I had read that departure times for egypt air flights were goals, not something set in stone (so to speak). Such appears to be the case today as our flight from London to Cairo is likely to leave around 6pm, 4 hours late.
London Heathrow is an interesting airport; they don’t let you know the gate number for your flight until 30 minutes before you leave. Why? So they can keep you in the huge shopping area in the middle of the terminal. Smart people.
This is my FOURTH attempt to post from my iPhone via the wordress app. Each of the prior three went
So right now we (that would be myself and the wife aka Redwood City shop mom) are sitting on the tarmac in DC about to begin leg 3 of 4 to Cairo.
The low tech entertainment system on my bike (computer and the tight connection with my surroundings) is infinitely more reliable than United’s volume control for the headset (full-blast only!) on the last flight, and on this one, a video screen more faded than a five year old Fry’s receipt.
8 hours from London, 16 hours to Cairo. So near, yet so far. No, only seems far right now. Thank goodness my daughter is holding things down back home at the shop, with help from the rest of the crew. Nice not having to worry about things back home. Thanks Becky! And Burt and Don and Roger and Patrick and Joey and Danny and Andrew and Greg and Manny and Charlie and I sure hope I didn’t leave anyone out!
Ok, I left out Kevin, but he’s been away for 9 weeks but he will be back I’n action, helping customers, this Saturday. –Mike–
Yesterday was one of those special days where it felt like, to go faster, all you had to do was twist a throttle. One of those days where, leaning into a corner, you just added a bit more gas to snap yourself upright as you came out of it. Sadly, I don’t get too many of those days anymore, but when I do, they’re memorable.
It wasn’t a long ride; up Old LaHonda, down to West Alpine and back, and I was telling myself I wasn’t going to push it on that first climb, but then you look at your computer as you come across the various timing points and realize that you’re moving faster than you thought and, well… you can’t let it go to waste, can you?
I was on my own yesterday, just dogs chasing from behind and rabbits to catch ahead. Quite a few rabbits in fact, including a guy that I caught up to on West Alpine and made the mistake of passing at the start of the climb. That lasted for… a minute? But I kept him I’n sight and no doubt he motivated me to go faster than I would have otherwise.
Now, withdrawal begins. Two weeks off the bike as I head to Egypt. More on that soon. Plane is leaving!
Sometimes we try to be “thankful” for something at Thanksgiving out of rote. It’s just something we’re supposed to do, and we search for the usual, the mean on the table, those who prepared it, the roof over our heads, whatever. I don’t want to trivialize Thanksgiving too much, but sometimes it’s more of a Hallmark Holiday than it should be.
Kevin riding through Woodside on Mountain Home Road
But not today. Because today, Kevin got out on his first bike ride. After I did the morning 58 miles with Claude, Kevin suited up and we did a 24 mile version of the extended “loop” through Woodside & Portola Valley. First time for Kevin on a bike in, what, 9 weeks or so? And just 4 days after having his kidney stent removed, and 2 days after getting off the all-too-powerful pain meds. He did impressively well! We didn’t push it hard, but he was riding at a near-normal pace, complaining only about a bit of pain when he breathed, partly due to the cold (although it wasn’t that cold this afternoon, around 51 degrees or so) and partly due to getting over quite a bit of congestion caused by his meds (narcotics depress respiratory activity, which can cause the lungs to congest, as his certainly did).
So Saturday you may see him working again at the shop, and Monday he’ll be back at school again (which, just like his cycling, will be after a 9-week absence). This is something we are truly thankful for.
There were multiple factors conspiring to keep ride attendance low this morning-
And it it was just me & Claude, doing the traditional Old LaHonda/Pescadero/Tunitas Creek run. We did see a small number of cyclists out on Canada as we started out, most bundled pretty heavily but more than once this morning we saw people with exposed legs and wondered what were they thinking?
