All posts by Mike

A different ride- had to check out Higgins Canyon Road

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

A little bit different view of the coast, with the fog hugging the shoreline as if it was a solid barrier.
Today was, finally, a day I felt normal. A good thing, that, since things have been decidedly not normal for a while, and even yesterday afternoon and evening I had that feeling, physically, that something wasn’t quite right. Kind of a combination of apprehension and wondering, if you feel a bit out of sorts then, how are you going to be tomorrow morning?

I did oversleep; think I finally woke up close to 9am (yikes!), with Kevin already on his way to our house. He wasn’t happy about things getting off to a late start, although it did allow the fog a chance to clear out so, by the time we got going at 10:40am, it was pretty darned nice out. No leg warmers, no base layer, and for half of the ride I got to wear fingerless gloves.

Old LaHonda was nothing special; by now, we’ve been up it so many times it doesn’t have much appeal, and Kevin’s upset about the light still being there, since it wrecks his Strava time. I’m sure there’s a new Strava segment that ends at the light, but the mailboxes are the only finish line he cares about.

I let him pull all the way out to the coast on 84; I’m not proud and didn’t want to slow us down. Passed the scene of a very recent (probably just a couple of minutes) motorcycle accident not too far past LaHonda, something we used to see a lot more of. I doubt that motorcyclists are driving more safely these days, so probably just fewer of them.

Coffee and food at San Gregorio which seems to have become our new usual thing. They’re improving their pasty offerings, which might have something to do with our more frequent stops there, and there’s something to be said for hot coffee when out on the coast.

Even though I’d told Kevin we were going to be checking out Higgins Canyon Road, I don’t think it registered with him that we’d be adding a few miles to do that! I was really enjoying the moderately-paced “longer” (than many lately) ride, and it was nice to be on roads we hadn’t visited for quite a while.

Higgins Canyon Road? Definitely not possible on a weekday, while work is being done, and on weekends, getting through requires squeezing you and your bike through a small hole cut in the fencing.

Traffic was a bit lighter than expected, given all the warnings about everyone going to the pumpkin farms, although Tunitas did have a lot more traffic than usual (maybe there was an accident on 84?).

Two annoyances descending Kings. First, at the stop sign just below the park entrance, where they have the short one-lane section. We dutifully stopped to let a car that had arrived sooner proceed up the hill… and it was followed by another car and a motorcycle! They just cruised on through, no stop. Second was blowing my rear tube. Hit something really hard, hard enough that I expected to be riding on the rim instantly so I quickly slowed down… but it was actually 20 seconds before the tire was noticeably low and I had to pull over. Tire was ok, just a hole in the tube from where it was pinched by the force of the impact. I was telling Kevin as we were replacing the tube how I had just been thinking about trying a bit lower pressure. Er… no.

This was one of the few rides where I was feeling, for the second half of it, a whole lot better than Kevin. The slightly cooler temps on the coast were causing him some knee pain, so he was soft-pedaling the whole way up Kings. 1 hour, 9 minutes. For me, it was kind of nice going up a climb at a pace I could actually talk, but there were times my legs just wanted to get going.

Finally!!! (My wife has surgery scheduled to remove her lung tumor)

Personal stuff

Seems like it’s taken FOREVER to get things moving on my wife’s recently-diagnosed Stage 4 breast cancer. We had the initial terrible news- that her cancer had returned, now designated Stage 4, meaning it had “escaped” and was no longer curable. You read the statistics about her particular type of Stage 4 breast cancer (triple negative metaplastic) and it’s like… time to get your ducks in a row ‘cuz you’re not likely to be around very long. How scary? Oh, not that bad, just stuff like 10 months average lifespan from time of diagnosis. Not even enough time for the “flash” of your life passing before your eyes.

That’s what motivated us to find the best specialist possible, Dr Telli at Stanford, and created drama when it appeared like we wouldn’t be able to see her, then we found someone who knew someone (thank goodness we take good care of our customers, because it was a customer with the connections!), and Dr Telli’s reading of the tea leaves was very encouraging. The cancer had not spread past this one spot in one lung, and she felt, and our Kaiser doctor concurred, that removing that lump made sense and would buy time. Normally, you don’t bother removing a tumor at Stage 4 because you’ve already got spots all over the body, lighting up the PET scan. But there’s a real chance that getting rid of this tumor would both buy time and we’d learn something about treating the cancer by studying the tumor. Turns out doctors LOVE to talk to tumors. Tumor whisperers, kind of like I am with some bike things. Unless it’s a noisy disc brake.

But geez, getting on the schedule to get it removed has seemed nightmarish. Delays, a strike at Kaiser, and feeling like nobody had a good handle on things. I get it; Kaiser has lots of patients, but my wife is the only one I know who was recently diagnosed Stage 4, told that removing the tumor would be a good idea, and has had to sit on that for a couple of months. Meanwhile thinking that tumor is only growing and up to no good.

Friday, a week from today, she goes in for the surgery. The recovery period isn’t supposed to be too long; it’s a pretty small tumor (at least it WAS, last time it was scanned) and the surgery isn’t terribly invasive. No flying for 30 days afterward, and that was a bit of an issue since we fly to Hong Kong on Dec 7th for a cruise. The far far far bigger issue would have been that any delay coming close to the 30 days prior to our trip would have meant living with that tumor inside her that much longer, knowing there was no way that could be a good thing.

And that’s the other strange thing. They give you these cancer diagnosis and act like you have time to deal with it. I don’t buy that. Logic tells you that something with a mind of its own, multiplying rapidly, up to no good, is eventually going to kill you. The sooner you take action, the better the odds that it won’t. Or at least you’ll be delaying when it does. So to my thinking, acting sooner will probably buy you additional time at the back end. At some point you delay long enough that it’s too late to expect a reasonable outcome. Who knows when that point occurs?

My logical side says, show me a study that demonstrates differences in outcome based on when a serious cancer was diagnosed and how long before treatment began. And now I’ve found evidence to support that here- Every month delayed in cancer treatment can raise risk of death by around 10% | LSHTM. Kind of wish I hadn’t! I can rationalize that, in Karen’s case, the need for immediate treatment was actually questionable as there really isn’t much to treat, and she did immediately undergo medication (an aromatase inhibitor, targeting the less-than-5%-prevalence of estrogen-sensitive cancer cells in her system).

As Picard said, the line must be drawn here, this far, no farther. Whatever needs to get done is going to get done, and if we need to move our travel plans around or cancel them altogether, for the best-possible outcome, then that’s what we’ll do.