Had to happen sometime; our string of amazing weather came to an end. Got a chance to try out the rainbikes in weather that wasn’t too challenging. Just light drizzle and not too cold (upper-40s). REALLY slow slog up Old LaHonda, but nobody else out there to make fun of us. We saw maybe 10 others out on the road though. The original plan hadn’t included a ride up to Skyline, as I was thinking we should put the rain bikes to a milder test first, maybe heading down to Los Altos & back, but Kevin wasn’t having any of that. Too bad; I wanted to see if our old Los Altos location was still empty.
Last Thursday was a beautiful morning, although Kevin still wasn’t on top of his game, this time developing quite a nose bleed on Kings. Kevin (former pilot) and Karen showed up too! 4 is a big group for wintertime; most head out later when it’s a bit warmer.
Tuesday’s ride was just the two of us (myself and younger Kevin). Just another nice, and still slow, day on a bike.
Strava shows our location and speed being 35.1mph when the truck came upon us, angry that we were in the way. Just prior to this we had been doing 40. I’d actually seen the truck long before he got to us, and knew he was flying.
So kind of skipped over Sundays ride didn’t we? The plan had been West Alpine, but got a text 3/4 of the way up Old LaHonda that my wife was heading to the ER because her stomach pains from the past few days weren’t going away. Not much I could do, since you can’t go to the hospital with anyone anymore (Covid-19 restrictions), but Kevin and I decided to stay on “our” side of the hill, so she could get in touch with us if we needed to. Basically we rode the normal Tuesday/Thursday ride in reverse, which, curiously, is about 2 miles shorter when you substitute climbing Old LaHonda for descending 84. Weird thing, that.
After a bunch of tests it’s determined she’s got appendicitis and it’s gotta come out. Which, these days, is basically outpatient surgery. Again, with Covid-19, a lot of things have changed and pretty sure you’d be in & out same day for anything less complicated than a heart transplant. I picked her up around midnight and she’s been resting uncomfortably since. I’d show a photo of the three small incisions they made but that’s not the sort of thing I do. OK, actually it is, if it were me, but she might have different ideas about privacy. Well, not might, she does. 🙂
OK, now to this morning’s ride. This was the first ride in a couple months where I didn’t feel like I was riding with all cylinders firing, and Kevin, Kevin and Jeff rode off ahead pretty quickly. The funny thing is, I actually slept OK last night and felt ok getting up. Maybe it was because I wasn’t getting feedback on my power, because I forget to replace my power meter battery? Thankfully, I felt better as the ride went on, eventually dropping younger Kevin without realizing it, on the West Old LaHonda climb. Actually I did realize he wasn’t there, but didn’t know he was having knee issues and would have appreciated the company. He never seems to think like that when I’m in difficulty though!
Making the ride more interesting than usual was the idiot in the F150 that was flying down 84 behind us and then pulling ahead at the bottom before coming to a stop in the middle of the road to yell at us. Kevin was talking with the guy while I was taking pictures. Kevin was keeping his cool, surprisingly so, while this guy was going off about how awful cyclists were. It was only in hindsight that I realized Kevin (or I) should have asked the guy, “Are you threatening us?” Because there really wasn’t any good reason to call the CHP on him as he didn’t actually try to run us off the road; it would have been his own sorry butt that would have been in danger from stopping in the middle of a highway, not ours.
The irony is that Kevin and I are always watching out for cars and trying to give as much room as possible and, if someone’s really flying downhill, we’ll find a place to pull over and let the idiot go by. In this case, we were nearly at the bottom of the hill and going fast enough it didn’t seem like we’d be holding anyone up. I’m guessing, if we weren’t there, he might have shaved 4 seconds off his drive.