This is what I get to look forward to, twice a week. It never gets old. Unlike me. Maybe that’s what makes it so special. Time stands still. The view from this spot hasn’t changed since… ever. OK maybe 60 years ago you wouldn’t have seen the road on the other side, and there a couple of houses if you look really closely. But for the most part, this is a timeless landscape that I enjoyed in the way-back days, and my son will enjoy for the next 40 years.

A quick ride report- typical Tuesday morning group, but atypical pace. Complete lack of testosterone today, enough that I could almost talk riding up Kings. Probably helped that my son wasn’t there, stoking somebody’s desire to go faster. Funny thing about an easier pace though. For some reason you get hungry, almost to the point of bonking, which never occurs on a fast ride. Good to know there are still things to figure out after riding seriously for 40+ years.

Knock knock knockin’ on Kevin’s door…

We knew it wasn’t going to be pretty; the weather forecast, for days, had said it was going to rain on Thursday, specifically, Thursday morning. And for days you’re thinking yeah, sure, as if they can get it right this time. But they held to the forecast, and about 4am it started to rain. Nothing that bad really, just wet pavement, light drizzle, light wind.

And for that we get… nobody. Just myself and my son (Kevin), on our rain bikes, heading down Canada Road to the start, expecting to see flashing head & tail lights in the distance. But nothing. Looked for tire tracks in the wet pavement, but saw nothing. In fact, this might have

Nobody home

been a most-remarkable morning in that we saw not a single other cyclist during the entire ride! A check later on Strava confirmed it- everybody stayed home.

Why? We’ve certainly seen a lot worse weather than this, with a number of people out there. My theory is that we’ve gone so long without rain that we’ve become spoiled and have decided to just wait until it’s nicer to ride. Especially on a day like today, where it was wet in the morning and dry later on. Why not just wait it out?

So no Karl, no Karen, no JR, no Todd, no Eric, no (pilot) Kevin. What do we do about it? Look for answers, of course! Kevin (pilot) lives not too far off Skyline so instead of doing the West Old LaHonda loop, we headed down Swett Road and dropped in to see him. Find out why he didn’t show. But alas, he wasn’t there. We figured that might be the case, as he’s on reserve this month, meaning that, at short notice, he could be called on to fly to Shanghai or Miami. That’s what he tells us anyway; we were kinda hoping we’d catch him sleeping in. Long story short, if you don’t show up for our ride, we just might track you down.  –Mike–

Kevin looking serious, studying things the way you hope a pilot would.

I was so hoping to wake up to dry roads this morning, but guess it wasn’t meant to be. Not raining, but damp. Thankfully not so bad that I couldn’t rationalize riding my Madone instead of my rain bike. Don’t get me wrong; if it’s really dumping out there, it can be fun riding the rain bike. That whole man-against-nature thing. Bring it on. But a light drizzle with damp roads is simpy yucky. It destroys your confidence descending and you can’t see through your fogged-up glasses. But a really nice bike makes up for a lot of it.

Just three of us today; myself, Pilot Kevin and Karen. Kevin (my son) couldn’t make it due to another really bad night with his kidney stone pain, Karen said Karl would rather stay inside when it’s wet, and the rest of the group probably think they were just being sensible. What they missed was one of those rare rides at a sensible pace, so sensible that even I could find the lungs to carry on short conversations while climbing Kings.

Wonder what the Strava “suffer” score might have been? I forgot to wear my heart monitor so I’ll never know, but I suspect it was pretty low. That’s OK. It felt nice not running myself into the ground for a change. –Mike–

Just in time for Easter, our Tuesday-morning ride spots a Squabbit! Not familiar with Squabbits? It’s a cross between a Squirrel and Rabbit, something that looks like a Rabbit but has the suicidal antics of a Squirrel. Proof is in the video!

Was that the high point of the ride? No, not for me. First, it was great just pretending to be functional after very little sleep last night, courtesy of a call from our alarm company, telling us that something triggered an internal sensor in our Los Altos store. At 2:37am. Love that type of phone call. I told them yes, dispatch the police to check it out, and call me back if there were any problems. No call back so it was probably something that fell over and triggered a motion sensor, but as hard as I tried to be motionless myself, my mind was buzzing and I just couldn’t get to sleep. Hate that. But at 6:55am I sprang into action, woke up Kevin (who’d been up until, ironically, almost 2:30am due to pain from his kidney stones), and half-zombie-like got out and rode.

