Hard to believe that the kids start school tomorrow, August 17th, barely halfway-through what used to be a full month of summer. How did this happen? Wasn’t Labor Day traditionally the last day of summer? Are kids actually smarter now than when they had a real “summer” vacation?

I’m reminded of this because Kevin and Becky start Canada College tomorrow. No big thing for Becky; she’s a “veteran” student, but for Kevin, it’s a bit scary moving from high school, where all the decisions are made for you, to college, where personal responsibility rears its ugly head.

But of course this is Tuesday so of course we rode. Just barely made it out to the start in time as we discovered Kevin had a flat tire before leaving, but we made it, with Eric there to make sure that we left precisely at the GPS-accurate time of 7:45am. Quite a few out today, can’t name them all, but we did have Eric & Jon & Todd & Marcus & George & Karl and several others. Kevin was under strict orders to keep his heart rate below 182, hoping that would prevent a seizure, but all it really did was ensure that the other guys were able to ride on ahead. I say that’s all it did because he still had a seizure about 4/5th of the way up the hill.

It wasn’t the seizure that caused us to shorten the ride a bit though. He’s apparently developed another kidney stone, thankfully not as painful as the last one, but enough that he’s got quite a pain at times and wanted to head back down 84. Since we had a bit of extra time, we made a detour off Canada to see his new school (Canada Jr College) and figure out how he’ll deal with a bike there… which doesn’t seem too easy. It’s likely he’ll probably walk half a mile and take the SamTrans bus. Strange that he’d think about doing that instead of riding, and yes, I did suggest that any worthwhile teacher would let him bring his bike into the classroom! That’s what I did back in the day (yes, I served my two years there way-back-when).

Heading back home over Jefferson I heard something loud near the road, looked over and saw the strangest monstrosity. Large Turkey Vultures look like any other big bird in flight, but up close on the ground, they look like… well, a turkey! Hard to believe they can even fly, and not sure why this was didn’t.