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Overview

Summary

As things went on Thursday Night we were lucky to ride at all. Louis and I both wound up working until after 5:00 PM. Then when I arrived at Louis' place I discovered that my back tire was completely flat and wouldn't take air. It was now 6:00 PM and our idea of getting an early start so we could catch a nice long ride was fading fast. We managed to quickly track down a bicycle and lawn mower shop in Manteca that carried tubes with Presta valves and we were in business, so we hit the road (6:15 PM) with a decent amount of daylight.

I had heard about a little ride called 'Shadow Cliffs' somewhere between Livermore and Pleasanton on Stanley Blvd and it sounded like it was close enough to get a decent ride in. I had checked the maps and it appeared that Stanley intersected Hiway '84 on the SouthWest side of Livermore. So we took 205-580 to '84 through Livermore, and searched for Stanley.

Perhaps Louis and I were bullshitting too much and totally dropped the ball, but we didn't see a Stanley Blvd off of Hiway 84. I am certain eventually we'll find out if Stanley Blvd hit 84, but not this week. We soon found that we had run out of Livermore and were wandering down 84 looking at a continuous line of traffic coming at us. I didn't think Louis would like Pleasanton Ridge, or Mission Hill so we decided to try for a place called Lake Chabot near Castro Valley.

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I was a bit suprised to find such a beautiful park/ lake area snuggled in the middle of the Castro Valley area. We came in the front entrance to the park and headed east along the outskirts of the park.

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The park itself is very nice but unfortunately the multi-use trail which mountain bikes are permitted on follows along the outskirts of the park. Looking to the left we were treated to spectacular views of the park, to the right, peoples backyards and barking dogs.

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