What an awesome spring day for a ride! Mid-60s, a few clouds, a bit of a breeze blowing in from the coast and a playground of fantastic roads snaking through our coastal hills. Finally, a chance to push the legs; the last few weeks have seen no rides of greater distance than the 31 miles on Tuesday & Thursday mornings, and like a car that’s been sitting around too long, or not driven at speed, my body felt like it really needed a thorough thrashing to cleanse itself of weeks of built-up muck.

The “normal” ride would be a simple coast loop, out to Pescadero, across Stage Road and then back via Tunitas. Done that, probably 100+ times. We needed to do something more today, something that we’d feel in our legs the rest of the day. Over Old LaHonda, out to San Gregorio (a nasty drag into a headwind), south on Stage to Pescadero, then back via Haskins and, for fun, West Alpine.

Stopping to help two women fix a flat on Old LaHonda

I thought about holding Kevin back, telling him we should take it easy up Old LaHonda, but the way he tore up the first couple hundred meters, I realized he was on a mission. But about 1/3rd of the way up I saw him pulled over and yes, my first thought was darn, he had a seizure. Nope. He was being civilized and seeing if two women at the side of the road needed help.

Being me, of course I don’t remember their names, but Kevin tells me the one with the flat was Susan. Very nice people (aren’t most cyclists?) younger than me (isn’t everybody?) but still looking for women on bikes Kevin’s age (Susan and her friend had a bit more “life experience” than the 18-21 year old he’d like).

I pulled a lot of little pieces of glass out of her tire; please, make sure you inspect your tires after a ride and if you see any little cuts at all, let the air out and squeeze the tire so you can make sure there’s no embedded glass. Chances are there’s more, and if it stays in your tire, it will eventually push through and cause a flat.

From there Kevin rocketed on ahead, determined, even though he no longer had a Strava time to shoot for, pushing himself as hard as he could. Go figure. Me? I’d think this was an opportunity to take it easy.

$5 flat fix. Had a $20 but hoped $5 would be enough.

The ride out to the coast was not easy though, pushing against a fair headwind most of the way, and then, a couple miles out from San Gregorio, right when I was getting into a groove and pushing into the wind pretty well, my front tire went flat (looks like the cardboard from a tube box, which I’d used to reinforce a tiny spot where a piece of glass had gone through, actually wore a small hole in the tube). Yes, I admit it, I used one of Kevin’s CO2 cartridges instead of my hand pump! Saved a lot of time. The repair to the tire did cost me $5 though.

Looking towards the south-most climb on Stage Rd

Stage Road, with a slight tailwind, was fun. It was clearly an opportunity to try and post some new best times, which we did, on both the first and second climbs. The fairly-gentle grades work well for me; my breathing won’t keep up on anything over 5%. Glad I had my chance on Stage Road, because that was the only time I could hold my own against Kevin; the subsequent climbs up Haskins and West Alpine were rude formalities, as he established a new personal record on West Alpine 5 minutes better than anything he’d done before (which just happened to be 5 minutes faster than I climbed it today).

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Life goes by at just the right speed on a bike. You don’t notice the smell of breakfast when you drive past a house in a car. You don’t see the snakes in the road that need to be picked up before a car runs over them. You don’t

Kevin admiring girls admiring the view

notice the red-tailed Hawks circling overhead a bit up the road, which might just happen to correspond with another rider on the climb. And you smugly think that those people who drive up to Skyline, to admire the view from the scenic overlook… do they really appreciate it? They’re just looking at it, while those of us on bikes… we’re part of it. But that didn’t stop Kevin from admiring the view of the two young women admiring the view in the photo.

67 miles, just over 6700ft of climbing, and yes my legs hurt when I walk down stairs. It feels “good” to hurt like that. I’m going to get more of that “good” feeling.

Well darn, it would really be nice for things to resemble “normal” again. After losing rides from being in DC a week and a half ago, then doing the zombie thing (riding just a couple hours sleep, an interesting experiment that I would prefer to not repeat) on this week’s Tuesday & Thursday-morning rides… let’s just say I was ready for something normal. And normal in this case, was going to be a ride of at least 57 miles, figuring that I might as well match the number of miles to my age on my birthday. I should have known better. Kevin’s still having pretty severe kidney stone issues, so I was fortunate to get 30 miles out of him, basically a reverse of the normal Tuesday/Thursday ride.

It was looking like it wasn’t even going to be close to 30 miles; we’d headed up Old LaHonda, down the back side, back up to Skyline and then down the other side of 84 into Woodside, except that, somehow, I convinced Kevin that we should detour back up to Skyline via Skywood Way after following a too-slow car for a mile down the hill. Skywood Way used to be a through-road to Skyline until maybe 30 years ago when they blocked off the Skyline side. No biggie if you’re on a bike, just 20 feet or so that you have to walk your bike. You can see the details in the Strava report below, and, shortly, in a youtube that I’m uploading.

The plan (remember, there’s always a plan) was for a long, slow ride. 60 miles, easy pace, OK, not really easy but as fast as I’d be able to go after a week off the bike. Yes, setting a pretty low bar for myself. But everything changed when Kevin developed yet another kidney stone last night, requiring yet another visit to Kaiser Emergency in the middle of the night, so the planned early start became a potential non-start. Except of course that Dad thinks cycling fixes everything, so Kevin was coaxed out of his fetal position on the couch and, a bit after noon (3 hours later than planned), I finally got him out on the road.

And guess what, he did feel better, once on the bike. Much better. Good enough to ask for permission to play his favorite game on a climb- “Let’s ditch Dad!”. I told him to go for it, since climbing fast was taking his mind off the kidney issue. How fast? Not too fast; he’d been off a bike for the past week too (without a reasonable excuse, except that Dad wasn’t around to get him going on Tuesday & Thursday morning), but just over 20 minutes is still about 2 minutes faster than I can handle.

70 degrees, great day on a bike

Apparently great day for cars too!

Then up on Skyline he asks me what time it is, I ask him why, and he tells me he’s got to be back by 3pm for his on-line video game shoot-’em-up thingee. ??? It’s 2:15pm just south of Old LaHonda; I’d figured on riding south and descending West Alpine then back via 84, but instead it was a quick run back home… but not before navigating through a huge traffic jam at Sky Londa. Some sort of car rally of epic proportion, with sports cars parked everywhere

Taking the Skywood Way bypass

and traffic at a standstill. We first figured maybe we could thread our way through but it looked really bad, and for who-knows how far down the road. So instead I showed Kevin the Skywood Way alternative, a road that used to go through to Skyline just north of Sky Londa, and now blocked off but accessible through a dirt path. We came back to 84 a mile down the road, with no traffic at all. And Kevin almost got back in time for his on-line thingee. Unfortunately he was a “reserve” and they filled in needed positions before he could get on-line.

22 miles instead of 60. 2700ft of climbing instead of 5700. Tuesday morning’s ride is not going to be easy!