5.5

7:44 am - Saturday - December 14th - Ramona, CA - 50° F, 96% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the east by northeast.....foggy this morning with a forecast high today of 61° F.

After opening the pool, and doing the requisite tests I headed out to take care of an assignment delegated to me at our 9 am meeting.....install 'No Animals' signs on all four restroom doors, and at the Red Barn entrance.  Our park rules, which are distributed to each customer at registration, include a rule against pets of any kind being in any park building, or in the pool/playground areas.  We have signs at the pool, and playground, but until Friday we had none at the restrooms, or at the barn.  I guess its kind of like U-Turns with people.....if there is no sign prohibiting a u-turn, it's okay to do so.  Customers have interpreted the lack of signs at these buildings silent permission to enter them with their animals, primarily dogs, of course.......

....it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, we do allow people to bring their registered service animals inside our buildings, as well as the pool/playground areas.  This took me less than an hour from beginning to end.

From that point on I spent the rest of my 'Short Friday' with hand blower in hand clearing leaves from the entrance of our park, including the lower parking lot, through the office parking lot, around the kiosk,   finishing at the dam end of the pond (Lake Lorenzo).

TLE and I were off work by 1 pm, and walking home.....we leave our golf cart at the office each Friday for the weekend workers to utilize.  Friday was the warmest day of the week with a high temperature of 72° F, and I had been eyeing Friday all week in anticipation of being able to take another mountain bike ride on my Haibike SDURO.  I hadn't had an opportunity to take a ride using my newly installed telescoping seat post.  These seat posts have been around for years, and are utilized by MTB folk to lower there seats when riding downhill.  When doing long sections of downhill I used to lower my seat manually before beginning the run, but when you are riding varied terrain, this is impractical.  With the advent of the telescoping seat post you can now change the height of your seat on the fly with a simple push of a lever mounted on your handlebars, and attached to the seat post via a cable.....

The XLC All Mountain telescopic seat post

.....there are a lot of these telescoping seat posts on the market with costs as high as $400, but I chose to purchase the one that comes standard on many Haibikes (not mine), the XLC All Mountain telescopic seat post.  When you push the pictured lever with your weight on the seat post it collapses down about about 6 inches.  When you push the lever with your weight off the seat post the seat rises back to its normal position for flat, and uphill riding.  

In all I made three complete rounds of our fire roads covering about 5.5 miles in total over about 56 minutes......once I got used to the new seat post it was wonderful.  Each time I came to the downhill I rode with more confidence, and ultimately hit just over 37 mph for a short stretch on the last downhill.........

 Once section of the fire road overlooks our office

I had to ride back up that hill to get back to the main fire road

....at one point I rode down an offshoot of the main fire road to a cul-de-sac overlooking the office.  Without the battery assist on this Haibike SDURO I would never have ridden down that section as I would have had to push the bike back up the very steep hill.  I put the bike in 'Standard' mode (two levels up from 'Eco+'), and just shot back up the hill......amazing!

In all I covered over 1100' of elevation gain on my three loops, and consumed around 500 caloric units.  This is the longest bike ride of any kind I've taken in 9 months both distance, and time wise.  I felt great at the end of the ride, and could easily have gone for another loop.

We spent the evening watching Hallmark Christmas movies, and were in bed before 10 pm.....thanks for stopping by!

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