When will the gray drizzle end? This morning was another “might as well have been raining” up on Skyline morning. Not because anything was coming down from the sky, but because it had apparently already done so. Seems like it’s been such a long time since I woke up and got to see the sun!

This morning it was Eric, George, Kevin, Kevin and JR riding up Kings with me, although George turned back a bit early. Kings wasn’t so bad, and these days, getting a 27-something, for me, is OK. But younger Kevin was way off the back on the (wet) descent into Sky Londa and would have no part of an obviously-wet West Old LaHonda loop, so the two of us split off from the rest and headed straight back down into Woodside, where we looped around a bit and then did something we haven’t done in years, and remembered why. Summit Springs Road off Tripp Road. Yikes. I’d forgotten just how steep a climb could be! 7 nasty minutes of pain, and not really the good type of pain, the type of pain where you feel like you could tear off a chunk of it and say yeah, that was good, give me some more! No, this was the type of pain that makes you wonder what the point it. Kevin fared much better, at least until his VNS (the gadget that zaps his vagus nerve at a regular interval, trying to keep seizures at bay) went off, which wrecks his breathing for about 30 seconds. Coming at the steepest part of the climb, up near the top, it just about toppled him off the bike. He couldn’t continue up so he circled back down a bit until his breathing came back and he could resume his climb to the top. Even after all that, he still got there well ahead of me.

After heading back down (the only option you have; Summit Springs literally dead-ends into the side of the mountain) we amazingly bumped into JR & the other Kevin, returning from the “real” route. They confirmed what Kevin feared; that the descent down the west side of 84 to West Old LaHonda was not pleasant. Less-pleasant than climbing Summit Springs? Hmm…