The day started earlier than most Sundays; I actually set the alarm for the regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride time of 6:55am, even though I wasn’t planning on getting out until 8:30 or so. Why? Got to catch the end of the Tour of Flanders! Which would have been more interesting if it didn’t take 20 minutes to finally find a working live feed for the video, causing me to miss the part where Fabian Cancallara ditches Sagan on the last climb and then solos in the final 12k for the win. Fortunately, it’s available on youtube here.

Shortly after 8:30 Kevin and I head slowly, and I mean really slowly, out to the coast. He was not a happy camper, and didn’t get feeling better until he got mad enough about the pain that he totally ditched me on the Stage Road climb from San Gregorio to Tunitas. What a way to wreck a beautiful morning! And it really was beautiful, with the broken clouds and super-clean air. I thought he’d stop at the top, but no, he was continuing on, making time on me while I had to change out the battery in my video camera before continuing to Tunitas.

I pushed pretty hard on the lower, flatter part of Tunitas, knowing that was a place I could make up quite a bit of time on him, and eventually caught up just as the main climb started… and right as I found my rear tire going flat. Darn, two flats in a few weeks, this is killing my typical 3,000 miles between flats average! It’s also costing me a lot of money; $5 for the bill I had to reinforce the front tire with last week, but thankfully I had a $1 bill this time.

We did climb Tunitas fairly fast after that, and of course I lost contact with him until it started flattening out again. If he ever learns how to push on the flatter parts, I’m in real trouble! But since I was never any good at that when I was his age, I might have a bit of time.

Now if we can just get rid of those danged kidney stones!