My Dad buckled my helmet and checked that it was snug. "Ready for a ride, Nathan?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied, although I was not at all sure if I was--so far my bike helmet had only kept me safe on the tricycle and mostly I just used it for my Space-man Spiff adventures.

His bike looked so tall as I stood there. He reached down and lifted me into the seat behind him and buckled me up. "Here we go," he said as he put his feet to the pedals.

That first bike ride when I was three or four instilled feelings in me that would keep me coming back to biking through my childhood and, I'm convinced, for years to come.

Bay Area writer, road bike-riding enthusiast and sometime Cycle California! contributor, Bo Crane, has crafted a story about a group of riders planning to do an upcoming version of the Death Ride. Part Desparate Housewives meets Cycling Past 50, the story revolves around four weekend warriors training for the Death Ride and the women who (sometimes) ride with them and love them. The group gathers each weekend and rides different popular (and familiar to local riders) routes, i.e., the Alpine Road Loop, Devils Canyon, Mt. Diablo, Page Mill Road, Sierra Road, in their continuing effort to get into Death Ride fitness.

The first part of the novel focuses on the training rides and each chapter opens with a description of the route along with a little discourse on its history or the history of the ride's surroundings. The rides feature miles of steep hills, scary downhills, bad spills, just about what you would expect in the lives of cyclists driven to ride one of the biggest challenges in the west: The Death Ride. Readers get a peek into the off-the-saddle experience of bikers who live to ride the Death Ride: Their anxieties, loves found and loves lost, jobs and marriages in transition and on weekends, hours in the saddle.

The second half goes into the days before the event: The preparation, the five mountain passes and how the characters handle the event itself. This half serves up the Death Ride as a three-ring circus: Bikers coming uphill, going downhill, missing their contacts, missing the event, grinding out the miles in the relentless high-altitude heat. Who makes it to the end? Who survives? If you are going to be in the area, come on out and meet the author at this year's Death Ride, Turtlerock Park in Markleeville.

-Tracy Corral

You can find Cycle California! at 740 locations in Northern California and Northern Nevada. Click on the "Get the mag" link above to find out where. Or, click on the image of the magazine cover above to read this month's issue!

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