Would have been nice to ride as many miles as my age on my birthday, but 68 miles just wasn’t in the cards; it’s been ages since I’ve had a long, hard ride. Heck, I didn’t even do my traditional Mt Hamilton New Years Day ride this year. Life has gotten in the way, big time. Most of the change goes back to my wife’s Stage IV cancer diagnosis; from that point on, priorities changed in an absolute way. I’m only just now becoming comfortable with thinking about things in less than absolute terms; until now, I think I’ve used her cancer as an easy-out card for keeping myself in shape.

August 20th since Kevin and I had done a Pescadero/Tunitas ride. That’s just crazy. And even longer than that since we’ve had a really good cookie face test photo.

It wasn’t an elegant ride; Old LaHonda was pretty tough, but it did come with a turkey crossing not far past the halfway point; that was pretty cool. Stopped to film them before continuing on.

Should add that the weather was really nice, a bit cooler than the prior two days, but I was able to use regular gloves for most of the ride, and didn’t even bring the electric-heated ones. Still needed a lightweight base layer, but there were times when we wished we’d left the leg warmers behind. Did cool down a bit at the coast, as we headed north on Stage Road, as well as descending Kings.

Pescadero bakery did not disappoint! Kevin and I always order the club chicken sandwich, which used to be consistently extraordinary but over the past few years has been a bit less reliable, sometimes with pretty chewy chicken. No issue with that today, and the cookie… they’re back to their monstrous size again.

Saw David K on a classic older bike that’s actually worth riding because it’s so radically different in how things work; most older bikes are just old and less functional than newer stuff, but this bike’s gear system was amazing to look at.

Stage Road heading north went better for Kevin than me. Something about being half my age seems to work in favor of doing well on a tougher ride without having recently done a lot of miles. Hate that. But we were both happy to have finished Tunitas in under an hour (56:25), my “fastest” time since last August.

I really was surprised it’s been 7 months since last doing a ride that Kevin and I used to to twice a month with regularity, sometimes more.