Distance: 45 miles one way
Elevation gain: 3330 ft 

(A Best of the Best ride)

This and the Jesus Maria Road ride are the best rides in the Gold Country.

The century that explores the Gold Country is the Sierra Century, and, while I have reservations about centuries generally, this is one worth doing because 45 of its miles are great riding and a perfect introduction to the region, and the other 55 aren’t bad.  Good as the route is, it’s got the inevitable stretches of mediocrity that plague all centuries, so, in keeping with the spirit of Bestrides, here is a modified version of the Sierra Century route, whittled down to the sweet stuff.

As with all Gold Country riding, the route can be ridden any time of the year, but doing it in the spring, when everything is green and blooming, doubles the pleasure.  The Sierra Century used to be in the middle of summer, when temperatures on the road could easily be over 100, but it learned its lesson and is now c. April 15, which is about ideal.  The route has great variety of landscape—rolling grassy foothills, burbling streams, conifer forests—and 5 small towns, each of them worth some exploring.

It’s a U-shaped course that climbs up into the Sierra, cuts across the ridges, then descends, leaving you with pleasant but not great roads to close the loop.

Start in the town of Ione.  Stop off at Clark’s Corner, an excellent, friendly restaurant run by great boosters of cycling who deserve your business.  Take the main street out of town heading north and immediately go R onto Hwy 124, a boring road that’s the worst on our route.  Go R onto Sutter-Ione Rd. (I’d start the ride here if I didn’t want to give Clark’s a plug) and enjoy the rolling grassy hills, typical of the riding west of Hwy 49, that precede the more wooded stuff to come.  This (along with Stony Creek Rd. to the south) is as good as the riding to the west of Hwy 49 gets, so if you don’t like it I wouldn’t do more of it.   It can be brutally hot out here on a summer day, so ride it in the morning or in another season.  You will do some work here—the rollers can get big and you’re gaining elevation overall.

Ione-Sutter Creek Road

Sutter-Ione Rd. ends at Sutter Creek, the prime tourist destination in the Gold Country.  You might pause to soak in the quaint charm of the main street and/or hit the ice cream parlor on your R.  Ride through town (heading south) and take Church St. to the L.  It soon becomes Sutter Creek-Volcano Rd.  This leg is a popular bit of riding because it’s along a pretty creek and as mellow a climb as the Gold Country has—perhaps 1000 ft in 12 miles.  Try to get there before midday, when the light is still low and the broadleaves along the creek are illuminated.

Road to Volcano in autumn 

In the tiny, very historical town of Volcano notice the actual phone booth on your R as you enter town (and the sign inside) and consider buying food, because I don’t know of any place with good food past Volcano until Ione. Volcano at first looks like a tiny ghost town, but within its three small blocks beats a mighty heart.  In that 100 yards you’ll find two charming, refurbished old hotels, each with a very good restaurant, a friendly old-fashioned general store, two theatre stages (one indoor, one outdoor), a city park, and a very good bakery.  I highly recommend (if not today, eventually) an overnight in one of the two hotels, but check on opening and closing hours for everything before you book a date:  the last time I was there, one hotel’s restaurant was closed Sunday, the other hotel’s restaurant was closed Monday, and the bakery was closed Saturday.

Leaving Volcano, go R up Ram’s Horn Grade towards Daffodil Hill (signed).  This is a serious 3-mile climb that’s a lot of 6-8% but never worse.  At Daffodil Hill, a tourist attraction (also clearly signed), you used to be able to walk among its tens of thousands of daffodils during blooming season, but it’s been closed “indefinitely” since 2019 because it became too popular and the area couldn’t cope with the crowds. 

At the intersection with Shake Ridge Rd., stay R., the road name becoming Shake Ridge Rd.  Daffodil Hill looks like the top of the climb, but around the corner is a long character-builder of a climb, then a fair amount of moderate climbing, all of it doable if you know it’s coming but spirit-crushing if you think the work is done. When Fiddletown Rd. comes in from the L., you’re done with the hard climbing for the day.  Take it and enjoy a wonderful, fast, easy, rollicking 10-mile descent through the prettiest of foothills foliage to Fiddletown.  This is my favorite road in the Gold Country.  It’s not all down—you’ll ride perhaps 10 rollers—but if you keep your speed high you can sprint up most of them.   It starts out fairly steep—35-mph steep—but soon moderates, and you’ll probably pedal the last miles, which is a kind of descending I love.  The scenery is the best on our loop (see photos at the end of this post).  The road surface is far from perfect (this is the Gold Country), but not so as to impair your pleasure significantly.

