It’s Thursday, which means heading up through the park. Used to be the case that the lower gate would be open half the time, closed the rest, but lately, it’s nearly always been closed. Today, as usual, closed. The upper gate, on the other hand, has only been closed once or twice previously. As you can see in the right-side photo above, the park guy had just managed to get it opened up as we arrived. Good timing, since, at my speed, I would have been heading uphill so fast that I might not have even noticed it wasn’t opened, and likely vaporized both the gate and myself from the force of impact. Not.

Young Kevin, Mark P, Marcus, Eric, Todd, JR & Jan this morning, a cooler morning than we’ve seen in some time, cool enough that long-fingered gloves were once again required. Windy too! Wasn’t it just a week or so ago that we were in the upper 80s? Definitely looking forward to the return of warmer weather. But as slow as I felt, we still got back by 9:22, right on schedule.