A July ride up to the top of Refugio Pass, and return. There are no beautiful pictures of California here; just a dirt path that used to be a road climbing up a steep mountain pass. In the morning the pass was fogged in, which was great for exercise, but bad for pictures. I did not include a lot of pictures, but I did record the return trip for my historical records. I will attach the video at the very end, just for the hell of it, but I do not recommend anyone watching. It’s just a long boring video on a broken road, that I took my time navigating.
On this ride I did determine a very interesting piece of information. I have a real problem riding this trail. I thought it was because of the steep grade and my smooth road bike tires on the loose gravel, but that turned out not to be the problem. The grade on this trail varies between 3% & 10%. I have many other rides that have grades that steep. I may go very slow, and stop to rest a lot; but I can ride these grades. It turns out the problem is speed.
When a bike is in motion with the wheels spinning, there are physical forces that keep it upright. If it slows down to where the wheels are turning very slowly, those forces become very weak. In this condition, it is the rider that is actually balancing the bike. For me, on a smooth surface this is something I can do. However, on a very rough, unsmooth surface, I cannot balance the bike at the slow speeds I can generate. I thought I was losing balance because the tires were slipping, but that is not the problem.
Since I no longer have the strength to move the bike faster; there is no fix for this problem. On this type of steep, rough, sandy road, I will have to simply push the bike more than I ride.