All posts by Mike

Wish I could remember the catchy title I came up with while riding!

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Wait. Maybe it’s coming to me. Nope. Darn. It was messy this morning and normally I’d be thinking hey, great, let’s roll through the muck! But it wasn’t raining very heavily, no wind to speak of, so no real challenge. Plus I wasn’t feeling all that great, dealing with a minor cold that took some of the liveliness out of me. It felt like getting on a bike seemed like a dumb idea. That thought, of course, was exactly what it took to get me out there.

It wasn’t so great the first few minutes and then it just kinda felt like what I should be doing. Or we, as Kevin was with me. It was a really slow ride up Old LaHonda, but it was nice being able to have a conversation while riding. The plan was to continue on West Old LaHonda but my Garmin displayed a message saying it had just been closed due to a downed power line. So that feature of displaying text messages on your Garmin can be quite useful!

We made the ride a bit ugly by heading north on Skyline all the way to Kings, but it was still highly enjoyable. Go figure. Have to wonder about the other cyclists we saw out there though, at least the half that had nothing on their legs to keep warm. 44 degrees and damp is definitely leg warmer weather!

Would have been nice to have a more challenging ride before ditching the bike for two weeks while on vacation to Israel with my wife. No riding there. Leaving SFO 9:40pm Monday night, and arriving at… 9:40pm Tuesday in Israel. That’s pretty strange! But not as strange as heading from Asia to the US and landing earlier than you took off. THATS strange.

Breakfast in America

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Breakfast at Alice’s in Sky L’onda.
We normally have a breakfast ride to Alice’s for Kevin’s birthday (the younger Kevin, not the older guy who likely doesn’t look forward to birthdays anymore), but last Thursday was both his birthday AND Thanksgiving, so we postponed it to today. We got the word out to the former regulars, but the fog and work commitments kept everyone away. Everyone except the older Kevin, who had started up the hill several minutes earlier than us and circled back down once he got to the top.

He really didn’t need to head up earlier. We are going SLOW these days when it’s cold, and it’s pretty much always cold. The sub-30-minute times we could routinely get during the summer (and Kevin could sometimes do much better than “just” sub-30) have turned into 34-37 minute casual cruises, slow enough that even I can carry on a conversation. Sometimes.

We did get passed at the bottom of Kings by someone who was really flying; I joked that we could cut him off by riding through the park. Like I said, it was a joke.

At Alice’s we met the owner and heard about the history of the place, and learned that the pond behind Alice’s was actually a mill pond from back in the day, making railroad ties for the long-abandoned line that ran, for a few years, from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. Older Kevin (pilot) didn’t actually join us for breakfast; he rode the West Old LaHonda loop while we ordered our food, and arrived back in time to keep us company while we scarfed down the healthy stuff you see in the photos.