From the start in Woodside to the outskirts of Pescadero, temps stayed between 32 & 37 degrees for the most part, with brief forays into the very-low 40s. Thank goodness we live in an area where we don’t get ice when it’s cold! There were only a few times where I heard or felt that crunchiness you get when the road is frosted, and no slipping. Climbing Old LaHonda, Claude remarked that we were likely the only people climbing the hill this early; the group we came across at the top proved this quite wrong.
One area I was mistaken was the ability to buy food in Pescadero & San Gregorio! Every previous TurkeyDay ride, one of the two stores/bakeries in Pescadero was open, and the San Gregorio General Store has always been open. Not today though; stores in both towns were hosting private town functions. My initial instinct in Pescadero was to hit up the gas station’s market but I figured I was fine for a while, and San Gregorio wasn’t that far away. Trust those initial instincts! Thankfully, the Bike Hut on Tunitas Creek had some munchies available (yogurt-covered pretzels, $2/bag) that kept me going.
Did I mention how incredibly-clear it was this morning? You could look out towards to ocean and see Hawaii! Almost. There was something out there, an island, a non-moving ship, something that was in the same place when I first saw it, off Stage Road, as when I last saw it approaching Tunitas Creek. It was too far south to be the Farallon Islands, but it was… something.
Some things about this ride will never be the same; passing the Flamingo House sans Flamingos (5 or 6 miles before Pescadero), and the removal of the iron skeletons holding machine guns a few miles after Pescadero, on Stage Road. But some things never change, like the steepness of the middle section of Tunitas Creek, or the fun of sharing your favorite rides with others.
Yesterday morning Kevin finally got his kidney stent removed, all 16″ or so of it. It’s one of those procedures that could best be described as indiscreet. You’re on a table, your feet in stirrups, and they’re inserting this thingee with a micro camera and hook up through your UPB (Used Beer Port) looking for the end of this plastic tube which, once they find it, latch onto and pull out. Oh, and you’re watching the whole thing on a video screen. And then, when they pull it out, they ask you if you’d like to keep it. I don’t know if the Dr. was joking or not, but he seemed quite proud of it when he was holding it up in the air. No thanks, but why, with all the weird stuff in document with photos, didn’t I take a picture of it?
Kevin’s gradually feeling better. There’s some irritation from the removal process (any guy should be cringing thinking about this; I’m sure there some equivalent for women but it most certainly falls under the TMI catetory), but he’s already down to half his usual pain meds, and sounding a bit better each time I talk to him. What we’re praying for is that this actually fixed things; the true nightmare scenario would be to have gone through these past 6 weeks of extreme pain and find out there was no point because it was something else. We’re confident this was it. To feel otherwise would create a personal hell that even Dante could not imagine.
The weather forecast for this morning featured semi-epic condition; cold, rain & wind. So I dutifully got out all the nasty-weather riding gear last night, mounted an extra flashing light, and in a strange way that most won’t understand, was looking forward to a ride in the elements with a couple of the “usual suspects” who aren’t typically scared off.
Wrong on all counts!
First, the weather. It wasn’t that cold, it wasn’t that windy, and I don’t believe there was a drop of rain until the very end of the ride. A far cry from the 100% precipitation forecast on weather.com for 8am last night! And second, no sign of Kevin (pilot Kevin), or Chris, or Mike. Just Ludo (who is potentially as much an all-conditions rider as myself, which doesn’t speak well for his ability to reason) and Karen. Karen, who humored us for a short while, flying up the hill, but eventually, on West Side Old LaHonda, decided that she needed to get to work sometime today. Oh, did I mention that I was slug-slow? Ludo asked if I was having trouble with my lungs or legs, but I’m thinking it was a team effort, no part of my body really enthused about going fast on a bike this morning. That’s pretty rare; usually I work into the ride and get stronger as I go. This morning, I felt better as I rode, but better is not always faster. Still, it was good to be out there, and good to remind myself how much nicer it will be on Thanksgiving morning on my “nice” bike (the current-model 6-Series Trek Madone) with its optimized-for-dry-conditions (meaning, fast) tires and Speedplay pedals instead of SPDs and ultra-light wheels and a feeling that it just wants to go. My rain bike is great for… rain. But it doesn’t have that zippy feeling to it. Kind of like a runner training with weights I guess.
