It was time to get back to the usual Sunday ride and pay a visit to Pescadero again. Leg warmers, base layers and long-fingered gloves on the way out to the coast, with a plan to remove them if the forecast was correct and it was nice and warm “out west.” And it was!

Kevin is amazing; he can be out of shape and pull off a 20 minute ride up Old LaHonda almost at will. I saw how he looked at the start and didn’t even try to stay with him for even a little while; just told him go for it and watched him… go!

This wasn’t a ride where I felt a whole lot better as it went on, but I didn’t feel any worse either. Distance tends to be kind to me, even though Pescadero was out of cookies. Hey, what’s with that? It hasn’t been THAT long.

Very very slight breeze but guess it was enough to completely clear the air and give a wonderful view of the Farallon Islands and a ship or two. Another nice view was the barn on the left just as you enter Tunitas. Is it in a state of arrested decay? It’s not looking too healthy, but I’ve probably said that for the past 15 years.

And.. my weight is almost back to normal. Just took two weeks to get the Greece off, so to speak.

It was nice being in Greece for two weeks (OK, cut out 2 long travel days from that). Got back Wednesday afternoon, rode the regular ride Thursday morning with ex-pilot (Kevin) while the other Kevin had literally flown the coup to a wedding in Denver. It was slow, really slow, but surprisingly, not ugly. Heart rate was up higher than normal, but that’s to be expected with two weeks off the bike. Even more so with a pretty hefty weight gain, leaving for Greece at maybe 161 pounds, returning at… 170???!!! Some of that was water retention from the flight; I dropped down to 166 after Thursday’s ride. Beautiful morning too.

Friday night I woke up maybe 2am and had this very odd question of… where was I? Was I in bed on the cruise ship, the hotel in Greece, or home? I figured it out and went back to sleep. 🙂

And then today. Sunday. No lingering effects of jet lag by now, and I was hoping Kevin (not ex-pilot), who was back from the wedding, and also hadn’t ridden while I was gone, would want to do the regular Pescadero/Tunitas loop. No way; he didn’t think he could handle the mileage. Good thing he thought that and we chose West Alpine instead, because I felt terrible going up Old LaHonda, and things only got worse on West Alpine. It was not pretty. We stopped halfway up to take off our leg warmers (got up to 78 on the climb), and felt a bit better, but still, it was a hard slog. Kevin was doing better, but up on Skyline things reversed and I was recovering and he was beginning to feel it.

Long story short- don’t spend two weeks off the bike.