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So kind of skipped over Sundays ride didn’t we? The plan had been West Alpine, but got a text 3/4 of the way up Old LaHonda that my wife was heading to the ER because her stomach pains from the past few days weren’t going away. Not much I could do, since you can’t go to the hospital with anyone anymore (Covid-19 restrictions), but Kevin and I decided to stay on “our” side of the hill, so she could get in touch with us if we needed to. Basically we rode the normal Tuesday/Thursday ride in reverse, which, curiously, is about 2 miles shorter when you substitute climbing Old LaHonda for descending 84. Weird thing, that.
After a bunch of tests it’s determined she’s got appendicitis and it’s gotta come out. Which, these days, is basically outpatient surgery. Again, with Covid-19, a lot of things have changed and pretty sure you’d be in & out same day for anything less complicated than a heart transplant. I picked her up around midnight and she’s been resting uncomfortably since. I’d show a photo of the three small incisions they made but that’s not the sort of thing I do. OK, actually it is, if it were me, but she might have different ideas about privacy. Well, not might, she does. 🙂
OK, now to this morning’s ride. This was the first ride in a couple months where I didn’t feel like I was riding with all cylinders firing, and Kevin, Kevin and Jeff rode off ahead pretty quickly. The funny thing is, I actually slept OK last night and felt ok getting up. Maybe it was because I wasn’t getting feedback on my power, because I forget to replace my power meter battery? Thankfully, I felt better as the ride went on, eventually dropping younger Kevin without realizing it, on the West Old LaHonda climb. Actually I did realize he wasn’t there, but didn’t know he was having knee issues and would have appreciated the company. He never seems to think like that when I’m in difficulty though!
Making the ride more interesting than usual was the idiot in the F150 that was flying down 84 behind us and then pulling ahead at the bottom before coming to a stop in the middle of the road to yell at us. Kevin was talking with the guy while I was taking pictures. Kevin was keeping his cool, surprisingly so, while this guy was going off about how awful cyclists were. It was only in hindsight that I realized Kevin (or I) should have asked the guy, “Are you threatening us?” Because there really wasn’t any good reason to call the CHP on him as he didn’t actually try to run us off the road; it would have been his own sorry butt that would have been in danger from stopping in the middle of a highway, not ours.
The irony is that Kevin and I are always watching out for cars and trying to give as much room as possible and, if someone’s really flying downhill, we’ll find a place to pull over and let the idiot go by. In this case, we were nearly at the bottom of the hill and going fast enough it didn’t seem like we’d be holding anyone up. I’m guessing, if we weren’t there, he might have shaved 4 seconds off his drive.