Fiddletown itself is a very small, quaint cluster of houses and ramshackle stores that looks like a movie set of an old mining town.  The local historical society is active, and they’ve prepared a walking tour with accompanying pamphlet if you want to get off your bike and explore.  As far as I can tell there is no reprovisioning.

In Fiddletown we leave the 100-mile Sierra Century route and continue on the metric  Sierra Century route.  Stay on Fiddletown Rd. to Plymouth.   It’s less wonderful than what you’ve just done, but it’s still very good.  Just before Plymouth there’s a tiny, completely unexpected hill that gets up around 10% and guts you if you think all the climbing is over.

Plymouth used to be a sleepy intersection, but the wine business has exploded in the Shenandoah Valley, so money is moving is.  There’s a nationally-ranked restaurant in town, Taste, if you want to get off the bike for an extended repast, and a boutique hotel, Rest, if you’re done for the day.  Across the street from Taste on Main St. there used to be a wonderful foodie deli, the Amador Vintage Market, but it has folded and there is no place special I know of to eat.  The coffee deli down the block from Rest has a few sandwiches, and there’s a Mexican restaurant I haven’t tried (along with a modern supermarket) a stone’s throw to the south down Jackson Rd.

My route stops here.  Of course you have to get back to your car, though the roads between Plymouth and Ione vary from pleasant to tedious, so here’s a route.  Ride straight on through town and Fiddletown Rd. becomes Old Sacramento Rd.   The road surface on Old Sacramento is poor for a couple of miles, but it doesn’t last long and the road contour is fun.  Take it till it T’s at Hwy 16.  Go L on 16 (shoulder riding), then go R on Willow Creek Rd.  Ride WCR until it ends at Hwy 124; turn R onto 124 and take it into Ione.  If you’re planning on doing this entire loop, you might like to start in Plymouth, as the Sierra Century does, to make sure you’re doing the hottest part of the loop in the earliest part of the day.

Shortening the route: our long route includes two roads that make excellent out and backs: Sutter Creek-Volcano road, and Fiddletown Road from Fiddletown to Shake Ridge.  SCV meanders sweetly along a pretty little creek, so it gets points for beauty, but the pavement is fairly rough, so the return ride is less than ideal.  FR is pure joy both ways —21 miles of gorgeous scenery (see the description above).  Both roads are easy to moderate pitches only, so you never suffer, and the road contour is constantly interesting.

If you want to do a bit more work, do Sutter Creek-Volcano and continue on up Ram’s Horn, then take Shake Ridge Rd. back to Sutter Creek.  SRR has decidedly less interesting contour and less beautiful scenery than SCV or Fiddletown Rd., but it’s not bad.

There’s a shortcut that allows you to trim the loop by eliminating the miles connecting Plymouth to Ione and Ione to Sutter Creek if you’re willing to ride some dirt.  It goes from Sutter Creek to Fiddletown (you’ll probably ride it in the other direction).  Beginning as Amador Road, it leaves Hwy 49 from the north end of town and heads north for 10.2 very pretty miles of riding before ending at Fiddletown.  Head north for 2 miles, at which point you intersect and cross Amador Creek Road (jogging L about 50 ft. in the process) and the road changes its name to Turner Rd. (all signed).  You may see 3-4 cars in these first two miles, but after Amador Creek Road you should be alone—I saw 2 cars in the last 8 miles, out and back.  Continue to a T at New Chicago Rd at 3.1 miles.  Go R onto New Chicago and begin 7 miles of dirt to Fiddletown.  At mile 5.3, take a sharp L onto Quartz Mt. Rd (signed).  Total elevation gain 1400 ft. one way, which is a lot.  The dirt is flat and well-groomed, but see below.

I used to love this route, but as of 5/22 it’s unridable unless you have huge tires, because all of Quartz Mt. Rd. is under several inches of loose, sharp new gravel.  On any conventional road bike, it’s hell—no traction, no steering.  I ended up walking the 10% pitches, up and down, and there are a lot of them.  Perhaps in a year or so the gravel will go wherever gravel goes and Quartz Mt. will be ridable again.

