On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 3/1/2007
Chasing Blue Skies
There are those who complain that California has no seasons. Or, if they are not exactly complaining, are putting forward this spurious assertion as yet another proof that the Golden State is somehow punched off-center...not like all the other places; that we are in fact the perpetrators of some meteorological turpitude: feckless, lazy, left-coast loonies, lolling about in some endless summer of balmy, palmy sunshine.
Those of us who actually live here know that nothing could be further from the truth. Those who spend a goodly portion of their lives outside--and who does more of that than cyclists?--know all too well the vagaries of the California climate. We do indeed have seasons, with all their various changes. But the critics are correct in the claim that our seasons are not quite like those of other, more archetypal regions, or at any rate do not coincide with the established timetables for those seasonal swings.
I have covered this same patch of ground before in a column entitled Winter in the Wine Country. In reviewing that old chesnut just now, I realized that I may be sounding like a broken record on the topic...trotting out the same old tired truisms once again. (Time, perhaps, to take this hackneyed old hack out behind the barn and shoot him.) However, I am not this time writing an ode to Winter. I am revisiting the topic of seasons to pay homage to the next one ’round the dial: Spring.
Say what you will about the other seasons--the crisp, austere clarity of winter; the stained-glass palette of autumn; the home-grown tomatoes of summer--but I think it’s safe to say that the greatest number of people feel the greatest fondness for the onset of spring. There is an almost atavistic pleasure that derives from the notion that we have again survived whatever the last, long, dark winter could throw at us...that we ourselves have survived, that our species has survived, and that our entire big blue marble of a planet has survived. Beaten, bowed, and bruised perhaps, but still chugging doggedly along, at least for one more year.
It’s certainly no accident that Easter falls right around the Vernal Equinox. Those early Christian spin-doctors were no dummies: they knew a good thing when they saw it. Nothing sells quite as well as rebirth and fertility. (And if you think Easter is simply the culmination of the New Testament passion play, ask yourself how it comes to pass that the two most potent icons of the day are the Easter Egg and the the Easter Bunny. What symbolizes fertility and fecundity better than eggs and bunnies?)
Springtime in northern, coastal California is not so different from springtime in other parts of the country, except for its timing. The old adage about April showers making May flowers is not quite apt around here. Our flowers kick it into high gear around mid-February. In fact, my benchmark for the season is not the official, equinoctal March 21. It is that slighly elastic date in February when you look around and notice, all of a sudden, that flowers are blooming on all fronts.
For some reason--I have no doubt there is a reason, although I don’t know what it might be--the yellow blossoms come first. Scotch broom leads off, with its quiet, tawny yellow and subtle bouquet. Then the acacias go crazy, with over-the-top, extrovert explosions to dazzle the eye. The oxalis and the mustard make their appearance next, scattering their confetti around the meadows and woods and under the still sleepy vines.
Finally, to put an exclamation point on this opening floral fanfare, we get the plum trees. Not yellow. Not at all. What the heck is that color? That wonderful, lush, blushing fantasia. Pink is too frivolous a word to do it justice. It’s deeper and denser than pink...an almost vulval, come-hither sensuality of a color. Who, upon seeing a plum tree in full spate, could doubt that we have turned the corner and that good times lie ahead?
However--and this is the big However of springtime--the road from winter to summer is no seamless, flawlessly paved boulevard of progress. Many a muddy puddle lies across our path between those bright February blossoms and the consistently dry, sunny days that are the California cliché. Spring is a capricious, mercurial mistress. She titillates and teases us with the most delicious, delightful days. We set records this February, for example, with a few days in the 80’s...heady stuff, especially considering that this heavenly heat wave coincided with killing, crippling storms on the east coast and in the plains states. But then, just a week after that unreal heat wave, she slapped us silly with ice, hail, and even snow.