Nice morning, medium sized group. Jan, Kevin, Kevin, Eric, George, Karen, Karl & Todd. The sun came out, the roads were dry, and I was able to get just under 28 up Kings. The only real issue with the lack of sleep was a bit less awareness of the wheel in front of me, causing me at one point to suddenly put on my brakes so I didn’t go up George’s backside, which in turn got a well-deserved audible response out of Eric behind me.

I’m looking forward to getting some sleep tonight!

It’s been pretty darned dry so far, and even when it has decided to rain, it’s cooperated and mostly avoided Tuesday & Thursday mornings! The last tiny batch of rain was nice enough to not start until Tuesday night and ended early yesterday afternoon. Can’t complain about that.

A bit damp and cool this morning on Skyline

Only one Kevin again today (the pilot’s been missing in action), Karl, Karen, Jan, Todd, Eric & Marcus. The fast folk were Kevin, Todd, Marcus and, later in the ride, Karl. I kept contact up through the park and a bit beyond, but about halfway up Kings the Kevin/Todd/Marcus group rode easily off the front.

It wasn’t cold this morning, at least not by winter/early spring standards, sitting around 39-40 degrees for much of the ride. The damp air made it feel a lot cooler than that though! We’re all definitely looking forward to warmer days ahead.

This was a beautiful morning. Happy riders, happy joggers, and, especially, very happy dogs. Maybe Winnie-the-Pooh in his mouth wasn’t so happy?

What’s not to like? The day began on what could have been a bad note, waking up at 6:35am, 20 minutes before the alarm is set to go off. I briefly thought about getting up, but instead thought hey, maybe I can just get back to sleep, and I did. Can’t tell you how it works, but when the alarm did go off at 6:55am, I felt like I must have had an hour or two sleep since waking up. Amazing! So how does that work?. Doesn’t make any sense at all. Just happy that it does.

Also happy that Kevin’s kidney stone pain wasn’t so bad. And really happy that the skies were clear with not a hint of the rain that was supposedly coming in later in the day. Of course, Kevin was happier with his 25-something time than I was with my 28-something, but I was able to keep him in sight for at least the first quarter of the climb. And the funny thing about happiness is that it creates more opportunities to be happy, probably because you’re more confident, and that confidence took me to my first sprint victory at Sky Londa in a while. It was a blast; heading down that final drop, sneaking up on George, Keith and Kevin, then sling-shotting forward off each, passing the last (Kevin) just before the line. Perfect timing, and much-improved confidence on the descent leading into it. They had a good hundred meters or more on me early-on, but it didn’t matter, because I knew I could close that gap.

And the various walkers and joggers in Woodside all seemed happy too. Especially the dog in the photo. What a great day to be out on a bike! Too bad it had to end. –Mike–

Actually it was a bit tiring, probably finally falling asleep the prior night around 4am for a variety of reasons, not a small part of which had been Kevin’s kidney stones that had cast me in the role of a bad father because I wouldn’t take him to the emergency room for pain meds. The thinking was that, at 11pm, we’d be there for 3 hours minimum, leaving no earlier than 2am, and past history, which replayed according to plan, would have the worst of it over by 1am anyway. It’s just not a lot of fun, seeing your kid in pain like that.

Even though Kevin got more sleep than I did, I was nice and didn’t try to haul him out on the ride. Instead I went through the motions, the same motions I’ve done many hundreds of times before, meet up with Karl, Eric, Nigel and Marcus and head up to Skyline. Since it was a Thursday we went up through the park, and my barely-under-29-minute time was perfectly satisfactory (to me). Nigel actually turned back before getting halfway up the hill, feeling like he just didn’t have it in him today. But for me, well, I just kept going, one foot after the other.

Everything was going nicely until West Old LaHonda, where I got one of my exceptionally-rare flat tires. A flat tire that took longer to take care of than it should have because the first time I inflated it, the removable valve core unscrewed, letting out all the air. No fun! But 10 minutes later we were back on our way.

Just to be clear, given the choice, I’d rather be able to ride with a reasonable amount of sleep than without.