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Distance: 41 miles one way
Elevation gain: 5030 ft

(Best of the Best descent)

I learned about this ride in the nicest way.  I walked into a shop in Sutter Creek to do a little browsing, and I happened to be kitted out.  The proprietor said, “You looking for a good route?”  and pointed me to this one.   I left the store and drove straight to the ride.  It’s a classic climb and decent up into and back down out of the Sierra.  Along the way you’ll meet 3 charming crossings of the Mokelumne River and 4 mountain towns that run the gamut from little city (Jackson) to nothing-but-general-store.

This route does a lot of climbing.   Not one foot of it is especially steep, but there’s a lot of it.  You will be climbing pretty much without a break for the first 17 miles, and there’s plenty of climbing after that, with overall climbing stats well over our 100 ft/mile benchmark.   But it can’t be all up, and this ride features one of the fastest, smoothest slalom descents I know of.

This route follows the model for the classic Hwy 49 loop ride: Take off from a point on 49, climb eastward until you hit that north/south road that goes by many names but runs pretty continuously about 15-20 miles east of 49, ride north or south on it, then find a road that goes west and returns to 49.   You can probably map out a dozen such rides, and they’d all be good (see more in Adding Miles).  They typically leave you with an unpleasant leg along Hwy 49 to close the loop, as this one does.

Tabeau(d) Road

Navigation on this route is tricky, both because I want to discuss several options, and because both the AAA map and the Benchmark atlas omit one of our roads, but each one chooses a different road to omit—go figure.

Ride east out of Jackson on Clinton Rd.  You can park in the Raley’s parking lot near the corner of Clinton and Hwy 49.   Clinton has Hwy 88 paralleling it just to the north and taking all the through traffic, so cars are at a minimum here.  You start climbing immediately, but the first few miles are very mild and you can easily warm up on them.  The further east you go, the steeper, smaller, and prettier the road gets.

A stone’s throw out of Jackson, the redundantly-named Butte Mountain Rd. goes off to the R (there’s no sign on the R side of the road, but there’s one across from Butte Mt. Rd. on the L) and now, in the way of the Gold Country, you have to choose between two excellent roads.    They both go to the same place, so it’s a question of what you like.  Clinton is a mild steady climb; Butte Mountain rolls up and down, so it gives you a more varied riding experience, but you have to pay for all the little downs by climbing to regain the lost elevation.   And it’s also a little steeper.  So it’s quite a bit more work.  Butte Mountain Rd. is a little more remote, and it gets smaller—down to a very cozy single lane.  Make your choice.  I prefer BMR, but our route map assumes you go up Clinton.

A stone’s throw above where Butte Mountain and Clinton reunite, Clinton heads off to the L at a right angle and the straight road becomes Tabeau(d)—pronounced “tuh BOO” and spelled with and without the -d.  This section of Tabeaud isn’t on the AAA map (it’s in the Benchmark atlas), and Googlemaps doesn’t help because it shows so many roads in the area it’s hard to find your way.  But in the real world it’s apparent.  There’s no sign at the intersection, but there’s a small sign 50 ft before it, and 50 ft after it on Tabeaud.  You can stay on Clinton if you like—it’s good riding, and it’s the easiest way to the top—but we’re going straight onto Tabeaud because there’s stuff on that route we don’t want to miss.

Clinton Road

Next you reach a fork marked E. Clinton to the L and Tabeaud Rd. to the R.  (the Benchmark atlas doesn’t show E. Clinton).  This time the sign is smack dab at the intersection.  Both routes are worth riding.  If you stay on Tabeaud, you’ll do 1.5 miles of climbing that’s steeper than anything else on the ride, then roll up and down to Hwy 88.  But we’re going L., because  the next mile or so is one of those stretches of road that’s just laugh-out-loud fun, a joyous little roller coaster.   It puts the “whoop” back in “whoop-de-doo.”  It ends all too soon, back at Clinton Rd., where you go R, then R on Irish Town Rd.  This is a rather monotonous climb of unvarying pitch that goes on a little too long and dumps you out on Hwy 88 and into Pine Grove, a large mountain town with a bank, a pharmacy, a burger place, a pizza place, and an ice cream parlor.  (If you took Tabeaud Rd. it brings you to Hwy 88 south of Pine Grove, and you’ll have ride north to town, then retrace your route if you need ice cream.)