This was in the week leading up to the 2007 Tour of California, and more grisly weather was forecast for the entire week of the race. You may recall that last year, it rained like crazy right up until the night before the Prologue, then turned bright and dry and sunny for the entire week of the race, and then started raining again on the evening after the last stage was completed. Everyone shook their heads in wonder at this fortuitous timing. This year: same thing, or close to it. The forecast was dire, and yet somehow, some way, the storms went somewhere else than wherever the riders were. Almost. They did get nailed for an hour or two by rain heading south out of Monterey on Stage 4. But halfway through Big Sur, the sun was out again, and the roads were dry for the sprint in San Luis Obispo. And that was it. When the peloton was riding in sunshine and beauty in Northern California, it was raining in the south state; when they were in Southern California--under sunny skies--it had resumed raining in the north. Nothing illustrates the checkered, changing fortunes of the season better than this game of dodgeball that the Tour has played--and won--in its first two years.
In my little corner of California--Sonoma County--these mood swings of the weather gods are aggravated by the lay of the land. This is a deeply, steeply folded landscape...a rumpled quilt of topography. It’s not a mountainous terrain, by the standards of the Alps or the Rockies: the highest point in the whole region is only a bit over 4000’. But we do the most with what we have: shady pocket canyons tucked under tall ridgelines, with always the ocean nearby, driving the engine of climate change. This is the native habitat of the micro-climate, with temperature swings of 20 degrees or more in five miles or less.
So when those moody, prankster gods are scratching their heads and trying to decide which sort of whacky spring weather they’re going to toss at us today, they will not be making their mischief on anything resembling a level playing field. The winds will swirl every which way, up any available canyon; the clouds off the ocean will snag on the ridgelines and let the thirsty redwoods rake the moisture out of them. Meanwhile, two ridges away, the sun will be shining down and all will be calm and cozy.
For a cyclist, this makes for an interesting challenge. From my house in the west county hills, 15 or so miles from the ocean, I can look out across millions of acres of hills and valleys and mini-mountains, and on a typical spring day--like today--I can see several different weather systems in one panoramic sweep. Blue skies and bright promise over here; dark clouds trailing ragged, rainy petticoats over there; chill, low-lying fog still hunkered down along the Laguna de Santa Rosa...and so on. Never a dull moment, and never the same from one moment to the next. If I am determined to get in my miles, I will have to venture out into this hurly burly and take my chances.
But I can, to some degree, define the terms of engagement. These are the rides I call chasing blue skies. They are the essence of springtime. I ride wherever it seems least likely to be raining at any given moment. That view out the front window makes my first decision for me: off I go, toward whatever looks like the most promising patch of blue. Then, once atop my first ridgeline of the day, I look around and take stock again: where are the most ominous clouds heading now? Over there? Okay, I’m off in the opposite direction. Not only is the region home to a rumpled topography and a sampler pack of micro-climates, it is also packed with a dense network of dinky back roads: another junction and another option every mile, or even more frequently than that. This is what makes such improvisational rides possible.
And highly entertaining. I never know where I’m going next. Every intersection offers a new opportunity to reinvent the route, like a jitterbugging tailback dodging lumbering linebackers. Go left...no, right! Of course, just as those linebackers sometimes do catch up to the runner and pound him to a pulp, so too do the rain clouds sometimes close off my escape routes and give me a good dunking. But that’s okay. It wouldn’t be much of a sporting challenge if we knew we were always going to win the battle.
The thing that’s so appealing about springtime though is that we do think we’re going to win this particular battle most of the time, as long as we choose wisely as to when and where we ride. In the winter, when we sneak in a dry, sunny ride, we say we’ve stolen one from the rain gods. In the springtime, we take it more as the right and proper order of things that we should set out dry and return home in the same condition, several lovely hours later. It doesn’t always work out that way, but it happens often enough to make cycling here a reasonable premise, even in February. And by the time the real, nominal Spring arrives in March and April--with the snowy showtime of apple blossoms; with lavender lupine and crimson owl’s clover; with goofy little lambs capering about in the emerald fields--by then we California cyclists will already be fully up to speed, rolling out our pacelines on a tailwind run, all the way to summer.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net