Excellent classic San Baronto tour.

Met with the team for a local classic tour this morning, out through Lastra, Montelupo, and Vinci to San Baronto.  The climb to San Baronto is just super fun.  There are so many cyclists there that you can always find someone who will hit your pace and keep you challenged for the climb.  Today, Adam, from Revelstoke, Canada, started out front, but around 1/3 the way up, I caught him and then we rode together with one other guy for the next 1/2, or most of the way up.  I stayed with the other guy, and led part time while we picked up a third on a pass, but somewhere along the way we dropped Adam.  Still, super fun climb for everyone, and Adam was only a minute or two behind me.  Paolo, Andrea, then Massimo were within 3 or 4 minutes, then Nicola was around 10 minutes out.

We all went into the bar for a well deserved cafe, and Nicola devoured a large piece of strudel.  I guess the climb worked her pretty well.  It reminded me of a time many years ago when I was ski touring with a group, and we returned from a long 9 hour day, and basically 10 of us sat and devoured all the food within sight without a single word.  Anyway, Nicola being from Revelstoke, her eating the strudel reminded me of this, as my incident was in the Selkirk mountains, which are above Revelstoke.  We descended carefully, then hit a pretty fast pace back on the flats.  We dropped Nicola and Adam a few times, and I waited to make sure they knew the way.  Anyway, sweet day and sweet tour.  97.0 kilometers in 3:32 for an average of 27.5 kph (fast for me) with 515 meters of climbing.

Super cool monument to cyclists at the top of the little pass in San Baronto.  It is a local classic, and a total cycling scene, even on a winter's day like today.  It was reasonably temperate, but chilly on the descent.  Also, the roads were quite wet descending for 2/3 of it, so caution was important.

Paolo and Adam getting water at the fountain.

It has been a while since I posted a fountain picture, I think, so

here is one of my favorites just past San Baronto where the 

descent starts.