Well, this 4th of July weekend turned out to have a strong road biking theme to it. Not only was the Tour de France kicked off on Saturday, but there were plenty of road biking activities around here as well. Our friend Dave from San Diego is training for a trip that he will be departing on in a week or so. He’s flying to France where he and a group will be riding several of the same routes as the Tour de France (not at the same time of course), and will have front row seats at the finish line in Paris when the race ends.

Dave was up in the area this weekend for a wedding so we decided to do some rides. On Saturday we did the Old La Honda/Tunitas Creek ride, a 40-mile loop with two fairly big climbs, the first one up Old La Honda road and the second, much more gruelling, one up Tunitas Creek Rd. Climbing up Tunitas Creek made me really glad I had a triple chain ring. Although he grumbled a bit, Dave made it all the way up Tunitas Creek with the double chain ring on his old clunker bike. Way to go Dave! After the Tunitas Creek climb, there was a long and windy downhill back to Woodside. While car traffic was reasonably sparse, it was still a bit unnerving because of the many blind corners. We made it OK, but were glad when the downhill was over.

The next day we felt surprisingly good so we decided to do another ride. I took Dave out on Foothill Expressway where we did a 30-mile out-and-back. This ride was much easier as it is mostly flat, but it was still a good workout.

And on Tuesday, the 4th of July, Judy finally got around to buying a road bike. The bike model was more or less decided beforehand so it was just a matter of finding the right size and haggling on price. Judy ended up buying the Specialized Ruby Comp (shown above), basically the women’s specific version of my bike, the Roubaix Comp. I’ve got to say though that I like the looks of her bike a bit better. Even though the bike wasn’t on sale, I was able to talk them down quite a bit in price so Judy ended up getting a pretty good deal. Her bike fitting is next Saturday and we plan to go on our first road bike ride right after the fitting.

Here are the specs of Judy’s new bike, saved as PDFs from Specialized website: The Ruby Story, Features, Tech Specs, and Geometry.

Posted by Roger at 9:48 pm.