upwind.. there were drifts of feathers.. previously it was called 'Mellon College' because it was surrounded by water Mellon fields.
SSU had a Very modest beginning in the middle of no where near a very small town called Turlock. my brother was a police captain there, that grew to a fair size due to the college. hot summers..110* cold foggy winters.. tulle fog, it gets so bad you cant see 10 feet. there is a story that once it was so bad for so long on the roads that the DOT cut it up in blocks and buried it beside the road.
it is actually a really nice place, Yosemite National Park is about 70 miles away, there are 3 or 4 good lakes near by. their are several major rivers near by
San Joaquin River:
Mokelumne River
Calaveras River
Stanislaus River
Tuolumne River
merced river
San Fransisco is about 110 miles away.. we went to see concerts there at Winterland and the Filmore West nearly every weekend from 68 to 74
i was a founding member, 2nd president of the Modesto Roadmen bicycle club, founders of the Tour de Modesto race. i had a Biabchi Team Issue bicycle, sewup tires, we did 4-5-6 day road tours in 64-70, in 1964 we did a 5 day loop Modesto-Paterson-Del puerto Canyon pass-lick observatory-San Jose-Saratoga-Santa Cruz- Monterey-Big Sir- Carmel- Monterey-Salinas-San Juan Batista-Hollister-Pacheco pas-Gustine-Patterson-Modesto in 5 days 6 riders, started with 7. one crashed lost most of a day. we cut one day of high school, with a bad assed principal.. they never said anything. we never heard of down sleeping bags, we tied cotten ones on our bikes.. no fancy bike bags in those days. we all had European racing bikes we raced ABL of A races, sponsored a lot of club road races. we rode 50 miles to Sonora and back in the Sierras for fun.. i had a wonderful time there growing up on a farm. but we made the fun.. it was not indigenous there.
we rode several times to Yosemite on logging roads, rode on a tour to yosemite-tioga pas- mono lake-to Nevada, to reno-Sacramento-back to Modesto. i rode in death valley. i was an eagle scout, 5 year summer camp staff at camp mc bride at pine crest lake., good at camping, taking care of people. we lived thru it.
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