Right now, I’m thinking I’m leaving for France just in time. The Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride is definitely picking up speed, in particular the Tuesday edition, which today saw a door-to-door average speed of 16.7mph. Typical winter average would be around 14.5, and anything 16.0+ qualifies as a hard ride. If we were going for fastest-possible time, I’m sure we could hit 17 without much trouble, but this ride has always had at least some social aspect to it, and as long as I’m part of it, always will.

We were missing both Kevins today; Kevin the pilot is back in Maine, and Kevin my son had a rough night, with something from the prior day’s wedding apparently not agreeing with his stomach. I could have gotten him up anyway; after all, I only got maybe 4 hours sleep myself, but decided to be nice for some reason.

Roll call? Yeah, good luck with that; anything over 4 or 5 and I’m likely to forget a couple. But I’ll try. Jim, Don (up from Southern California and a customer of ours from the way, way, wayback days), Chris, Eric, Karl, Karen, Marcus & Andrew from our Redwood City store. Not content to simply ride faster up the hill than his boss, he also carried a backpack with him. Sigh.

Fast but not deathly pace up the hill, which I’m thinking is kind of interesting as I type this, because this same pace just a month ago would have been unthinkable. 26:54, my second consecutive sub-27 time, so I’m reasonably pleased with my progress so far. Not that everybody else isn’t riding faster too, but at least I’m maintaining my relative position despite qualifying for the 55+ menu at CoCos Monday night afte coming back from my Mom’s wedding. Interesting stories I could get to on that another time (about two high school sweet hearts getting back together when 80 years old, meeting the other side of the family for the first time at the wedding, and thinking how I’d react if her new husband expected me to refer to him as “Dad”, something I doubt would be the case but be assured I’ve got a waiting response if he did!).

Chris… 37 I think… and complaining about getting old. He simply has no idea. 37. Do I even remember what it was like, being 37? Actually, I do. I really wasn’t in the best shape at that point, probably weighed more than I do today. It wasn’t until my early-40s that I started to get serious about staying in shape, and my goal was to be in better shape at 50 than I was at 35, a goal I believe I achieved. Would I do things differently if I was 37 again? Probably. But looking at Chris, the only real evidence of age is a bit of gray. Me, I’d take more gray in exchange for better lungs & muscles any day!

Getting back to the ride, perhaps the best part about it was getting back before the rain hit. Yes, rain. June 28th and it’s raining in Northern California???!!! From about noon-6pm, yes, it rained. But from 7:32am-9:27 (my door-to-door time for the ride) it was reasonably-warm and completely-dry. Hopefully France will be more of the same.