I rode in a diesel vanagon up Montezuma Grade east of San Diego, Ca..an average climb of about 9%, 11 miles long and 3700' of elevation gain. 3 of us aboard with our bicycles. We were driving over to Mt. Palomar to ride something different, plus I was kinda interested in maybe buying the Westie from a Canadian riding buddy. My wife, a pretty fit 50+ yr old ex. bike racer started up the hill ahead of us and when we finally caught her in about 5 miles she put on a sprint and re-passed us easily...on her bicycle, going uphill..9% climb..50+ yrs old... I decided that the 1.6 Westie was just too slow for me...especially in California. During that one 40 mile trip we had about 10 really close calls with impatient vehicles passing us unsafely and we got flipped-off dozens of times..Not my idea of a pleasant way to get down the road... Don Hanson On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 8:53 AM, Mark Dearing <VWBrain@aol.com> wrote: > In a message dated 10/24/2009 10:53:11 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, > rogersisler2000@YAHOO.COM writes: > > Did you get the requisite bumper sticker? How did it go? Are you still at > it? Did you ever get out of first gear? Did hikers pass you? Tell us your > story. > > > > That is a heck of a climb. I did it in my 66 westy a long time ago. > Remember that isn't the highest peak on the east side,but probably the > highest > road. Mt Mitchell in NC is highest peak but no road later mark d > |
Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of
Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection
will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!
Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com
The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.
Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.