Finally, a ride that went according to the plan! It was getting a bit frustrating, as the past couple of weeks have seen a number of rides shortened, some for weather, some for Kevin’s epilepsy issues. Nothing should get in the way of a bike ride, y’know? And today, nothing did. Not even the frigidly-cold weather in the forecast, which we got around by doing what we do best… leaving really late and racing the sun. Nobody does this better than my son and I. 40+ years of riding ’round these parts and I can estimate when I’ll be back home for just about any loop possible. I figured we needed to be home by 5 to not run out of sunlight, and we arrived home at 5:02pm. And yes, we did bring lights, just in case.

It was the usual, the “Coastal Classic” it’s often called, heading up Old LaHonda, down the other side, over Haskins to Pescadero, the three bumps on Stage Road heading north, then back up to Skyline on Tunitas and down into Woodside on Kings.

We left at 12:29pm (isn’t it wonderful that Strava knows everything?), called it a draw at the Loma Mar sprint, split a coke but ate all of a cheesecake ollalieberry muffin (I’m sure it was low-cal) and then headed out for the tough part, those three nasty bumps heading north on Stage. Don’t know why it seems like they’re tougher than Old LaHonda (which, at just under 23 minutes, was pretty slow, even for me), but it seems like they’re just tall enough to be annoying, not tall enough to develop a rhythm on. But today it was worthwhile, the view of the Pacific being so spectacularly clear that you could even see the Farallon Islands!

No headwinds, no tailwinds on Tunitas, so no excuse for going slow, and nothing to help us go fast. Which makes sense; we rode “middle” with a time of about 52 minutes to the top (Strava says 53, but I think that’s one of those Strava things where we needed to blow through Skyline and stop on the Kings Mtn side (east), not the Tunitas side (west). That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it. For a bonus, we spotted someone walking a cool Corgi dog just before the climb.

Weather-wise, sure, it was a bit on the cold side at times, although it was up to 42 or so by the time we left and rode through Woodside. Got cool enough descending towards LaHonda to put on our light wind-shell jackets (which Kevin didn’t start with; we got a few hundred meters from the house when I asked if he brought one, and said no, he didn’t need it… I told him sorry, that wasn’t a choice, and later, he was very, very glad to have gone back and gotten that jacket!). By Pescadero we could remove them, as it was up in the mid-50s along the coast, dropping steadily to the upper-30s near the top of Tunitas and all the way down Kings.

It was only 57.5 miles, but quality miles, and felt like a much tougher ride than the New Years Day ride up Mount Hamilton.

Why do I bother with weather.com? That hourly weather forecast… it’s just a tease, isn’t it? It said the last of the rain would be 8am and we’d have a pretty nice day after that. Well 8am came and went, and sure, it stopped “raining” but the air was so damp and cool that it really didn’t much matter; the water on the ground was going nowhere fast. So we scrapped the idea of a longer ride and instead used the morning to do the family breakfast thing and, horrors, spend a couple hours cleaning out the garage. And yeah, to be truthful, that two hours was spent entirely on bike stuff in the garage, and another 15 minutes spend debating the appropriate use for a garage… apparently, some believe that you’re supposed to be able to park a CAR in a garage! Why would anybody do that? Bikes in this family outnumber cars by 3 or 4 to 1, even if you include the shop van.

But the icky conditions did give Kevin the chance to try out his new Foundry CycloCross bike (yes, we actually do sell something besides Trek… who knew?). We left the house not completely certain of the route; I was favoring staying “low” (in the foothills) but Kevin’s idea of a ride requires that it has to get up to Skyline, or it’s not really a bike ride. We didn’t have time to head “over the hill” and maybe take in West Alpine (it was 2:15pm by the time we left) but we were able to ride up 84 and south through the fog to Page Mill, descend into Los Altos Hills and then back via Portola Valley and Woodside. A very good shakedown cruise for his new bike, whose combination of wider tires and disc brakes should be a big help in more-epic conditions.

