Category Archives: Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Endless ramblings regarding the every Tuesday & Thursday-morning bike ride, leaving Olive Hill & Canada Road at 7:45am, rain or shine

Does it ever get old? Well, yeah…

Personal stuff, Tdf trip planning, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Back from France for just a few days and life is back to normal. Kevin’s version of normal anyway. The entire time we were in France, 10 days, Kevin had a total of 2 seizures, one of which was pretty inconsequential. The other was a bit of fun for me; it was the last stage we saw, shortly after the finish, very crowded, and that’s when Kevin decides to have a seizure. I mean sure, better than on a bike, but I’m having to explain to multiple gendarmes and passers-by that Kevin is going to be fine, this is normal for him, nothing to see here, move along.

10 days, a lot of riding in high heat, an occasional post-ride beer (Kevin doesn’t otherwise drink; pretty much same with me), less sleep than normal, all sorts of things that you might think could trigger a seizure because they’re different, not expected, not in line with the programming of the “extra” brain he has, sitting on top of his semi-normal brain. But that’s not what happened. And there was a lot of extra brain stimulation too; you don’t normally get “kidnapped” and force-fed oysters and chase it with a chugged glass of wine. 🙂

But get Kevin back on home turf and it’s seizure time again. Multiple seizures per day sometimes. I really shouldn’t be over-thinking this; clearly I should try and get Kaiser to pay for extended trips to France for Kevin. And of course, someone should be there to make sure everything’s going ok, just in case, and who’s more qualified at traveling through France on a bike than me?

But we have to deal with the hand we’re dealt, and presently that hand has us back home again, with Kevin flying up the hills ahead of me, and I have to wonder, coming around the next corner, if I’m going to find Kevin on the ground. Well, as can be seen in the photo above, that’s what greeted me, just below the archery range. This had been a pretty long one too, about 7 minutes before he was back up on his feet, er, pedals. Fortunately, he’s following protocol when on his bike, and at the first sign of something going on (he has a warning, called an “aura”, prior the seizure taking control) he gets off the bike and lies on the ground. It must look interesting to someone seeing it happen; this guy is flying up the hill on a bike, then suddenly pulls over to the side of the road and lies on the ground.

Up until that point Kevin had a near-record time for Kings, maybe just 15 seconds off. That was Tuesday. Thursday? No seizure, at least not on his bike (think he had a couple at the shop later on) but came within just 6 seconds of his best-ever time up Kings through the park. Me? I was doing not-so-badly on Tuesday, looking at a pretty decent time until I had to stop for Kevin. Thursday? Way, way slower. Probably not helped by having to try and repair a dishwasher hose the night before.

Hard to believe a week ago was our travel day from Annecy to Colmar, followed by one of our best rides the next day, Stage 20, the last mountain stage of the ‘Tour. By Wednesday I’d recovered from most of my jet-lag, so right now I feel pretty much at home. Being at home is nice; I missed my wife, and she missed me. But it’s nice, for 8 or 9 days a year, to be focused on riding a bike and eating french pastry and drinking a ton of Orangina.

My life in pictures

Tdf trip planning, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

A couple weeks ago I developed, simultaneously, a pretty sore left shoulder and a really nasty nerve pinch in my right hand. It’s likely the shoulder came from descending Umunhum a few weeks ago; the descent requires an enormous amount of braking pressure, and things were likely made a bit worse when I did a fair amount of test-riding my son’s bike prior to his taking it to France. His setup is really strange; due to a knee issue he has to have his saddle tilted way down at the nose, which shoves you into the bars, putting a lot of pressure on your hands and… shoulders.

Unfortunately, it was going to be about two weeks before I could see an ortho at Kaiser, and during that time my right hand issue resolves on its own, but the shoulder… still there. Activity generally made it feel better; sleeping has been a problem. So I kept the appointment and got a bunch of x-rays showing nothing serious, no problem riding in France. She even offered cortisone shots if it got bad enough (it’s not that bad) and overall had a great amount of respect for someone who wants to stay active.

So not exactly a clean bill of health, but a much better message than I could have received. Hard to say if that was what helped me climb Kings faster this morning, or if it was the nicer weather (finally, no leg warmers or base layers!!!).

All of this a really good thing since Kevin and I will be heading to France today (Wednesday) to catch up with the ‘Tour. We’ll be flying SFO-LHR-GVE (Geneva), then taking a train from Geneva to Annecy, where we’ll be staying until a week from Friday. Annecy will allow us to see 6 stages either solely by bike or extending our range with local trains… no rental car, yay! Some very challenging rides, a couple not so bad. More detail shortly (I’ll probably be posting our itin from the plane). Only thing I’m not looking forward to is the apparent lack of air conditioning. Annecy is one of those strange regions in France where they still don’t believe in air conditioning. But it won’t be too hot, right? Nah. Mid 90s… we might break our previous record for Orangina consumption. Fortunately, I do better in too-hot weather than too-cold.