Riding With The Old Goats

I’m finally back riding with my group. I belong to San Jose’s Almaden Cycle Touring Club. They classify their rides as “billy goats” if there’s lots of climbing, or “grizzly bears” if they are flatter. My subgroup likes to ride in the Morgan Hill area, southern Santa Clara County or “south County”, we are all fairly long in the tooth, and we do a lot of the billy goat rides. Hence we are the South County Old Goats. I usually ride with them every Tuesday, although my last ride was June 11th due to surgery and rehab. Today we did a nice ride starting to the Southwest of Morgan Hill and looping around to the northwest before returning, about 33 miles. I rode to and from the starting point also so totalled about 40.

We regrouped and took a break at Uvas Reservoir:

Some fellow old goats hanging about at the entrance near Uvas road:

We then fought a severe headwind to go north to the beautiful Casa Loma road, It’s sure nicer doing that in a group. We followed Casa Loma road to its end where it runs into Rancho Canada Del Oro open space, a great place to hike. I hope to be back hiking in scenic but hilly places like that in a few more weeks when it’s ok to carry a hiking pole in both hands.

We had lunch afterwards at a local deli, which sure hit the spot after a long ride.