The day starts with a 9:30am appointment for Kevin (my son, the one with the kidney issue) to see Kaiser’s super-duper urologist in Hayward, for a second (or 3rd?) opinion. Or that was the plan.
In reality, the day started with a phone call from Kevin’s new urologist in Santa Clara, checking up on him after the relatively-minor operation he had on Friday to figure out if, in fact, his issue was caused by a slight blockage of the body’s plumbing exiting the kidney, or something else, something so mysterious that it can only be figured out by eliminating every single other possibility.
It appeared that his pain was diminished via the new (and painful) stent placed Friday, so we decided it was time to get things behind us as quickly as possible and implement plan b- a robotic surgery procedure that removes the narrowed tube and stitches it back together. The Dr. checks the schedule and discovers that someone’s cancelled a procedure today so let’s get moving. Great, we’re off to see the Dr. in Hayward, meanwhile having three phone conversations with the surgical staff at Santa Clara setting things up. Er, how fast can we get down there? And that’s while we’re in the Hayward Drs office. Continue reading No bike ride ever as grueling as this day…→
OK I’ll be the first to admit that I hate the combination of cooler weather & rain. It makes a mess of your bike, you can’t see well, you have to worry about losing traction on tar stripes and you generally feel sluggish. Worse, colors disappear. Everything becomes a more lifeless shade of gray. If I wanted gray, I’d live in Daly City or some other fog-bound location. I don’t like gray. I like contrast in my life. I like color. Color like you see in the post below this one, blue skies with nicely-textured clouds and strong shadows that can only be cast by the sun on a beautiful day.
Between late-May and sometime in October, we get those beautiful days, typically without a drop of rain anytime during that wonderful 6-month stretch. But all things eventually come to an end, and that end came today, and I almost considered not riding, taking the day off, getting things done on this website that have needed doing for years. So you’ve got the choice. Give in, or fight it. Giving in on the very first day of rain… where would that lead?
3 computers & a video camera
Besides, today was going to be my first experiment with the ContourHD video camera mounted to my bike instead of my helmet, and through a lot of experimentation I thought I’d come up with something that ought to work! Except that my last experience with the camera in rain came to no good, and the rain housing I’d ordered for it, well, that was left at the shop, and I briefly considered driving down to the shop to pick it up before realizing just how absurd that would be… I’d drive to avoid riding in the rain so I could set up the camera to ride in the rain? Coming to my senses I rode in the rain first down to the shop, installed the rain housing, and headed out into something better called a drizzle than real rain. I didn’t even ride my “rain” bike, refusing to completely capitulate to the changing weather.
There were a *few* people riding in the rain...
So how many others were out there on the roads today? Darned few. I probably saw 15 other cyclists out on the road, not including what looked like a fair number of women doing a Velo Girls clinic under cover in Portola Valley.
The plan was just to head out and do “the loop” but it hardly seems like a bike ride if it doesn’t include a trip up to Skyline, so I headed up Old LaHonda road, telling myself that I’d take it easy, I’m not out there to kill myself today, but it just never works out that way. Sooner or later you glance at your computer when you pass a known timing point and realize that you’re still in the running for a reasonable time. No rest for the wicked.
Hopefully I’ll be able to do some cool videos with the ContourHD mounted to the bars. I’d tried a week or two ago with it mounted to my helmet, but that moves around way too much. The stuff I shot today is useless because everything’s dark & gray (or the lens is fogged up because I didn’t properly set up the rain case at first), but at least I could see enough to know that it works a lot better than up on the helmet. Thankfully the forecast looks good for Tuesday, so maybe I’ll have something then.
