All posts by Mike

Some days you think about turning around, but you don’t, and it does get better

It gets better unless you don’t have any brakes descending 84, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Not such a bad morning to ride. Wet roads but it wasn’t raining, and the temps weren’t too bad (lowest was 42 I think?). I’d gotten a text message from older Kevin saying he was heading up the hill “early” and couldn’t quite figure out what that meant. But one thing the other Kevin and I did know… we weren’t feeling like we’d be in chase mode trying to catch someone who started out ahead of us!

Yes, it was a really slow pace up the hill. Actually slower at the start I think; I finally found my legs maybe 2/3rds of the way up Kings. But not before I considered turning back a couple times. Just did not seem like climbing Kings was what I wanted to do. Which, of course, is exactly why I needed to do it. Just past that 2/3rds point, older Kevin was riding back down Kings towards us. Thankfully, he wasn’t feeling any faster!

OK, the brakes. On younger Kevin’s bike, he hadn’t bothered to check the adjustment on his disc brakes, and by the final descent, he was squeezing both levers all the way to the bar and just barely able to keep his speed down. But just barely was good enough to get to the bottom where we stopped and I readjusted them to compensate for wear, and all was good.

Where was everybody Sunday?

Debris on West Old LaHonda during Sunday’s storm
It was one of those mornings where it’s wet, but not really raining, so what do you do? You wait for it to rain again, of course!

Just me; Kevin was off with his girlfriend, the other Kevin (the ancient guy who’s about a year older than me) decided not to spend time in the muck. Not much of a ride; just a slow roll up Old LaHonda, with a stop in the middle when I came across one of our customers, Kathy F, out walking her two dogs. Then another brief stop near the top, when a guy with a tree on top of his car was asking me if the power line was still down, so he could drive down to his house. Apparently the power line wasn’t actually on the road but up on the air, and no, I never noticed. Far as I know, it wasn’t there. Hope I wasn’t THAT delerious, riding so slowly!

The storm never really hit. Just some light rain and a bit of wind. A good test of the rain bike though, whose brakes weren’t working until I spent some time on them at the shop the other day. Brakes. Who needs ’em?