Not the Annual M-S-M Ride in Search of Autumn
As much as I enjoyed all those late summer trips to Carpinteria and Santa Barbara, I have always had this connection with the high country. This years' camping trip to the Sierra was nixed, and once we crossed the November threshold I knew my chances for a local fling before winter laid in up there were growing slim. And so I set aside today for what I once hoped would be an annual Ride in Search of Autumn. The route from Manker Flat, below Mt Baldy, up to the Notch, then down the north side to Stockton Flat (then retracing your tracks), may not be long, it may not present you with the most elevation gain you'll ever do on a ride but, if you ask me, that vertical ascent in that very short distance makes it a leg-breaker in its own way.
When I began to plan for the ride a week ago, I had no idea that rain would be forecast for the weekend, with snow at the higher elevations. As things seem to be playing out, the timing was all right.
Speaking of timing, I was back up at the Notch for the second time, after having climbed back up road from the north side. The wind was blowing in gusts so I didn't sit against the railing, where the best views are, but in a slightly sheltered spot off to the side. I watched two women walk over to the railing and, just as they got there, a great gust rushed up canyon and took the cap off the head of one of them. It blew directly to me; all I had to do was close my fingers around it. As she walked over to get it, I said, "I think we're meant to be together," but I gave the hat back to her anyway.
Speaking of anyway - anyway - did I find autumn? After all that is the whole point of the ride. Down in the lowlands summer tends to stick around far longer than it is wanted, and it seems like the best place to find the wayward season is up among the highest peaks. It was up there alright; I felt it in the temperature of the air - twenty degrees cooler than yesterday, I saw it in the grey squirrels running back and forth across the road, each one wearing great fluffy coats, I saw it in the flurry of activity at the ski resort - filling the reservoir to load the snow making cannons which I spotted here and there on the slopes. I saw it in the way visitors to the mountain were dressed, the chairlift operators standing around with beanies on their heads, sweatshirts and gloves (and there I was in simple cycling kit). I could smell it in the air, even with a new fire burning down below in San Dimas, it was crisp and fresh up high. I could see it in the first fingers of cloud stretching across the sky. I felt it (boy did I feel it), in the swirling wind - one moment a devilish headwind, the next a merciful tailwind. Icould see it in the pale yellow leaves of shrubs spotting the mountainsides, and in that single tree all the way over at Stockton Flat, seeming to change before my eyes, half yellow, half still green. Autumn is coming out, with winter rushing right behind it. (I had to limit the photos here, if you know me, or have "liked" Claremont Cyclist, there will be more there).
getting lower now
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