When you get to Pine Grove, you’ve got another decision.  You’re into the ride for 13 miles and about 2200 ft of vert.  Are you up for 30 more miles and 3000 more feet of vert?  Do you feel like sharing the road with some traffic?  If the answer is no, consider looping back down the road to Jackson.   All you have to do is ride down the road you didn’t ride up—if you rode up Irish Town, ride down Tabeaud, and vice versa.  (Tabeaud’s surface downhill is a little rough, and Irish Town is a great descent, so if you’re planning to do this shorter loop, I suggest going up Tabeaud and down Irish Town.)  Ride back to the E. Clinton/Tabeaud intersection, ride down to the Butte Mountain/Clinton intersection and descend the road you didn’t ride up.  You’ll have a 25-mile day with about 2500 ft of vert, you’ll spend the entire day on sweet, traffic-free back roads, and very little of the route will be duplication.  Warning: if you lay out your route so you’re “descending” E. Clinton, you’ll be riding up some nasty 14% pitches.

If you ride on, as the route map does, the rest of the ride is on highways, mostly small ones.  Ride south out of Pine Grove on 88, a large highway with a lot of traffic and a good shoulder, for a very unrewarding three miles, all up, and go R onto Hwy 26, aka Red Corral Rd.  You’ll stay on 26 to the end of the ride.  Red Corral Rd. is much smaller than 88, so cars, while certainly present, shouldn’t be a problem.  Climb a steady moderate grade until you reach an obvious summit around 17 miles into the route.   Prepare yourself—something really good is about to happen.  The next 2.6 miles are a long, perfect slalom through big, sweeping curves, the ultimate ski run on a bike—a Best of the Best descent without a doubt.  The road is curvy enough to be exciting yet straight enough and open enough that on-coming traffic isn’t a threat, and there isn’t a tight curve to spoil your rhythm.  It lasts until you cross the North Fork of the Mokelumne River on a fairly large bridge (the first of three crossings on the Mokelumne on this route, four if you close the loop via Hwy 49).  Take a moment to be grateful—you’ll never see a descent like that again, at least on this ride.

Consider pausing at the crossing.   This is the best place to get off your bike on the route.  It’s a lovely spot, well worth fifteen minutes of foot-dangling or meditating on moving water.   When you’re ready to move on, you must now climb, as always after a big descent down to a river.  The climb is substantial in length but never brutal.  When it ends, you roll a couple of miles into the town of West Point.  Notice something odd?  These are the only miles you get on this ride that aren’t noticeably up or down.

West Point, supposedly named because it’s the western-most point that Kit Carson ever reached, is a small, authentic mountain community with a classic little grocery store.   If you stay on our route you’ll miss most of it.  South of West Point you cross the Middle Fork of the Mokelumne, but you’ll hardly notice it.   Drop down to the South Fork of the Mokelumne, your last creek crossing (unless you do the Hwy 49 leg).  The crossing itself and the next few miles of riding are particularly beautiful, especially if it’s later in the day and the forest is backlit by the lowering sun. After the creek, you climb, a lot, to and beyond a false summit to about 33 miles into the route—the non-existent community of Glencoe is about the end of it (there’s a sign, and farms, but no town).  From there it’s mostly down with some lovely stretches, repeatedly interrupted by small ups (and one large one) all the way to Mokelumne Hill—as if to make a point, the road actually climbs up to town. The Mokelumne Hill intersection with Hwy 49 is just that—an intersection, with some stores, a gas station, and a restaurant.  The real old town is 100 yards north on 49 and to the R (the sign says “Main Street”).  It’s well worth a visit, a Gold-Rush town still pretty much in its original 1800’s shape with an old hotel where you might want to stay if you’re looking for cheap, authentic Gold Country lodgings.

