What is going on with the weather? Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be light drizzle, nothing more. Looking at the hourly forecast, never more than a trace, .01 inch. And it wasn’t supposed to carry through the day; just a few hours and gone. Didn’t work out that way; it was raining when I rode home from work Saturday night at 6pm, and Sunday morning, about 9:30, it was dumping. The forecast, which we still believed at that time, said that should be the end of it. Right. By the time we finally got out the door at 11:34, it had started raining a bit again.

But hey, we were on rain bikes with disc brakes, we were dressed for whatever might come our way (almost; I should have been wearing booties, not just toe covers), and it was about time we have a ride we didn’t cut short because we were feeling bad. We certainly had a reason to assume we were feeling bad; first time over 30 minutes up Old LaHonda that didn’t involve a mechanical issue. But we kept going; no way was I going to do another “ugly” ride like last weekend, heading north on Skyline.

The rain was on & off, more nuisance than anything. Wind wasn’t too bad, but of course it was a headwind going out to the coast. I was looking forward to coffee in San Gregorio but Kevin informed me that he’s serious about trying to cut back, hoping it might reduce the number and severity of seizures he’s been having lately. Before getting too amazed at Kevin being able to stick to that, he did buy a Coke, so he still did get some caffeine, just not as much.

Thankfully it was pretty nice while we were in San Gregorio, maybe mid-50s, so we had an enjoyable stop for drinks and turkey & jack sandwiches. Fuel for the ride back over the hill. Stage Road felt about as bad as Old LaHonda, and Tunitas… well yeah, it was a slug fest (Kevin counted 20 slugs I think?) but at least it’s long and steep enough to have an excuse for not being easy.

Heavy rain waited until the exact moment we hit the stop of Tunitas, just in time for descending Kings. It still amazes me how much traction we have on 28c tires at 90psi; we’re able to descend at a pretty decent speed without feeling dangerous. So why are so many road bikes coming with 32c tires these days? Probably because most people are reasonable and willing to sacrifice a bit of speed for a smoother ride.

It was going to be tight, getting in a ride today, with the 49er game starting at noon. We had to get out when we knew it was going to be really cold. What we didn’t know is how awful each of us would feel!!!

The plan was to head out to the coast and back Tunitas. We nearly bailed on even climbing Old LaHonda, in favor of a foothill loop to Los Altos! In fact, we almost turned back at the first corner on Old LaHonda, it was that bad. And it didn’t get better as we rode either. Oh, and it was even drizzling when we started, despite a forecast that said no issues with rain.

We got to the bottom of West Old LaHonda and turned back towards Skyline, and immediately Kevin was thankful, since we had a pretty good tailwind… which meant we would have been fighting a nasty headwind all the way out to the coast. At Skyline we headed north, then looped out Swett to Tunitas and back down Kings. A whopping 31 miles!!!

And got back in time for the game. Well gee whiz, we should have just ridden later; the 49ers played as badly as we rode. But at least they had an excuse, with their main quarterback quickly out of the game with an injury.