Finally, a long-range (and short-range!) forecast with no rain!!! A bit of mist up on Skyline, but that’s not so bad. This morning Kevin (my son, not the pilot) and I headed up a few minutes early, along with Millo. This was Kevin’s first real post-high-school ride so we made it a mini-event with breakfast at Alice’s Restaurant, but we’ll get to that a bit later. First things first, it was time to get that 30-minute-King’s Mountain-monkey off Kevin’s back. Or so we thought. I hit my timer at the right place, but Kevin forgot to hit his. No problem, right? Except that my Garmin ‘705 computer has been having a habit of dying at random intervals lately, and on the way up the hill, it died after about 8 minutes or so! This meant that the only way we’d be able to time the ride would be after the fact, by looking at either his Garmin’s output (and figure out where the starting & stopping points were) or the video I was shooting.

Kevin started out pretty slowly up the hill, slow enough that I had my doubts we’d come anything close to 30 minutes. But, as before, he started speeding up as soon as it got steeper, and by the half-way point, I’m thinking maybe he’s got a chance. We jettisoned Millo at the park entrance (not because he couldn’t keep up, no issue there, but he had to get back early) and continued on, wondering if we were going to get caught, wondering how we were doing. Flying blind, as it were. We get to the top, not knowing how it went, but a bit hopeful because nobody caught us on the way up and we actually had to wait several minutes for the rest to show up (the rest being Marcus, Darryl, Kevin, Karl, Eric & George). Later we were to find out he’d finished at 30:15, respectable, but not yet there.

From there it was the usual quick run to Sky Londa, with Kevin fitting right into the group on the descent, riding in perfect formation while I hung back a bit because A) I was trying to film it and B) I don’t feel as comfortable as Kevin does riding so closely to others at high speeds. Guess Kevin’s training at the track has paid off. We then stopped off at Alice’s and ordered breakfast, letting them know we’d be back in about 20 minutes. The waitress had some concern that our food might be ready before we would be back, but it seemed to work out perfectly, as we arrived back to a table set with 5 of the 6 plates with the final one arriving almost instantly. This is the life! I had the “Agusta” which, while more than I should have eaten, ended up being my only food between 9am and 9pm (two eggs, two sausages & two pancakes, plus a cup of really good coffee).

I’m thinking Kevin won’t need a head start by the middle of summer, maybe even sooner. And I’m thinking we should do the breakfast ride thing more often than once every three years or so!