Two-Wheeled Traffic on Angeles Crest Highway

There are two types of two-wheeled vehicles that frequent Angeles Crest Highway:

Both types are crazy.  And both types gather at the Shell gas station at the base.

Mt. Baldy Elevation

I went and hiked Mt. Baldy with some friends a couple weekends back.  We started out somewhere between 5000 and 6000 feet.  I think it was about 6.5 miles up with over 4000ft of elevation gain and around 3-3.5 miles going back down.  That climb was one of the hardest things I've done; I was definitely not really prepared for it.  We survived though taking about 6 hours to do it.

Break of Dawn, Best Brunch in the OC

I read about this place while on a flight.  It's run by a Vietnamese guy named Dee Nguyen and there's a really great story behind the reason he started this restaurant (it has to do with his son Berlin).

This is the back side of the menu.  Notice the note at the bottom.

Water served in this cool mason jars. 

The Mac N' Cheese.  There's a whole lot of awesomeness going on here including the egg on top. 

It was good :)

Airplane vs. Sea Level Air Pressure

The air pressure at sea level is much greater than at altitude.  An airplane is pressurized, but I think it's roughly to an equivalent altitude of 8000ft.  So, the air pressure is significantly less than at sea level.  To show this concept, I opened my water bottle during the flight so that the pressure in the bottle equaled that of the cabin pressure (~8000ft equivalent).  With the bottle back at sea level, the greater ambient pressure crushes the bottle.

Strava for Cycling

So I've been using this Strava app on my phone which tracks my rides using GPS.  It's pretty cool stuff; it uploads your ride to a database that you access online.  From there, you can see speed, route, elevation, power output, calories burned, heart rate (if you have a monitor) and how you compare to other riders on the same segments.  Strava can also be used for running.

I'm testing out this 'embed' feature where it shows a segment of my ride on a web page (such as this blog).