All posts by Mike

Another Sunday Solo

Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Plenty of rides by myself lately; last time I rode with “a” Kevin was a week ago Tuesday, and that was ex-pilot, a very slow slog up Kings, but at least the full ride including West Old LaHonda.

Thursday, on my own, got to admit it didn’t feel much like a day to be on my bike, having to put on leg warmers and base layer, heading up the hill alone through the park. A number of times I actually thought about heading back down to the flats and looping around Portola Valley, but it’s really not that hard to just keep going. Up on Skyline I was thinking maybe skip West Old LaHonda and do the Swett Road/Upper Tunitas loop, but no, you just put one foot in front of the other, and keep on going. Who knows what you’re going to see after all? Keep looking for that Bobcat that occasionally shows up on West Old LaHonda.

Sunday was again on the cool side, so I stayed on the bay side of the hill, trying to find things I haven’t noticed in the prior 50 years of riding the same roads. That gets tough! But there was an oddly-placed Lemonade stand (on Summerhill) and the horse atop Arastradero, in the photo above. Seen that horse many times, but never stopped to take a photo. This time I did, only afterward, seeing the potential of the phone, wishing I’d actually gotten off the bike and walked up to the fence to get a better picture. Maybe next time.

Except that next time I’ll be riding with others, and most aren’t quite so excited about things like horses up on a hillside, or out-of-place Lemonade stands. Oh, right, why was it out-of-place? It was sitting right past the very top of that short steep pitch off El Monte, just as you’re getting ready for that nice little descent (that wasn’t, back in the day, interrupted by two badly-placed stop signs). You’re just not thinking about stopping at that point, and you’re in a little bit of disbelief that that’s where they chose to put a Lemonade stand.

Tomorrow morning, don’t know if I’ll be on my own or not. Kevin (not pilot) is back from Disneyland but his knee is still an issue. Curiously it hurt just as much from walking at Disneyland as it does from riding. Maybe he’ll be out on his e-bike to give his knee a rest. And just now, as I’m typing this, I get a text from the “other” Kevin, ex-pilot, making sure I’ll be out there.

Summer just went by way too fast this year.

The almost-weekly check-in?

Personal stuff

Tough to explain how it was an accomplishment to get up Kings this morning in 47 minutes but that’s all Kevin’s knee would allow. In retrospect we should have stayed down low, but this was going to be Kevin’s last ride for a week and a half (he and his girlfriend are heading to Disneyworld next week for a much-needed break). It was interesting to note that, even at such a slow speed, my breathing was still quite audible and slightly labored. Very much looking forward to the latest series of lung tests starting towards the end of this month!

Distractions. Never could I imagine so many things going on all at once. My wife’s battle with Stage IV breast cancer, which has spread to one of her lungs… if not for Keytruda, she’d probably not be around. Having to constantly monitor blood work, making sure she’s healthy enough to handle more poison pumped into her system, and hoping she ends up one of the many Keytruda miracles who were given a very short time to live but keep pushing that expiration date out, over and over and over again. Tough figuring out what to plan for… how far in advance you can organize a vacation, and having to think about whether a vacation could be costly not just in terms of $$$ but also the ramifications of missing a treatment that in retrospect shouldn’t have been missed. You just can’t know.

And then there’s my mom, being treated for lymphoma that somehow found its way to her central nervous system, something so rare it wasn’t even considered a possibility when they were looking at a mass adjacent to her brain that was causing language and motor skill issues. An awful lot of doctor visits, treatments, hospital stays and planning that, just like with my wife, don’t have the luxury of being able to deal with when convenient. You just have to make time for it. She is, thankfully, doing remarkably well. The irony is that, had the doctors realized the mass adjacent to her brain was from her lymphoma issue and not “just” a meningioma, they might not have operated, and had they not operated, instead of being in a really good place right now, she’d have been on a steadily deteriorating path. At 93, they tend not to offer up somewhat heroic operations (like brain surgery) if there’s anything making it more complex. Complex health issues and 93 year old patients normally don’t have great outcomes. But that’s the thing. They don’t know my mom. Her own mother lived to be 102 after all!

And now son Kevin’s knee, which is happening at the same time he’s also experiencing a pretty heavy uptick in seizure frequency. And daughter Becky’s shoulder surgeries.

It’s a lot of stuff all at once, and it’s not just affecting my riding, but also the business. It’s really tough trying to feel creative and enhance marketing efforts needed to bring customers into the store when all this is going on. It’s not exactly how I thought things would be at 68.

But ultimately I do have to keep a focus on riding. There’s that objects-in-motion-tend-to-stay-in-motion thing. My health is much better when I push my physical limits. There’s a feeling of control in a world where so many things seem beyond my control. It all also reminds me that writing is something I need to keep up as well.