The weather looks very good for riding up Mt Hamilton on New Year’s Day, an annual event for many of us. You can head up the hill anytime you want, but the “Chain Reaction” folk will start from Alum Rock and Mt Hamilton at 9am. Kevin will likely be pushing for time, maybe to better his 1:37 of a couple months ago, while I’m likely going to be heading up at a more civilized pace with Burt, one of our alumni. New info- Burt says he’s leaving an hour or so earlier! Darn, I was looking forward to a moderate pace. Now I’m going to be killing myself trying to keep up!

There’s no food or water on the way up, so make sure you’ve got two bottles and power bars or whatever keeps you going. The coke machine at the top takes only crisp dollar bills, not soggy, so store them in a plastic baggie and you’ll be fine.

See you there- –Mike–

Nothing epic today; had to get back fairly early to catch an afternoon flight to LA. Why? Don’t ask. Let’s just stick to bike stuff. The original plan was a bit unusual; Kevin didn’t want to do the usual coastal classic, and suggested Page Mill. I hate Page Mill. Kevin likes Page Mill. For the same reasons. It’s steep! Actually, I don’t mind steep, if that’s all it is. What causes me grief are steep climbs that you can’t develop a rhythm on, and for me, that’s Page Mill. The bottom quarter of that climb, before it even gets steep, just doesn’t allow me to get settled in. The part from the golf course to just below Foothill Park. And then again, just before Moody to about half a mile past. After that, I start to feel OK again. But getting back to the route, it was going to be up Page Mill, north on Skyline, west to LaHonda, then up West Alpine back to Skyline, north again, then back down 84 into Woodside.

Unfortunately, Kevin had a minor procedure done on his big toe the other day (cutting away some of the toenail) such that it was in pretty bad pain on steep stuff, so climbing West Alpine was out of the question. Instead, we took Skyline north all the way to 92, then back via Canada Road. It was up on Skyline that we saw a Coyote, a Coyote so well-groomed and docile-appearing (didn’t seem bothered by us or cars) that you wondered if it wasn’t a dog. Beautiful animal, and I was really looking forward to seeing it on the video form my camera… but apparently, and this has happened several times before, my GoPro didn’t actually charge the battery I had installed just a few minutes before. Thus, no cool photos of the Coyote, nor the large Hawk that had been sitting on a telephone wire close to it.

Still, when I look at the data on Strava, it wasn’t a bad ride. For me, 46 minutes in the winter is a respectable time to climb Page Mill (from Arastradero to the top) and I was only 30 seconds or so behind Kevin. Considering how much more I’ve eaten than normal lately, and how much less I’ve ridden, I was surprised to hold up that well. Maybe this won’t be such a bad winter!

OK, actually not winter yet, and it wasn’t all that dark. But it was a bit wet, a bit cold, and that hot shower at the end felt pretty darned good.

I suggested to Kevin that we take it relatively-easy heading up Old LaHonda, thinking something around 25 minutes would be fine today. Uh-uh. Kevin wasn’t at the top of his game, but it was still 22:37, about a minute off the best I could reasonably be expected to do right now. If Kevin hadn’t missed a few rides due to his kidney stone issue, I’m sure it would have been faster.

Temps ranged from 44 to 52 degrees, although the dampness (and later rain) made it feel a bit cooler than that. It was a good “winter shake-out” ride, something to discover where we need to improve out cold-weather gear. Basically, the usual. Better gloves and wind-front tights! The run out to the coast was a bit faster than normal, due to a complete lack of wind (typically, you’ll get a headwind, unless there’s a very strong off-shore flow, something you’ll only find on very hot days). As a result, without intending to do so, I ended up with my 3rd-best time from La Honda to San Gregorio, entirely as a solo effort (Kevin didn’t do many pulls at the front today). And then, surprisingly, the climb up Stage Road to Highway 1 felt remarkably good, giving us our best-times ever (“ever” meaning the past three years, while Strava has existed).

Tunitas? Nothing spectacular there. This was one of those rare days where I had better legs, but chose to not take advantage of that. The most-challenging part of the ride was the Kings Mtn Descent. Cold & wet!

