Tag Archives: cycling

Was that the last of the rain? Maybe? Please?

Ride reports (not Tu/Th), , , ,

Easter Sunday. The plan (as always, there’s a plan) was to head out fairly early so Kevin (my son, not the pilot) and I could get in a good hard ride and get back in time for the traditional early Easter Sunday dinner (2:30pm for the usual honey-baked Ham, a scalloped-potato dish, string beans with sliced almonds, the usual holiday fare) and then later on head to a 5pm church service run by Pastor Ben, one of our customers and all-around good guy.

The ride was supposed to be up & over Old LaHonda to the coast, Stage Road south to Pescadero, over Haskins and then up West Alpine and return north on Skyline. A reasonably-ambitious ride that would require us to get out on the road by 8:30am or so, certainly no later than 9. 8:30 wasn’t going to happen; it was raining lightly but with a promise of clearing soon. 9:30 and it was still wet out, too wet for my nice bike. We finally hit the road at 10:30, with the pavement having been dried by some fairly stiff winds, and a modified itinerary consisting of climbing Kings, south on Skyline to 84, down to LaHonda and back via West Alpine. A perfectly-reasonable ride, except that we didn’t count on the equivalent of heavy rain and relative-cold (49 degrees) up on top, with the appearance of more of the same if we were to head further west.

By the time we got to Sky Londa we were cold and totally soaked through, not having planned for anything more than light rain, so we rode down 84 back into Woodside, at which point Kevin was thinking we were simply heading back home. Er, no. We needed to get some miles under our butts and generate some heat to dry out our clothes! Fortunately, about halfway down to Woodside the skies dried out, making this a reasonable plan. From the bottom we turned right and headed out to Portola Valley, looped through Los Altos, and then returned via Sand Hill. In the end it was just 46 miles, but much harder than you’d think due to some very stiff headwinds most of the way back. Total climbing was about 4300ft, more than I thought, but it was pushing forward through the headwinds that has my legs feeling like I rode!

Oh, should mention one really good thing was that this was the first Sunday ride in several weeks where Kevin hasn’t had even a minor seizure. His combination of meds has been changing, and hopefully we’re finally seeing things stabilize. That would be a very good thing, especially since the trip to France to see the ‘Tour and ride the big mountains is less than 90 days away!

Two Kevins today! Plus Karl, plus fog, plus gradually learning to edit video

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride, , , , ,

Kevin (my son, not the pilot) is off school this week, so naturally he was going to show up on one of the Tuesday/Thursday-morning rides, right? Preferably both? Yeah, right, the last thing a kid wants to do when they don’t have school is get up early; Kevin begged out of Tuesday’s ride with that excuse, but made an agreement that he’d be there today. So, I got up 15 minutes earlier than normal (not fun; I don’t like getting up when the first digit on the clock shows a “6”) and was happy to see that the forecast rain hadn’t materialized so I could ride my nice bike and we didn’t have to throw fenders on Kevin’s.

We rode up to the start a few minutes early, planning to tell whomever might be there that we’d be getting a bit of a head start. Whomever, in this case, was just Karl, but since most show up for this ride with maybe a minute or two to spare, no more, that wasn’t very surprising. I did expect to see Eric, who is most definitely not scared by even a “5” showing up as the first digit on the clock, but it was likely pretty wet where he lives, in the mountains about Los Gatos.

Kevin and I weren’t riding very fast up the hill, but apparently fast enough to hold off Karl and pilot Kevin, whom we finally saw on Skyline just before descending towards Sky Londa (we’d stopped to put on windbreakers, since it had dropped to 41 up on top). The video tells the story… we were, quite literally, riding in the clouds. Don’t worry, this one’s short (under two minutes). The moving black bars are a result of using image stabilization functions in Adobe Premiere Elements to try and get rid of the shakiness from the camera mount.

Things cleared up just past Skeggs Point, and it was quite beautiful out on west-side Old LaHonda. Unfortunately, we learned a bit more about what’s going on with the road, as we met up with a road crew laying down some patches. They told us there were no plans to do anything about the area where the road is sliding down into the canyon, and in fact they have cancelled heavy maintenance (chip-sealing) because the road doesn’t seem to have a future. Very unfortunate that they are still allowing vehicular traffic without restriction through the failing patch of roadway; I’m sure that the road would last much longer if they posted it as being impassable for trucks. Enjoy it while you can!