All posts by Mike

Winter is coming!

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

Picture tells the story (although too bad the Garmin doesn’t show wind speed too!)
Life is just a tad bit crazy and shows no signs of letting up. What happened to the good old days when you had a chance to breathe now & then and think about going someplace away from home for a different cycling experience? Or for that matter, a vacation with your wife? Each day seems to bring with it new demands added to those you hadn’t finished taken care of yet. Like… Sunday, the heater failed at home. Just happened to fail on the first really cold day of the year. Which makes sense, because the heater had just sat for months doing nothing at all… it could have failed earlier but how would we know, since we didn’t need it? And the day before, the dishwasher stopped filling with water.

Thank goodness my bike is there for me. And tomorrow’s reliable Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride, which will require multi-tasking because there’s a bicycle dealer board of director’s meeting that I have to pay attention to. I tried to figure a way to mount my phone to the handlebar, but there’s too much other stuff on my dashboard; no room. Not a problem for listening, but not much opportunity to cut in and say anything. And if I’m climbing Kings, out of breath, I may have to pull over and stop so they don’t hear me gasping for air.

OK, at least Sunday’s ride was pretty nice. Kevin was feeling stronger as the ride went, and finished saying he had a good time. I’m looking forward to more good times, but doubt there will be a whole lot of them, for me, during the next 6 weeks as we try to get things moved into the new location!

–Mike–

Kevin’s coming back

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride, Uncategorized

Is this tree, which has been steadily dying over the past 30 years we’ve ridden past, a sign of things to come? I’ve got to see if I can find some early pictures.
After Kevin’s kinda disastrous ride Sunday, where he suffered knee pain and a complete lack of power, I wasn’t overly optimistic about how he’d ride this morning. I even wondered if I should suggest he take out his e-bike. But it was an entirely different version of Kevin that showed up this morning.

Two Kevin’s actually, as the now-retired Kevin (pilot) rode with us. At the beginning of the climb I was able to do my interval thing, ride pretty strongly, then wait up a bit, although I noticed I wasn’t waiting up much, not much at all, because Kevin was trying to stay with me. And the times to the first couple of timing points weren’t all that bad. But I was able to keep it up, riding strongly for a bit, then throttling back for the other two to catch up, until… until we came across a guy riding up Kings on a full-suspension mountain bike, not e-bike, and we were not having an easy time closing the gap. Finally did get past him, and… there was Kevin (not pilot) right on my wheel. And for a little bit, on the wide-open clearing section (1.41 miles to go), I was thinking I was going to blow and Kevin ride past. It took me more time than I wished to regroup, settle in, get my rhythm back and push on again.

But Kevin never fell apart; he continued to ride pretty strongly, and had no issues riding across Skyline or West Old LaHonda either. Looks like things are (finally) getting back to normal.