I’ve been an avid mountain biker for years, and have always snickered a bit at people who confine themselves to road riding. Dirt’s more fun because it’s dirty, and road bikes aren’t cool and all of that. But recently I’ve discovered that much of my riding has been on pavement just to get to the dirt areas, and that there’s a heck of a lot more pavement near my house than dirt. In the mean time, my mountain bike has gone from a hard tail with relatively narrow knobbies to a full suspension rig with 2.4 inch wide aggressive tread tires - not the sort of thing that excels on pavement.

Since I finally paid off my truck a couple of months ago, I had some extra money lying around and decided to grab a road bike. I ended up picking up a Giant TCR C3 on closeout at Bicycle Warehouse. The frame is full carbon, with a decent midrange component group on it. I decided to go big on the frame and skimp on the components since the frame should last a lot longer than the components.

What a huge difference! The lack of pedal bob, and tires that have little rolling resistance have made it a million times easier to go places. I’d never think of doing 25 miles in a couple of hours on the mountain bike, but I’ve been doing just that before work on Fridays.

A couple of weeks ago, Steve, my office mate and fellow former shipboard computer geek, did a ride from Encinitas to San Clemente and back. It was about 75 miles round trip along the old highway 101 route, taking us up through Carlsbad, Oceanside, Camp Pendleton, Dolly Parton Memorial Power Plant (also known as San Onofre), up to the pier at San Clemente. This was a training ride for the Solvang Century, which Steve, my sister Melissa, and I are planning on riding in March.

Tomorrow I’m probably going to do a loop around San Diego Bay with another friend from work, along this route.