For Thanksgiving, we traiditionally do a much longer ride than the usual Tuesday/Thursday romp, typically a loop out to the coast and back up Tunitas. Something to make room ahead of time for all the food we’ll be eating later. In the past, we’ve started at 8am instead of 7:45, so if you arrive at 7:45 and don’t see anyone there, give it a bit of time before heading out.
Less than 2 weeks after new No Stopping/Parking signs were unveiled on Woodside Road (Hwy 84) west of the Canada Road intersection in Woodside, local merchants petitioned the town to allow lunchtime parking in the bike/shoulder lanes west of the Canada Corners plaza and Robert’s grocery. On November 16, the Town Council considered a draft resolution to request Caltrans to provide an exception to the No Stopping/Parking zone from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., seven days a week.
Isn’t it wonderful when a town will tell you, hey, go play in your own backyard, why are you riding in our town? While at the same time they have no problems creating congestion in ours?
If Woodside has a parking problem, they should require larger parking allocations for each business, and, heaven forbid, more asphalt. Like other cities in the area. Better yet, look at cycling as a solution rather than a problem and encourage residents to have their kids ride to school and the adults commute by bike to Roberts for their shopping.
Woodside isn’t putting in Ikeas or In&Outs or RadioShacks or CVS Pharmacies for their residents… the same residents complaining about cyclists invading their town have no problem making sure the place for those businesses in elsewhere, and driving on “our” roads and parking in “our” parking lots.
Woodside isn’t an island to itself. Nor is the world around it. Woodside benefits because they can use the infrastructure of local, more-congested communities for their needs, and we benefit from having a place like Woodside that’s remained an ideal place to ride because of that. It is not unreasonable to expect Woodside to bend a bit for cyclists to help keep that equation in balance. –Mike–
The day started looking not-so-great; wet, cold, and there were a number of things I needed to get done before taking off for 10 days a week from now. I was even thinking that I could rationalize not riding today after having done a ride in thoroughly-drenching rain during the latter part of yesterday’s memorial ride for Lauren Ward. But duty calls. We’d recently gotten in a new and intriguing product, Bontrager Race XL “All Weather” tires. They’d first been shown at a trade show last August, and Bontrager’s tire guy, Al Clark, was telling me how this was the first bike tire scientifically designed to reduce slippage on tar stripes and road paint. I’m thinking, yeah, right, and besides, August is far enough from our rain season that wet roads are part of a different reality.
The new Bontrager RXL "All Weather" tire that really does offer enhanced traction on slippery surfaces!
Flash-forward to these past two weeks and our re-introduction to rain. I’d set up our point-of-sale system to auto-order the tires when they became available and voila, just as the rain hits, there they are! Of course, the tires are at the shop, my bike’s at home, and my bikes in general just don’t get the love (maintenance) they should. The solution was simple; ride my bike down to the shop, get the new tires on (as well as a few other long-neglected tasks, like flushing the chain with enough Rock N Roll lub to clean it), and take it for a ride.
And where do you go when you’re looking for a place to slip on tar stripes? Where does everybodyslip on tar stripes? C’mon, I’m tossing out an easy one! That last 100 yards or so of Old LaHonda! Who hasn’t slipped on that, especially when wet? And today, it would have been difficult finding a dry spot on Old LaHonda. So I switched out the tires and headed for Skyline. It wasn’t an easy ride; I just couldn’t really get into the groove for quite a while, and as the sun was now out for a bit I was all too aware of being on a bike with wider (slower) tires, fenders, carrying more water & Cytomax than I needed… let’s just say that, when it’s not actually raining, being on your rain bike just isn’t all that much fun. And it’s odd thinking about the fact that you’re climbing 1250 feet or so just so you can try out a small section of road at the very top!