Maybe the last really perfect weekend day to ride, so you’d think a long hard ride to the coast would be in order. Nope. Kevin got another kidney stone (a painful by-product of his epilepsy meds) so it was almost 2pm by the time I got out on the bike. Instead of a quick run to Skyline I opted for a full-speed run through the foothills, with a detour (decided on the fly) up the infamous “Walking” Joaquin in Portola Valley.

Thankfully I did get a few Strava “accomplishments” for this ride. If I was only going to ride 35 miles, I was determined it was going to be a hard 35 miles. I was actually getting a bit tired by the time I got to the turn-off for Alpine Road (which Joaquin turns off of, just before Alpine becomes a washed-out dirt road), but came across another guy who’s got two years on me and was pushing pretty hard on the Alpine Road section (he didn’t go up Joaquin but instead turned around at the gate).

The planned ride was a simple concept, really. Head out in the worst storm to hit in a year or so and slog it out to the coast and then back via Tunitas. It sounded like a dumb idea, thus it sounded like something we’d do. Only it took a while getting going this morning (no big surprise there!) and by the time we finally got out, at noon, or was it 1pm?, the sun came out! The roads were soaked, but the skies were gradually clearing up and rain didn’t seem to be in the mix. Nevertheless we were prepared for whatever might come our way, with booties, thermal tights, plastic rain jackets, appropriate gloves and our rain bikes.

Heading up over Jefferson we came across Michael from our Redwood City store; pure happenstance that he would be riding over Jefferson at exactly the same time we were! He wasn’t up for a 3-4 hour ride though (other commitments) so he rode with us as far as Skyline & 84 before turning back (“us” being myself and Kevin).

A Sheriff blocked us from heading west on 84; there were power lines down just west of Skyline, and mudslides below that. Kevin thinks OK, let’s head north on Skyline then and head home on Kings. What???!!! That would only be about 25 miles and not all that much climbing, and descending Kings when wet? No fun. So I talk him into heading south on Skyline and riding west on Old LaHonda, hoping that would put us below the power line issue (it did) and maybe the mudslide(s) were something we could get around (they weren’t).

We hit another Sheriff (not literally) about 2 miles east of LaHonda, where a good chunk of the hillside had come down. A grader and skip loader were going to be on the scene for another 40 minutes according to the Sheriff, but it looked like they were going to be done quite a bit sooner than that so we gambled and waited… and won. 12 minutes later and we were on our way, riding gingerly across some pretty slick muck, but thinking back on it, there were a lot of opportunities to lose traction but our bikes didn’t let us down. Well, not Kevin’s bike anyway. Mine? I had to stop several times heading up West Alpine to clear debris out from between my front tire and brake. Kevin wasn’t having such issues; possibly my slightly-wider tire, combined with less clearance on the fork, was causing the trouble. Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to stop on a steep grade.

Oh, right, the ride was supposed to go up Tunitas and now we’re on West Alpine. It sounded like there were too many opportunities for road closures heading to the coast, and who knows what Tunitas might have been like (although truthfully, I was really looking forward to the climb up Tunitas under less-than-ideal conditions). Our timing was good; had we been on West Alpine much earlier, we would have been held up by a large tree that had fallen across the road (which was in the process of being cut up and hauled away as we came through).

The sun reallycame out about halfway up West Alpine, with the clean air providing some of the nicest views of the coastal hills ever. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my “real” camera with me (didn’t want to risk it getting soaked), plus we were chasing the sun and couldn’t spend much more time stopped than we already had. Plus, it was looking not-so-nice up on Skyline, with a heavy fog rapidly moving in. Thankfully, the fog & low clouds lasted only for a short time as we headed north on Skyline. A good thing; even with a pretty good set of flashing tail lights, being up there in the fog isn’t exactly the safest place for a bike to be. I’d even toyed with the idea of heading down Page Mill instead, but that would have added a fair amount of time getting home.

In the end it wasn’t a very long ride (44 miles) or a particularly hilly ride by our standards (4500 ft of climbing). But it definitely felt like a hard ride regardless. Sure wish my rain bike rode as well as my Madone!