Putting Together the Pieces: Sonoma Mountain on my SuperSomething

Sometimes the best kind of ride is when you leave the house with no route in mind and gradually a plan comes together as the wheels are turn. This past Friday, I rolled out my front door and started pedaling – not towards anything in particular; I just wanted to ride my bike and clear my brain. Little did I know that I was setting off  to connect a route I'd been scheming for years and come home with a completely different sense of the land I grew up on.

I live in Santa Rosa and one of the nice parts of living here is that it's right in the center of Sonoma County. A largely rural and agricultural county in Northern California. No matter which direction you start out, you'll find yourself somewhere scenic with different opportunities for terrain. Head north and there's Geysers, Alexander Valley, and Lake Sonoma. Pedal west and there are bike paths to Sebastopol, Cazadero, and Willow Creek. Meander east and there's Annadel, Hood Mountain, and Sugarloaf. Go south and there's the Valley of the Moon, Cavedale-Trinity, or Sonoma Mountain. Each of these options represents a different combination of landscapes. From rolling oak woodlands to coastal chaparral to towering redwood forests, we've got a taste of everything from the Northern California cookbook. 

Most of these routes work on any bike, but they're especially well-suited to the SuperSomething. The roads around here are gnarly: perpetually neglected, potholed, crumbling at the edges. With a nice compliant steel frameset, chatter-absorbing Ti seatpost, and 700x50 Ramblers, the SuperSomething turns all of that into white noise. Even on the worst pavement, it feels like you are floating.

So anyway, this ride rolled out through Howarth Park and Spring Lake, around the back way through Oakmont, then cruised down Highway 12 to Lawndale Road. This blissful little road was repaved after the fires in 2019 and with very little car traffic, it's a joy to take the whole road and glide into the curves. From there the ride went to Warm Springs and started the climb over Sonoma Mountain.

I was born not far from here in a turn-of-the-century bungalow that my dad still lives in, so on my rides over the mountain I often make a stop to spend some time with my old man. There is a deep sense of connection to the land here, having grown up as a little hippie child of the woods who was constantly out exploring, catching lizards, observing rattlesnakes, and crawling up creekbeds. But a lot of the land in that area is private, so there are still large swaths that I haven't explored. On Friday I decided to go 'splorin, the way I used to do as a kid. 

I'd been out scouting portions of an overmountain route in the past week, but today was the day it felt right to link it all together. From my dad's place atop Sonoma Mountain Road, I climbed roads, hopped gates, grinded my way up an old ridgetop fire road, navigated singletrack, and then abseiled down 2000 vertical feet over 8 miles of rough road that felt like riding a rollercoaster. The SuperSomething handled it all with a stability that beckoned to lean it around the bends, howling, fully committed. 

The route dropped down the west side to Petaluma Hill Road, threaded through Rohnert Park, and caught the bike path along the SMART train tracks back into downtown Santa Rosa. 39 miles, 3,279 feet of climbing, 3:34 on the clock – and a route finally connecting that I'd been piecing together in my head for a long time. Not bad for an aimless Friday.

About My SuperSomething

I'm 6'3" and I ride an XL SuperSomething. My saddle height is 830mm and my cubit is 510mm. I love the versatility of this frameset and I'm quite happy with this build, but since this SuperSomething is built as a lite-n-fast gravel bike, I may swap out the steel fork for our Sklarbon Fork. I think the Golden Hills color is one of my favorite bike colors of all time, and I'm looking forward to watching it age and get more character as we rack up more mileage on more fun exploratory rides like this one. It's the perfect bike for Sonoma County, and since I live and ride here, it's a perfect bike for me.