It’s getting towards the end of May, so you’d think the weather would start getting more than just a little bit nicer, right? But Wednesday night was quite nasty, lots of wind, and that extra bite of coldness that makes it just a bit bitter outside. One of those nights taking out the garbage isn’t much fun.

Thankfully we made the right choices for clothing, three layers up top, and it was needed. It never got super-cold; the lowest temp Kevin was was 39-something, but with the wind it would have sliced right through the normal two layers we would have normally worn this time of year. And yes, we were dodging quite a bit of debris, like the tree you see lying across 2/3rds of the road on Kings! Big enough that we didn’t consider even trying to move it.

Move it? Moving is something we weren’t doing very fast up the hill. I had both Kevins with me, and nobody was going fast. Fortunately that gives me a chance to have a little bit of fun now and then, riding hard for a minute or two and then waiting for them to catch up.

I’m looking forward to warmer weather.

This was not an easy morning ride, by any stretch of the imagination. Sunday’s ride up Mt. Hamilton could still be felt in my legs, and my breathing was as bad as I can remember in ages. Actually, despite Sunday’s ride, my legs still had some power, but power doesn’t matter if you can’t back it up with oxygen to keep the engine going. And this morning the oxygen just wasn’t there. So I got to watch Kevin and Colin climb away from me, more than once, while I tried to stabilize and then slowly claw my way back up to them. It’s funny that I didn’t remember finishing Kings right with them; I had to look at the video I took to see that’s how it played out. It was my recollection that I was way off the back, but pictures don’t lie.

Pretty sure there’s a connection between taking Benadryl the night before, and the lungs working even worse than what passes for normal for me. After an hour or so, things start to feel normal again.