All posts by Mike

Kings open again; West Old LaHonda almost!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride
As you can see, not much work left on West Old LaHonda!

We almost got back to normal today! Almost, but still a ways to go. Kings is open again weekdays; all the brush-clearing is over with, weeks ahead of schedule. Not a very fast ride up the hill though as Kevin was having some pretty severe vision issues due to his epilepsy meds, at one point causing us to have to stop for about 5 minutes.

The good news is that we dropped in on the West Old LaHonda roadwork from the Skyline side, and she’s almost ready for us! I sent an email to the San Mateo County Public Works department and got this reply-

Mike,
Yes, there is an update on the reopening of West Old La Honda Road.

We will be performing our construction project site walkthrough tomorrow (Wednesday).  There are still some delineators that the contractor still needs to install along the edge of the road/retaining wall which will probably be installed this week or next by the contractor.  In the next coming days or week, the hard barricades/concrete barriers/gates will be removed in the interim and replaced with A frame barricades that have a gap which will allow for local traffic vehicle access/bicycles and include signs on the barricades that will say local traffic only.

After the delineators are installed the road will be opened to all.

Thanks for checking in.

Regards,
Gil Tourel
Principal Civil Engineer
San Mateo County Public Works Dept.

That’s really good news. Not only will our road be back shortly, but they’re specifically accommodating the needs of cyclists, along with local access. Note that the signage will still state “local traffic only” but we qualify. Good news!

Almost there…

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Sunday’s ride didn’t quite go as planned. Again. Kevin was pushing really hard for a good time up Old LaHonda, after a good customer told him he’d just beaten his (Kevin’s) best time by a few seconds. And then, literally within sight of the top, he had a significant seizure. Of course he was hoping it would go away on its own, as they sometimes do, since he didn’t want to wreck his time. And of course it didn’t, so of course he fell over, hurting his knee a bit. So, no great time up OLH, and a banged up knee, so no ride to the coast.

But we did go through the first barrier to inspect the Old LaHonda Ross work, and it’s almost done! Can’t be more than a few days work left. Can’t wait. We were going to cross the barrier at the other side but came across a group of women and dogs, of which the dogs were much friendlier. The dogs would have been happy for us to come over to their side, while the women, or at least one of them, was reminding us that “their” road was closed. Sigh.

Headed back and then took Skyline all the way north to 92, then down to Canada. Traffic was backed up, bumper to bumper, all the way to 280. Must have taken people 3 hours to make the drive to Half Moon Bay!

We had a better plan, stopping for coffee at Emerald Hills Coffee, before the final mile or two home.