All posts by Mike

Kevin’s first time up Kings in 4 weeks

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride, Uncategorized

Kevin reaching the top of Kings, just short of 40 minutes from starting up.
Sunday’s ride went better than expected, at least for me, so I wasn’t entirely dreading this morning’s ride up Kings. I wasn’t looking forward to another cold morning ride, but I’d made sure my electric gloves were fully charged and I’d laid out the really-cold-weather gear the night before. 3 upper layers, plus carrying a lightweight wind breaker just in case.

Kevin was complaining about his side being sore, which he blamed on Sunday’s ride when I asked him to “move to the front” because we’d picked up some riders behind us on Foothill, and I wanted to make it easier for them to pass us, if that was their game. Kevin, of course, thinks I just wanted him to hammer at the front. Between that and the four weeks away from Kings, 40 minutes was about the best Kevin could do.

Not enough time to do the West Old LaHonda section. Again. Got to get that taken care of Thursday, pretty much no matter what!

Did I mention it was cold? Seemed much colder than indicated on our computers; quite a bit of moisture in the air. And not even winter yet.

And almost forgot, still testing positive for Covid too. And still zero symptoms.

First “real” ride in three weeks; better than expected. Oh, and Covid+ too.

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

I’ll back up a bit and talk about Tuesday and Thursday’s rides. Both about the same, dreadfully slow, 41 minutes up Kings, no time to do the West Old LaHonda loop. Dreadfully cold too; under 40F the entire ride (my computer reads temps a bit “optimistically though and shows just a bit higher). Tuesday I was on my own; Thursday I had Kevin (ex-pilot) with me. Kevin had stated his intentions to start 5-7 minutes ahead of me, because he thought he’d be slowing me down too much. Had to talk him out of that, and glad I did! 41 minutes was just about right for each of us. And on Thursday, I wasn’t sure how I’d be doing after getting, maybe, 2.5 hours sleep. Surprisingly the sleep didn’t affect me all that much.

Why wasn’t younger Kevin with me? He’d tested positive for Covid last Sunday, probably after already having had it for several days, and finally tested clear Thursday. Not in time to ride Thursday morning though.

But today things were good. Both Kevin (younger Kevin) and I were healthy (despite a couple days of Covid+ readings for me; I didn’t bother to waste a test today, but will see what I look like tomorrow), and I think both of us got enough sleep last night. Cold? Oh yeah. Thank goodness for my electrically-warmed gloves!!! Which almost weren’t available; I woke up at 6:30am and realized hey, did I plug the batteries in after Thursday’s ride? So I got out of bed and went downstairs to where the gloves are, and, sure enough, I had not charged them. Plugged them in and thankfully they were fully-charged by the time we left around 11am.

3 weeks out from a serious ride, heading to the coast wasn’t really an option. Besides, since I’m still likely Covid positive, it’s not like I can head into a place to get food. I tried to convince Kevin that we should do a reverse West Alpine, but he wanted to stay on our side of the hill, and suggested just a foothill loop. Not enough miles for me, and I wanted to see if I could get up Old LaHonda at a bit better clip than the two recent climbs up Kings.

27-something was actually better than I expected up Old LaHonda. At the top we headed south on Skyline, down Page Mil and then south again to Los Altos, stopped for coffee and food at Peets (adjacent to our former shop location) and then headed back on Foothill. We did surprisingly well, and now actually looking forward to the next ride up Kings. I just might survive!