Tag Archives: cycling

Next year, ‘cross for Kevin

Ride reports (not Tu/Th), , ,

Kevin originally wanted to do a final long ride before the end of the year, probably Santa Cruz (again), but since everyone at the shop was talking about heading to the Cyclocross race at Coyote Point, he thought it might be fun to ride there and take pictures.

Not much of a ride though; maybe 15 miles each way. Unless you ride over 92 to Half Moon Bay, north on highway 1 through Devil’s Slide, up over Sharp Park then down into Millbrae and south to Coyote Point.

The direct route. Why ride 15 flat miles when you can do 42 challenging?

The environment surrounding ‘cross is a whole lot more fun and less serious than road or track, but what attracted Kevin were women… his age, not 8 years older. He was surprised to see, in his words, so many “hotties.” I have no problem with that. If my son is attracted to athletic women who likely have healthy lifestyles, and sees the possibilities there as being more fun than hanging out with a bunch of guys discussing Skyrim, it works for me. Now, if they can figure out a way to play Skyrim during a workout, that might be a different thing altogether.

Oh, right, the race. Our Tuesday/Thursday riders did us proud. Karen won her event (she took the district championship last week) while George & Karl rode well in their race.
–Mike–

Nobody out here but us Turkeys!

Ride reports (not Tu/Th), , ,
Riding up Tunitas Creek in the rain

I can’t really blame anyone for not showing up for the annual TurkeyDay Trot this morning; the weather forecast had been for rain, starting at about 8am, and ending about noon. And our ride started this morning at 8am, and finished… just before noon! This was one of those rare times the weatherman really got it nailed; I woke up around 6:15am when my wife got up to do something with the turkey (what, I’m not sure) and it was completely dry out and not even that threatening-looking! But I went back to sleep knowing this, too, shall pass.

So yes, we got pretty wet, and it was reasonably cold, but hardly epic. In fact, it was disappointing it didn’t rain harder, because we were dressed for whatever came our way. I even had a rack on my rain bike with a rack-top bag filled with extra jackets and gloves, just in case.

The original plan had been to do the Pescadero/Tunitas loop, but this was one of those days where the motivation wasn’t there, and I was easily able to rationalize the need to get back at a reasonable hour to get the “Black Friday” sale email finished. And Kevin (yes, my son at least rode with me!) was pushing to cut it back even shorter!

As it was Kevin bonked, and running out of fuel on a day when even the San Gregorio General Store is closed (a very rare event; where did people go for Bloody Mary’s to take the edge off their hangovers?) caused problems because… he had forgotten to put the Honey Stinger energy bars back into his seat bag. But we did have enough Cytomax to get him up over Tunitas and home. Of course he first tried to ditch me at the bottom, but I got even further up the hill.