Our ride ends at the intersection, because that’s where the good riding ends.  But, unless you can finagle a car pick-up or hitch a ride (I wouldn’t think less of you if you did), you’re going to have to ride Hwy 49 back to your car, so I’ll tell you what you’re in for.  It isn’t fun.  It starts out OK, with you doing 20 mph on a gradual downhill on a decent shoulder with cars whizzing by.  In a mile or so you’ll see a sign that shows a circular curve and a 30-mph speed limit.  The shoulder disappears.  You’re about to descent down through a long series of amazing esses that would be marvelous if the road were closed to cars.  Move to the center of the lane—you can’t afford to be nice to the cars right now.  You’ll have a car on your tail—ignore him.  Some idiot will just have to pass you.  So be it.  If it makes you feel less guilty, you’re probably exceeding the speed limit.  Stay in the center of the lane until you’re down to the river and across the bridge.  Then move to the reappearing shoulder and stay there for a 4-mile boring slog back to your car.  It’s uphill every inch until the last 1/8 mile.  In total, it’s 7 miles—not the worst 40 minutes of your life, but I’m not putting it in my list.

Shortening the route: Ride to Pine Grove and back, riding Clinton one way and Butte Mountain the other.

Adding miles: As always in the Gold Country, fine riding is in every direction off this route.  You can make the loop a few miles longer by going R onto Railroad Flat Rd. at the intersection soon after West Point (clearly signed), then going R on Ridge Rd. to return to Hwy 26.   You can make the loop a lot longer by continuing past Railroad Flat on Railroad Flat Rd. and taking the next R on Jesus Maria Road.  You can go on in this way, making the loop longer by going south as far as you want to, then taking the next R back west—everything’s good until you get to Hwy 4, which is very trafficky.  Looking in the other direction, from Pine Grove you can go east on Pine Grove Volcano Rd. to Volcano—then you’re on the Cream of the Sierra Century ride.   And so it goes, without end, in this region.

Afterthoughts: You will suck water on this ride.  It’s hard work, and it’s probably warmer than you expect.  You can replenish at Pine Grove, West Point, and Mokelumne Hill (where there is a restaurant that grudgingly will give you water.  They charged me 75 cents for about six cubes of ice once.  It still rankles.)

Distance: 31 miles one way
Elevation gain: 3370 ft

(A Best of the Best ride)

Update 2018: a fire swept through this area in recent years, and almost all of Jesus Maria Road burned.  What was lush woods is now often charred sticks with new green underbrush returning (see photo below).  It’s still a great road, but with a very different feeling.  jr

Update 1/2021: Great news: Jesus Maria Rd has just been widened and repaved along its entire length and is now smooth.  This thanks to local cycling organizations and the state of California, who spent $200K for the repaving.  If someone spends $200K to prep a ride for you, you owe it to them to go do it.  For details on this and other aspects of California’s $14-million commitment to improving bicycling infrastructure in the Gold Country, see the CalBike website and Bestrides’s introduction to the Gold Country in the By Regions section.  Greenery is returning to the region as well, so there is no reason to delay doing this ride any longer.  jr

This and the Cream of the Sierra Century are the two best rides in the Gold Country.  It’s a tougher climb than our other Gold Country roads (lots of 8-11%).  I amassed 2450 ft of gain in the 14+ miles between Mokelumne Hill and Railroad Flat Road, which is a lot.  Jesus Maria itself is a narrow, serpentining crawl up through a canyon, and it used to be deserted but like everywhere else in California the occasional vacation homes with their $30,000 gates are beginning to appear, and you’ll see perhaps a vehicle per mile.  Thanks to the burn, the scenery varies from stark to lovely, and Jesus Maria itself offers some fine panoramic vistas, which are a rarity in the typically wooded Gold Country.   Like the Clinton Road ride, it’s a U-shaped course leaving you with an unpleasant stretch of Hwy 49 to close the loop.

Ride east out of Mokelumne (“muh KELL uh mee”) Hill on Hwy 26 and in 2 miles turn R on Jesus Maria Rd. (clearly marked).  Immediately you’re into a steep little climb that will strain your still-cold legs, but fear not—it’s short.  At the top you encounter the last thing you’d expect heading east from Hwy 49—a challenging descent.   It’s almost 2 miles long, and it’s an absolute hoot.  Every curve is a little technical puzzle to solve.  No two corners are alike, and no corner is a simple arc.  The road pitches up and down, cambers left and right.  It’s asking a lot, but while you’re trying to find good lines, try to notice how lovely the scenery around you is becoming, riparian trees largely undamaged by fire.

