I’d been watching the weather forecast carefully, noting when it was supposed to rain. 10am. By 9:40am, I should be home, so all should go well. Still, you wonder if the timing’s going to be right or if you’ll instead wake up to the sound of rain dripping from clogged gutters. But thankfully, the weather forecast was correct. Sort of. The reality is that it didn’t even drizzle until noon or so.

Kevin K, Eric, Karen, Mark P, George, JR… think that’s everybody. Actually we didn’t pick up Mark P until the top of Kings. I’ve been fighting a cold so my plan was to try and get up Kings in under 30 minutes, which wasn’t too much of an issue. I started up with George, Eric & Kevin K, hanging on until the half-way hairpin. I drifted off the back, eventually catching up to Eric who had come unglued a bit further up. 28:24 to the top, a fair amount faster than I was guessing I might be doing today.

The Skyline sprint couldn’t have been set up much better; George, Kevin K & Karen got away on the descent, with me right behind. On the final descent into the sprint I was able to sit up and relax a bit, and once at the bottom it was just a matter of waiting for someone to go and then getting on the wheel of the first person following that wheel. A pretty-simple slingshot maneuver and you go flying past everyone. The only thing unexpected was seeing Karen have the same idea, but she hasn’t had as much practice fine-tuning the Skyline sprint as I have.

Missing in action was the other Kevin, who was going to be heading down to Santa Clara Kaiser for more work on his kidney. Looks like he should just rip that line out of his side and ride instead; today’s surgical procedure was unable to clear the blocked ureter from his kidney. Even lasers couldn’t cut through. Yes, Kevin is tougher than a laser! In a week or two he’ll have a more-invasive procedure done, hopefully a procedure that will finally end his 21 years of sporadic kidney issues.