I wouldn’t say the day started great; last night I didn’t get to sleep until maybe 3am; one of those nights where you get anxious about things, including the need to get to sleep so you can get up early and ride, and you just have to kind of lie there until you finally konk out. You know the drill; you start to rationalize that there really isn’t that much difference between just lying there with your eyes closed and actually sleeping. But doesn’t matter; I’ve been through this before, and getting up when you’re supposed to and riding somehow seems to reset your clock and you end up feeling a whole lot better than you should.

It was Thursday so up through the Park; nothing fast today (thankfully) but I did get ahead of some, even ahead of Kevin for about 3/4 of the climb until he started picking up speed and past me within sight of the top.

The top. Oh my was it beautiful up on Skyline! The fog was just above the road, up in the trees, and the sun was coming through at exactly the right angle to create rays of light for almost the entire distance along Skyline. And no pictures to show it, because the video camera on my bike (my not-so-faithful Hero2) decided it didn’t want to record. All I’ve got is an Instagram photo I took at the top of Kings, and that was primarily to show that I wasn’t the last one reaching the top.