At the bottom of the descent you ride levelly along a pretty riparian woodland, then have to gain back all that lost elevation and then some.  You climb, quite steeply for 2 miles (8-11%), then more moderate stuff, until you’re 9 miles into the ride, after which the road rolls up and down, sometimes steeply, to mile 14.  The climbing work is never really over until Railroad Flat Road.  The road contour is constantly changing, and the scenery is varied—lush creekside woods, meadows, open grassy hillsides, conifer forests, stands of dead tree skeletons (see photos at the end of this post).  

When you dead-end on Railroad Flat Rd., you have a big decision to make: go on, or turn around.  Both options are really good.  If you turn around, you won’t be saving a lot in the way of miles or effort—there is 1230 ft of climbing on the 13-mile return “descent,” which qualifies it as a moderately difficult climb.  But it’s a very good ride, with better descending than you’ll get doing the loop, though the brand-new road surface is a trifle chattery.  Save some energy for the last mile of JMR, which is an 8-11% pitch.

Assuming we’re following my loop route, go R on Railroad Flat Rd.  This new road is the antithesis of Jesus Maria—wide two-lane mountain main artery, with noticeable traffic and no shoulder.   Ride into and through the community of Mountain Ranch, one of those real Gold Country towns that’s never seen a tourist and doesn’t want to.  There’s a big grocery store there, as far as I know the only place to reprovision on the route.

Just past Mountain Ranch, Michel Rd. takes off to the L and you have a choice.  If you liked the last few miles and want more just like them, stay on the main road, which has changed its name to Mountain Ranch Rd., all the way down the hill to San Andreas.  If you want to see more back country, go L onto Michel Rd.  We’re going L.  Don’t let the wide smooth surface fool you—it won’t last.  You’re soon back on a one-lane, patchy road through nice woods.  Watch for Old Gulch Rd. taking off to the L.  Take it if you want more adventure.  If you’ve had enough, stay on Michel, which soon runs back into Mountain Ranch Rd., which in turn will run you into San Andreas.  But we’re taking Old Gulch, because it’s some of the best riding and prettiest scenery on the entire ride.  It’s more remote than Michel, it’s calendar pretty, and the road contour is constantly invigorating.  It’s almost all down, and it dead-ends on Calaveritas Rd., another polished two-lane roller, but with much less traffic than Railroad Flat Rd., that you take to the R into San Andreas.

Old Gulch Road

Now our route ends, because the good riding ends, and we have to do what we usually have to do in the Gold Country, unless we can thumb a ride: suffer Hwy 49 back to the car—9 miles this time, of grinding up and down on the shoulder and ignoring whizzing traffic.

Jesus Maria post-fire—not a black and white photo

Shortening the ride: There is really no easy way to do this, since riding JMR as an out and back is about as hard as completing the loop.   Old Gulch Road makes for a short, lovely little out-and-back.  I’d ride it uphill (west to east) first, but it’s not a killer climb.

Adding miles:  As always in the Gold Country, good riding is in all directions.  Read the Adding Miles sections for Cream of the Sierra Century and Clinton Road for details.  All the seductive-looking roads you see on the map within the Jesus Maria/Mountain Ranch/Hwy 49 triangle are dirt.  Hwy 4 is hell until you get east of Big Trees State Park—big, very busy, and constant big rollers—but then it gets progressively smaller and quieter and finally turns into our Bear Valley to Mosquito Lake ride.  San Domingo Rd. is smooth dirt.

A general word of warning about riding in the Southern Southern Gold Country: every back road I’ve ridden south of Jesus Maria Rd. has had stretches of pavement ranging from poor to comically horrible.  That includes every Bestrides ride in the area—Ward’s Ferry, Old Ward’s Ferry, not so much Priest-Coulterville—and others like Dogtown Rd.  If poor pavement bothers you, ride somewhere else.

San Andreas is the terminus of a west-of-Hwy-49 road of particular charm, Pool Station Road.  Like all roads west of 49, it’s rollers through grassy hills, but it’s shadier and flatter and thus more pleasant than most.   It rolls for c. 12 mi, then ends at Hwy 4, making for an easy out-and-back.  If you want to keep riding, ride down Hwy 4 to Copperopolis and continue on O’Byrne’s Ferry Rd., which is much like Pool Station Rd. but a step drier and less charming.  The general warning about road surfaces in the area applies here—the last time I rode PSR the lousy tread seriously disturbed my wa.