Memorial Day was a bit different from the norm; typically, Kevin and I have done back-to-back fairly decent road rides. Well, we got the first part down (Sunday’s usual to Pescadero) but yesterday we did something different. Meeting up with a good customer (Lee C) we explored the area between Saratoga Gap and maybe 5 miles to the north. A series of single track and fire roads running along the sides of Skyline, offering great views and a lot of fun.

Not super-technical stuff (good thing, since that would’ve have put me in the dirt!) but fun. 14 miles, nearly all dirt, 1871 feet of elevation gain. No suffer score since I was recording on my iPhone app (left computer at home).

I had been concerned about how I’d do today, after missing Thursday’s ride for my treadmill test. A few aches and pains associated with that test didn’t help alleviate my fears. But y’know, you get back on the bike, you point it up a hill, and you just go. Maybe not as fast as the week before, but it’s still fun, you still see something new each time, even when it’s a route you’ve done over and over and over.

That route being the usual. Up Old LaHonda, over Haskins, lunch & cookie in Pescadero, Stage Road and return via Tunitas.

Old LaHonda was right at 24 mintues; Kevin was being kind and stayed with me the whole way up. As usual I felt better on Haskins, and even better on Stage. Tunitas? Yeah, well, we had to stop a couple times for emergency vehicles (one that was taking care of a tree that had recently fallen, not sure of the other) and it just didn’t seem like a day we had to kill ourselves.

 

Most-interesting thing on the ride was discovering not one, not two, but four peacocks at the house on Stage Road just outside of Pescadero. The house that used to have the metal sculpture machine-gun-man outside.