Last Sunday Kevin and I were supposed to to an easy hill ride, with a few miles. Ride up Old LaHonda then Skyline all the way to 9, down into Los Altos for the usual stop at Peet’s, and back via the foolhills. Didn’t work out as planned; Kevin’s knee was protesting pretty nastily so we cut things short, descending Page Mill and looping back through Portola Valley & Woodside. Under 40 miles just doesn’t cut it for a Sunday ride! But we couldn’t push our luck with his knee. He saw a doctor for it on Tuesday, and a physical therapist, at 7:30am, this morning. 7:30am??? Things are a bit tougher to figure out because he can’t have an MRI done, due to the computer installed on top of his brain. Big magnets aren’t a good idea.

Kevin did ride with me Tuesday morning, but we stayed out of the hills. Feels very very strange doing something other than heading up to Skyline on a Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride. We rode the Loop, including Arastradero, ending up just a mile or so short of the normal distance, but a whole lot less climbing.

Then today, while Kevin was at his PT appointment, it was just me out there. Surprisingly few other cyclists on the road; saw nobody on Skyline or West Old LaHonda. Nice morning as you can see from the video; the fog was further out towards the coast, and dry roads all the way!

Hopefully, with my mom’s brain surgery in the past (having a large meningioma removed, which sounds bad by itself, and add that it’s being removed from a 93 year old…). She’s recovering nicely, and hopefully we can get things back on track at the bike shop now. It just kinda feels like everything began going downwhill after Kevin and I got back from France. Time to reverse that. Time for Kevin to have fewer seizures too; it was 4 today and maybe 7 yesterday.

But this morning, even though riding alone, there was some feeling of normalcy. Heck, at the end of the ride I was even thinking, 9:29am, that’s just 7 minutes off a good time from the fast days way back when. Maybe way way way back when. It really does help having working power meters on the bike, no question.

At least Karen’s cancer seems stable and our November 17th-December 1st vacation is on! Flying into Amsterdam so she can see Anne Frank’s house, then train to Paris for a day, then board a cruise ship where the highlight will be a goat cheese farm and the Rock of Gibraltar. Our 4th cruise, not in as fancy a room as the last two but still pretty darned nice, still an Aft cabin so we can go to sleep with the sound of the ship’s wake through open doors. Looking forward to that! And also looking forward to the TdF route presentation in October. There are some things down the road to work towards. Just have to keep that in mind when things seem a tad bit crazy.