bikes. We passed a cop sitting on the side of the road. Then we were passed by many more bikers on fancy bikes. After a while, we got to the top of the ridge, and it was hot. It was so hot that I couldn't stand standing still for 5 minutes to take a decent photo. I felt like I was radiating heat. It was so bright, too. It was a wonderful ride, but it was just a little too hot. We biked along the ridge, which was pretty barren, and sweated a lot. We sweated our way up and up some more and then we managed to push ourselves to the summit of Mt. Tam. There are actually three peaks in Mt. Tam...so we had to climb over the first...down a little...over the second...down a little, and then up the third. The view was astounding. I will never tire of the view of the bay, but this was in a completely different angle than I've ever seen before. I could see all the way down Mt. Tam in Marin, I could see the Golden Gate Bridge from above, and I could see San Fransico at a completely different angle than from East Bay. It was astounding. It's a shame that it was so hot though, because I couldn't stand taking photos. What photos I did take didn't come out well because it was so bright and I was too hot to stand still and fuss with the camera to get a better photo. Some other time, we will summit Mt. Tam again, on a much cooler day. When we got to the top of the third peak, we were tired, but that wasn't much of a problem. It was just absolutely nauseating how hot it was; it was 103 degrees F at the top of Mt. Tam. We rested for a few minutes in the shade and ate melted trail mix, and then we headed down the mountain. Now, that was amazing. It was a screamin' downhill, and it was totally worth the climb. When we got back to our car, which was not much longer after we summited the mountain, we turned the AC on right away. Tim drove home along the curvy swervy road, we ate some In N Out for lunch, and then we drove the rest of the way home and laid around for the day.