The plan, because there’s always a plan, was to do something really different. A mountain bike ride. But that didn’t work out when Kevin woke up feeling worse, not better, as his cold took hold and sapped his strength. Normally I’d then go out on my own, typically a run to the coast (I certainly wouldn’t do a mountain bike ride on my own, because there’d be nobody to get a laugh from watching me), but that didn’t work out either when the visit to my 102-year-old grandmother revealed that she’s getting really close to the end, so I spent my daughter (Becky) and I spent a few hours with her today.

But y’know, just because you can’t get in something significant doens’t mean you can’t get in a ride, and even a 1hr 20min 25 mile spin is a whole lot better than no ride at all! So that’s what I did, heading out on the ‘loop (Woodside/Portola Valley/Arastradero/Junipero Serra/Sand Hill/Woodside), chasing the sun and keeping my heart rate much, something not so easy for me to do on a ride without big climbs, but today, I was going to make every mile count, which meant making every mile hurt.

And this is what I do for fun? 🙂

Regarding Grandma, we’re pretty comfortable with things. There are some uncomfortable items to go over, the balancing of quality of life and what measures to prolong it, with cost that thing that you can’t hide from and making you feel a bit conflicted. There are interesting things you learn about medicare and how many ambulance trips they’ll cover (apparently one every 30 days) and hospice care and at some point you’ll deal with increasing pain and have to make a decision as to whether it’s time to switch to morphine, which will slow down respiration and gently speed up the process. Been through this before, with my father, 24 years ago. I can deal with my Grandmother fairly well, but re-living some of what I went through with my father is not fun at all. But overall I’m good.