Hot dam!

The Monticello Dam is 50 years old this year, and today the Solano Irrigation District, which owns the dam, was having a birthday celebration. I'd thought vaguely about going. Instead, I decided to do a bike ride out to Winters with four other Davis Bike Club members.

Beautiful October day, easy ride to Winters, where we had some lunch at Steady Eddy's coffee house. "Hey," I said, "there are tours this afternoon up at the dam. Anybody want to ride to Lake Solano and take the shuttle up to the dam and take the tour?"

Three of the four others headed back to Davis, but S of D and I headed to Lake Solano. "Sorry," the volunteer said, "all the spaces on the rest of the shuttle trips are filled." We thought briefly of waiting around to see if anybody turned in their tickets, but it didn't take long for us to decide to just ride up there, ourselves, and try to tag along. So we did, and bingo--got up to the dam at the same time the shuttle did. No problem getting on to the tour.

Tour itself was a bit disappointing--I had hopes of actually going down into the dam, itself (turns out the only way to do that is through the dam's "front door," located nearly at the base on the downstream side), but we did get to walk out on the top and look over each side. Best little tidbit: The "glory hole" (the overflow structure) is a seamless 30-ft in diameter concrete tube, which, until 9/11 precipitated major upgrades in the dam's security measures, was a magnet for skateboarders. Cowabunga!

The best part of the day, though, was how leisurely it all was--I ended up riding 52 miles without even thinking about it, chatting with S of D, whom I hadn't seen for a while, drinking in this marvelous fall weather, the trees coloring up, the buckeye seeds looking like pears hanging on the almost-leafless branches. October is the best of months.