Category Archives: Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Endless ramblings regarding the every Tuesday & Thursday-morning bike ride, leaving Olive Hill & Canada Road at 7:45am, rain or shine

My life in pictures

Tdf trip planning, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

A couple weeks ago I developed, simultaneously, a pretty sore left shoulder and a really nasty nerve pinch in my right hand. It’s likely the shoulder came from descending Umunhum a few weeks ago; the descent requires an enormous amount of braking pressure, and things were likely made a bit worse when I did a fair amount of test-riding my son’s bike prior to his taking it to France. His setup is really strange; due to a knee issue he has to have his saddle tilted way down at the nose, which shoves you into the bars, putting a lot of pressure on your hands and… shoulders.

Unfortunately, it was going to be about two weeks before I could see an ortho at Kaiser, and during that time my right hand issue resolves on its own, but the shoulder… still there. Activity generally made it feel better; sleeping has been a problem. So I kept the appointment and got a bunch of x-rays showing nothing serious, no problem riding in France. She even offered cortisone shots if it got bad enough (it’s not that bad) and overall had a great amount of respect for someone who wants to stay active.

So not exactly a clean bill of health, but a much better message than I could have received. Hard to say if that was what helped me climb Kings faster this morning, or if it was the nicer weather (finally, no leg warmers or base layers!!!).

All of this a really good thing since Kevin and I will be heading to France today (Wednesday) to catch up with the ‘Tour. We’ll be flying SFO-LHR-GVE (Geneva), then taking a train from Geneva to Annecy, where we’ll be staying until a week from Friday. Annecy will allow us to see 6 stages either solely by bike or extending our range with local trains… no rental car, yay! Some very challenging rides, a couple not so bad. More detail shortly (I’ll probably be posting our itin from the plane). Only thing I’m not looking forward to is the apparent lack of air conditioning. Annecy is one of those strange regions in France where they still don’t believe in air conditioning. But it won’t be too hot, right? Nah. Mid 90s… we might break our previous record for Orangina consumption. Fortunately, I do better in too-hot weather than too-cold.

Santa Cruz would have been nice, but needed to get into Bike Friday mode for France

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Today was the shake-down cruise for the Bike Fridays. Originally it was hoped the weather would get nicer and we could finally get in a killer (and it would kill me) ride to Santa Cruz. And of course I’m determined to ride in weather a bit closer (as in, warmer) to what we’ll experience in France. Trust me, there will be no fog in France. Rain, yes, that’s a given. But it’s going to be warm and muggy.

Trying to avoid Old LaHonda as much as possible, we rode up Kings, as we usually would on a Tuesday morning. Not much fun later in the day when it’s busier; getting behind slower cyclists (what, slower than me?) and having cars back up gets tiring, and they won’t pass, even where it’s safe to do so. The crackdown on drivers dangerously crossing into the other lane has definitely been effective, but maybe went just a bit overboard.

Curiously I was about the same speed on the Bike Friday as I would have been on my regular bike. I took that as a good sign for the trip ahead. We stopped a number of times to address small issue; the bikes have been used for 10 or 11 trips so far, so it’s surprising there aren’t any large issues showing up.

Once up top we headed south to 84, then down to LaHonda for refueling. Kevin and I split a roast beef sandwich, and ate a Snickers Peanut Butter something. Not terribly impressed with it. The Mtn Dew was top notch, though.

Heat was definitely getting to me on the way up West Alpine, but that’s a good thing, that’s what I need to get used to. Most of the time Kevin was stronger, but we did trade a few punches on the way up.

Then down Page Mill, looped back up into Portola Valley & Woodside, and ended up with just barely over 50 miles. Most disappointing thing on the ride? No lemonade stands! A nice 4th of July day and no lemonade stands? What’s the world coming to?