Fortunately, the sun started to hide again and the whole of Old LaHonda was quite wet and full of leaves & pine needles, making me feel better about my mission as I struggled up the hill. It was an odd ride, since I was deliberating trying to seek out anything that looked like it might be slippery.
The verdict? These new tires work! The rear wheel simply did not slip. Not on the leaves, not even on that last nasty pitch where your rear wheel alwaysslips. They’re keepers. The only downside is that they don’t roll as nicely as the Conti Gatorskins or GP4 Seasons, my prior winter tires of choice, but they sure hold the road a lot better, and they also seem to ride more smoothly.
The new wet-weather tread design is offered in a variety of price ranges, and now that I’ve verified they actually work, we’ll be bringing them in. It looks like they’ve got price points of $20, $40 & $55 (the version reviewed here, the RXL, is the $55 option). The only downside I can see is a bit higher rolling resistance, but for a winter tire, that’s not so bad. So far, I’m impressed. I’ve only got a couple left right now, but will have many more by the end of the week. No risk trying them either, as Bontrager now offers a complete 30 day guarantee that you’ll like them. Such a deal. 
Me riding on a Saturday is as unusual as someone getting me out of the shop for lunch. One of those things that just doesn’t happen. One of those things that, when it does happen, is an indication that the universe is a bit out of place.
Lauren Ward's memorial ride, for which the skies miraculously cleared at the start, but cold rain returned before reaching the spot where she was hit.
The universe is out of place. But by a lot more than just a bit. Today’s ride was a memorial for Lauren Ward, the cyclist who was killed 10 or so days ago at the Alpine Road/280 intersection. Mother of two high school kids, wife of Bob Ward, longtime cyclist, racer and customer of Chain Reaction. Good people. How could this have happened to them. Why them.
Why anybody? We still don’t know what happened, we still don’t know if it’s relevant that the driver of the truck had previously been involved with one other accident resulting in the death of a cyclist, we don’t know if it’s just bad luck that the truck drive had also been involved in a head-on in which a woman whose car had drifted into his path was also killed. A horrible thought that comes to mind is whether the odds favor any truck driver with enough miles under his or her belt being involved in such tragedy. I hope not.
What we do know is that there’s not much extra room in that intersection when you’ve got motorists in the right lane getting onto the freeway, a cyclist in-between and more cars to the left. Motorists are in the mode of thinking about the freeway they’re getting onto as their highest priority. That needs to stop. Motorists need to pay more attention to the cyclists they encounter, and that’s why we need a 3-foot passing law. Not just because we need more room, but because we need motorists to be seeing cyclists well ahead of them and be thinking about how they’re going to safely deal with them. Requiring 3 feet to pass a cyclist will almost always mean moving over in the lane, and while cars might not be too concerned with being injured from a collision with a bicycle, they’re certainly going to be slowing down and become more cautious when they have to deal with oncoming cars.
That’s exactly what I saw happen in France, where they have a 5 foot (1.5 meter) passing law! In fact, you could watch oncoming traffic move to their right as you approached, allowing the car passing you to have more room.
One of the biggest arguments against a 3-foot passing law comes from law enforcement and auto-associations (CSAA being one) claiming that there’s no way to measure 3 feet between moving vehicles, and thus no way to enforce it. And if law enforcement people can’t do it, how can you expect the average motorist to? Well guess what? That ambiguity is the reason a 3-foot law is going to make it safer for cyclists, because FUD (Fear, uncertainty & doubt) will likely make the motorists more aware of and cautious around cyclists that would otherwise be the case. It’s not going to be the 3 feet that matter, it’s going to be a feeling that cyclists are supposed to be traveling with an invisible protective zone around them. What’s not to like about that?
You can see more info about efforts to pass a 3-foot law in California here, and I’ve sent in the suggestion to California State Senator Joe Simitian. When you call or write your elected representatives, it does make a difference. Please consider supporting this effort and help make it safer for all of us out on the roadways.