3:00am

I got up, and ate a big bowl of cereal, and then got rid of some weight. I put on a long sleeved jersey, shorts, and leg warmers, and then opened the door to look up at the sky. (The Chinese have a saying, "When going out, look at the color of the sky. When coming in, look at the color of your host's face..") I could see stars, and a couple of clouds, so I thought I'd risk taking my unloaded bike, as I had to ride with Eric "sunrise century" House.

I left the house at about 3:40, riding the 2 miles or so to the junction of Saratoga Sunnyvale and Highway 9. It was dark, but fortunately, I knew the roads well enough to anticipate how it went. My little vistalight front light cast a broad beam, but somehow it wasn't quite as bright as I was used to. Upon reaching the junction, I waited for about 5 minutes while 2 cars passed before I saw small twin headlights coming up. We waved at each other as Eric came to a stop.

Eric wears glasses (I can't remember if those were his titanium frames but they could have been), has brown hair and a short beard, and was between 5'10" and 6', though stretched out on his recumbent, he looked quite a bit taller.

"Doozo Yoroshiku," I said, wringing out what's left of my Japanese lessons from a year back. "Looks like I timed it just right: 3:59! Not as fast as I normally go..."

Eric then rattled off a series of directions, which I promptly forgot.

"You're leading --- I don't know the route!"

He went down Highway 9 and I followed, headlights giving us a little road to ride on.

"Does riding one handed mean you have to stop to drink?"

"Yep."

We rolled down Highway 9, through Los Gatos, and finally uphill towards Kennedy road, where I passed Eric for the first time.

"Wow, I passed the infamous Eric House uphill!"

He laughed. We talked and chatted about our favorite topics, bicycles, bicycling, Japan (Eric turned out to have been a Ph. D candidate at Harvard in Japanese literature in some previous life, of all things, and plans to go back to it someday when he's tired of Software Engineering) computers, software, socio-economics of bicycling, and management. He talked about his family on occasion.

We climbed Kennedy road in the pitch black, and I found that climbing in the dark really demands motivation, as you never know when you're going to finish and how far to the top you were. Fortunately, Eric, as you know, is an incredibly good climber, and I'm not too bad at it. Even on a recumbent, Eric climbs fast, and I could only imagine how fast he would be on a standard.

Descending Kennedy, however, took me sometime, as my lights weren't powerful enough, and I was too nervous to attempt any fast descents. But Eric waited for me at the bottom, and we moved along at a good clip after that. We then made a fair number of turns which got me lost, (at one point, Eric found some tree branch blocking the road, stopped and pulled it off the road. "Tell Eric Gilbertson that I've done my good deed for the day!") and finally got onto Uvas, which started with a series of rolling hills. Things were getting lighter at this point, and I could begin to appreciate the picture.

All around us were rolling hills, some occasional houses, and farms. Dawn broke upon us from the east, and so if you looked in that direction, you could see purple clouds mixed in with yellow light behind the hills. I noted that the grass had yellowed already. "Spring's nearly over," said Eric.

There was a headwind coming at us, so we weren't going fast. We stopped a few times to eat and drink and "use the trees," and eventually the uphill turned into a downhill and we found ourselves sailing down into a reservoir area. A couple more rollers found us in this beautiful spot with more water and hills near us. I couldn't figure out what it was, but there was this little white mist floating just over the water, giving the place a little bit of an eerie look in the morning light. By this time, it was bright enough for us to turn off our lights.

We weaved along the edge of the water, and at one point went over a landbridge with water on both sides. I could finally start to see birds behind some fences, and farms became evident.

We reached the end of the road, and faced a decision --- to take Watsonville road towards San Jose, or to keep going until we hit 152. I hated 152, so we decided to head back before the traffic got too bad. More farmland. A stop for me to switch to sunglasses. Lots of traffic, cars passing us. Then in a moment of quiet, I heard a rooster giving his morning salute. I pointed towards the east again: look at that --- a field of grass, standing almost perfectly still (no wind), looking golden in the sunlight. I could not forget that sight.

We started getting into suburban areas with lots of traffic, and at this point I turned my mind away from the surroundings, and started watching the road and traffic more. I ran over some glass, though fortunately we were not about to get any flats this time.

Finally, we found Santa Teresa Blvd, and got on it. By this time, the headwind had become a tailwind, so we were happy. Every so often, however, we'd come to a stoplight, and on starting some impatient car driver would buzz Eric. (Probably because of the weight, recumbents are hard to accelerate)

"Hope you're happier now!" said Eric.

We eventually reached Kennedy and started to climb. By this time, I was tired and Eric wasn't. :-) So he overtook me uphill, and led me all the way up. We reached the top, and I stopped and ate somemore, and then we sped down the other side, reaching about 30mph or so.

Back on Highway 9 through Los Gatos, and then up to Saratoga where we weaved through an amazing amount of traffic (and had a lot of impatient motorists behind us) before getting to my place where we stopped and ate some more.

9:00am

Distance: ~70 miles (~89 miles for Eric, though he hadn't calibrated his odometer for the 27" wheel on the bent) Time: ~5 hours (~6 hours for Eric)

Remarks: the vistalight headlight is a good light. So's the NiteRider. We were really impressed when the waterbottle battery jumped out of the cage when we went over some railway tracks, and the battery still hung off the cable. That trick would have retired a Nightsun. Eric claims that his recumbent seat is painful. We both think that this might be because the seat is too soft. He mentioned that several 'bent riders have told him he still has a few hundred miles of acclimation left. Recumbents seem to be harder to accelerate. Getting up at 3:00am is a pain, but the ride is fun. I wouldn't do it alone, however. Eric spins *fast*. Well, I spin fast too, and Eric thinks I spin faster than he does on the 'bent, but he spins faster on a standard than on a 'bent. I had fun catching Eric saying, 'real bike' instead of 'standard bike' when referring to uprights. :-)