Realistically, posting to WordPress directly just isn’t working. Why? Because it takes so darned long to process photos, cutting them down to size. Facebook does that automatically, and Facebook works right from your phone. Hate that, and there’s no question that typing things from your phone losses a lot in translation as you stumble over yourself typing on a tiny fake keyboard at a dramatically slower pace than I would on a computer. But here’s what we’ve got.

Tomorrow, we plan to revisit one of our favorite cliff roads, opposite Alpe d’Huez. It requires an early start, so while Kevin’s been asleep I’ve been piling up more endless travel-day hours getting things ready. Let’s see… this “day” began Sunday morning 6:30am and presently, it’s 1:09pm going by the same clocks… so I’ve been up a bit over 30 hours, and maybe, could be, two hours of sleep somewhere in all that. I’m going to crash hard tonight! But that’s always my plan, stay up until normal time wherever I’ve traveled, making for a really long “day” and then I fall asleep and wake up pretty much used to the new time!

After doing quite a few climb-free Sunday rides, got a text from Larry R, a guy I used to race with back in the 70s and took to France during the ‘Tour maybe 5 years ago… he was in the area and wanted to do a few climbs. Slowly. Larry’s strong & fast on the flats, but when the road tilts upward…

The reason this made sense was because Kevin’s knee wasn’t holding up to hard climbing efforts, and riding with Larry was going to be a more casual affair. Not that I have much horsepower these days, but it’s enough to tax Kevin’s knees. But not Sunday. Larry does about 165 watts on a climb, which is about 100 watts shy of what Kevin can maintain.

Originally thought about heading to the coast, but after climbing Old LaHonda we looked out and saw a pretty heavy fog bank. Uh… no. Headed up West Alpine instead. Met up with Karen, who used to be a regular on our Tuesday/Thursday morning rides, on the way up (or, more correctly, the group she was riding with passed us with quite a bit more speed than we were capable of). She’s got a regular job with regular hours that conflict with our 7:45am departure. And if she did show up, I think she’d get pretty bored by our sedate speed these days.

Headed down Page Mill and into Los Altos for coffee & food, then looped back through the foothills to Woodside.

Hoping to get some speed back soon & Kevin’s knees getting better!