Spokes, tubes, and tioga

How do you begin a blog post about Yosemite?  Neither words nor pictures can capture the beauty that we were able to see these past two and a half days.  We started of our Yosemite adventure in a small town roughly thirty miles from Yosemite.  It was pretty day with an early morning ascend of about three or four hundred feet.  The climb itself soon turned into an awesome descent.  We probably got up to speeds of about 30 or 35mph!   About two thirds into the descend I was riding behind Tom and all off the sudden I heard a pop.  Toms spoke had snapped mid-descend.  There really was nothing we could do sows wrapped it around another spoke and kept going.  About another mile later David's popped.  This Yosemite adventure wasn't really starting off so hot.  Our luck however soon changed as we approached the Yosemite sign.  After climbing close to a thousand feet on a broken spoke.  Joann and Ruby, who work at the park, drove by and picked up Tom so that he could go the Yosemite Valley in order to fix his spoke.  Tom got a free ride into the valley. 

Dave and I decided to bike into the park.  Along the way we got to see views like the picture above, clear pristine streams, and a good many signs about bears.  It was a tough climb but absolutely gorgeous and absolutely worth it!

We arrived in the valley and set up camp in the north pines hiker biker camp site.  Behind us was a stream clear as can be along with a perfect view of Half Dome. Which if you've never seen it before is the blueish mountain the the picture below.

The only difference is that we were probably several miles closer and it was sever times bigger than the picture shows.  In the valley we were literally surrounded by mountains like that on every side.  

At the hiker biker site we also met a dude named Per.  He was incredibly helpful and a lot of fun to talk with.  He has done some bike touring in Europe, South America, Canada, and is currently touring the States.  He gave us some tips on touring, bikes, and shared some of his food with us.  We all really enjoyed talking and swapping stories with him.  He's really he first bike tourist we've gotten to talk with.

The next morning we left to finish fixing Tom's bike and to head up to White Wolf road a 5000 foot climb over 34 miles.  it was hard but we finished strong.   It's crazy to think that in comparison our first real climb of this trip was roughly 1000 feet and rocked us.  We really have gotten stronger.  

Today we woke up and left White Wolf camp grounds to club an additional 2500 feet to see the Tuolumne (pronounced twalumee) meadows and to cross Tioga Pass.  The meadows themselves were gorgeous.  It was similar to what we had seen in Yosemite Valley except a lot more grass. We hit hem about lunch time and had only nuts left to eat and so we decided to hit up a convenience store.  While at the sports side of the store we ran into some friends of the Chesneys (talk about a small world).  They were very helpful and gave us some biking tips and even paid for our lunch( and then some)!  People's generosity...it just blows me away ( while I'm on the topic thanks Mr. Cutchin for your help!  We got to have REAL showers tonight for the first time in about four days.  We really appreciate it!). 

After getting our belly's fill we headed to Tioga Pass and climbed to 9945 feet above sea level

Which had snow 

The pass then led to a 3,500 foot descend over 12 miles with 8% grade for six miles.  Tom set the record of 50.5 mph.  And we all flew down that hill.  The descend led to Lee Vining a smaller town and a hotel where we are all about to turn it in for the night.  

~Paul