“25 miles an hour on even the steepest portion of the ride”

Today I decided to ride my R15 to my business partner’s house. Overall, the ride is about 4.5 miles in length and my ride there and back was much faster on my bike than in my car.

I live in the Hollywood Hills and I take Coldwater Canyon down to Ventura Blvd.  Since my ride down the hill was, well, downhill I didn’t think much about the journey. However, on my return leg I decided to power back up Coldwater Canyon. I wanted to keep up with traffic since it is a very narrow and winding road. As I reached the top of the mountain I had to stop at a traffic light to turn onto Mulholland Ave. A car pulled up next to me and the driver rolled down his window and yelled “That was F***ing awesome, how old are you?”. I just turned to him and said “yeah, that was quite a hill”.  Then he shook his head in disbelief and drove off.

I checked my bike computer and was astonished at what I saw. On my ride down the hill this morning my average speed was 18 mph. On the way home. . . back up the mountain my average speed was 19.5 mph!!

No wonder the guy was amazed. I couldn’t believe that I was averaging 25 miles an hour on even the steepest portion of the ride.  Those cars had trouble keeping up with me! Zoom Zoom.