Don’t know how many times I’ve been down the road shown above, but it’s a lot. Started back in the early 70s, and the road was memorable because someone had painted gigantic footprints on alternating sides. If I recall correctly, they weren’t there at the beginning (of my riding that road),but appeared shortly after.

They remained in place for years. Must have been a very well-built road, to not need resurfacing (which would have eliminated the painted feet) for so long. They were there long enough to register with me in a very permanent way, so permanent that 50 years after I first came across them, I still look for them, I still imagine that I’m seeing some remnant of the huge white painted feet.

I’ve searched the ‘net for pictures of those feet, or a story referencing them, but nothing. It was 50 years ago. It probably did appear as a story in the Palo Alto Times (back when newspapers were a big thing), but it doesn’t appear easy to access archived records on-line.

It’s funny, the nature of things you never forget, and imagine them today just as they were then. And interesting that something of such apparent important to me, didn’t leave much of a mark on anybody else, at least not enough to reference it on-line.

Today’s ride… not much. Kevin was having issues that you’d associate with a bad cold so anything long and challenging was out of the question. It was surprising even to get him on the bike in the first place! Wouldn’t have been a good thing having to descend any big hills anyway, as my rear wheel needs some work and doesn’t coast well right now. So an easy and very very slow ride to Los Altos, stopping at Peet’s for the usual before heading back.

And funny thing about the way back. In a pretty short period of time, shortly after leaving Peet’s, the ride went from “ugh” (and an implied, “Why am I riding at all if I feel this bad?”) to really feeling good about being out on a bike. For Kevin, it is frustrating how often this happens. And he hates it.

I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty, doing a ride that involved any climbing at all, after missing Thursday morning’s ride due to Karen’s (my wife) appointment with the breast cancer specialist at Stanford. As much as I hate missing a ride, this was a pretty good trade as it was a great meeting with the specialist.

The coast was questionable; we considered doing the Redwood Gulch/Skyline thing, but Kevin really doesn’t like the climb up 9 and I can’t say that climbing Redwood Gulch is something I’ve looked forward to in a very long time. We kept our options open to a reverse Redwood Gulch, heading up Old LaHonda and checking out the fog at the coast. Fortunately it looked pretty nice. I wanted to do the full Pescadero/Tunitas loop, but Kevin thought it might be better to cut out the Pescadero part… good thing, too, because otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten to experience the black cloud from the pickup… rolling coal, they call it.

Stopped for food and coffee at San Gregorio. And miniature cookies that no trick of the camera will allow to cover a face. Miniature isn’t quite right; they’re actually slightly larger than normal. The worst thing about either Pescadero or San Gregorio is that either place seems like a good place to stop and go read a book under a tree. But you have to keep going.

Kevin wisely decided to use the bathrooms at the Bike Hut, to make sure he didn’t have a Strava time to chase. Despite being short on miles the past week, I didn’t completely fall apart on Tunitas. It was almost enjoyable. But, at 44 miles, not a very tough ride. I need to do better.