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Bill  On The Road

 by: Bill Oetinger  7/1/1999

Interactive transportation

Click For a Larger Map of King Ridge
To reach King Ridge Road, from US 101 go west on River Road toward Guerneville. At Duncans Mill, turn right (north) on Cazadero Highway and right at Fort Ross Road onto King Ridge.

In the steeply folded hills north-west of Santa Rosa, California-100 miles up the coast from San Francisco-there is a wonderful road called King Ridge. It's the crown jewel in a collection of high-country backroads that has gained a reputation as one of the best bike-riding venues anywhere. After a few miles of quad-popping, chain-snapping climbs, the road enters a sort of cycling satori-purest bike heaven-as it dips and soars along an exposed ridgeline called the Butcherknife, with the land falling away on the west all the way to the distant, blue Pacific, and on the east to endless, serried ranks of empty hills.

The late, lamented Coors Classic stage race passed this way once (in a chilly, pea-soup fog) and the route made quite an impression on the visiting pros. Ron Keifel characterized it as "a death march," while Alexi Grewal-who rolled a sew-up on a 20% downhill-just termed it, "f-ing scary!" Taken at something less than race pace though, it's somewhat kinder and gentler. One bike magazine writer called it "God's cycling theme park" and "the best ride ever" while another stated, "without a doubt, the most beautiful road I've ever ridden."

I once wrote a short piece on the road as well: a brief tour guide for a California periodical. To log all the miles and elevation numbers for the article, I drove the course in my car. I could have gathered all that data on a bike ride, but I wanted to take the opportunity to share one of my favorite places with my non-cycling wife. We chose a lovely, early-summer day-the weather and the countryside both at their best-and my wife was suitably impressed.

We were having a nice drive, but as the miles of twisty mountain road rolled by, I began to feel fatigued in a way I never am on my bike. The road seemed to go on forever, even though we were only surveying a 55-mile loop. I was surprised to note that, in the midst of some of the most fantastic scenery imaginable, I was becoming bored! We were just sitting there, watching the world slide by, very much like a television travelogue, with pleasant mood music courtesy of the car's sound system.

In contrast, on my bike, I would have been actively engaged by every turn and contour, every puff of wind, every fragrant, vagrant smell, from barnyard to bay tree. I'd have been warmed by the sun and cooled by the shady woods. I'd have been going anaerobic on the climbs and going bonkers on the descents. Instead of sitting there, passively viewing a little wedge of world from behind a glass window, I'd have been engulfed in a 360° wide-screen, sensory extravaganza.

Remembering that day brings to mind one of the new buzzwords of the '90s: "interactive"-as in the Internet, interactive television, etc.-and it occurs to me that an important difference between riding in a car and riding on a bike is that the latter is far more interactive. Seeing the world while isolated and insulated within a car isn't remotely the same experience as seeing it-experiencing it-from astride a bike. Not even close. An open sports car would be better than an enclosed sedan, and a motorcycle better still, but nothing on wheels comes close to a bike for putting you in touch with your world.

Whether pedaling along a panoramic ridgeline like King Ridge, biking to work, or just noodling along the neighborhood bike path, it's this interactive involvement with the world around us-this quickening of our senses-that one notices first and enjoys most about cycling. And the best thing about this wonderful form of interactive transportation is how it rewards us for our effort: the more we put into it, the more we get out of it.

When we try to tell our non-cycling friends about these incandescent moments, they don't really get it. For the most part, they politely nod, while privately concluding we're a few spokes short of a wheel. In the end, we give up on attempts to describe these magic moments to those who haven't been there. We simply turn to our fellow-riders and grin, knowing nothing really needs to be said. They understand.

Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net



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