Monthly Archives: August 2010

This is Kevin’s idea of taking it easy?

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

I know better than to take Kevin’s (the pilot) word when he says he’s going to take it easy up the hill. You’d think his bike ride up Mt. Evans a few days ago might have actually slowed him down, but that clearly wasn’t the case. That’s OK, I’ll do what I can, and there were plenty of other people out this morning whom I could actually trust to run me into the ground climbing Kings! None of them disappointed. Thank goodness for Karl, who will sometimes hang back with me and give me a wheel for the climb.

The weather? Pretty darned foggy at first, although not cold (still required leg warmers though). We climbed out of the fog about halfway up Kings though, and had nice dry roads for the descents. This was supposed to be our first “alternate” routing, since roadwork on Kings was going to start today, but seeing no sign of it we took our chances (and won, this time).

Y’know, I’m pretty sure this ride keeps me alive. When I think about all the various issues I face each day, the usual work & family and life in general, it’s probably a good thing that there’s this one complete constant in my life. I leave the house at 7:33am, arrive in time for the 7:45am start (usually with about 90 seconds to spare), and get back almost exactly two hours after I left. Every Tuesday & Thursday morning, no matter what.

What’s the attraction to 90 degree weather?

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

I don’t get it. Kevin and I had a great ride to Santa Cruz (and back) today, enjoying temps ranging from 64 to 75 degrees, and I don’t know how it could get a whole lot nicer for a long ride.

112 miles (again; this ride holds few surprises as Kevin’s done it 3 times now this summer, and I’ve done it 4), heading up Old LaHonda, down the other side, over Haskins to Pescadero, than various inland roads that eventually put you out on the coast about 10 miles south of Pescadero, 14 miles north of Davenport. If the ride had a low point, it was Kevin mentioning that his computer showed we had covered 20 miles and had 92 to go (this was a few miles out of Pescadero).

Unlike previous weeks, we saw quite a few people on the “other” side of the hill, including a number of our customers. For example, Dana (riding a Trek Madone we sold her a year ago), in the photo here, who was riding with two others from Half Moon Bay to Davenport for lunch. We’d passed them a bit earlier and they caught up to us at the Davenport’s Whale City Bakery, a great place to eat be be aware they take only cash, no credit cards.

It was a bit breezy on the coast but at least slightly tailwind, some crosswind on the run into Santa Cruz. Fueled by peanut butter cookies, chocolate muffins and a coke, we were in no danger of bonking like I did on my own two weeks ago. The formal lunch stop was at the same Mexican food place I tried on that earlier ride, but this time determined not to eat quite so much. At least I was. Kevin decided that a “taco” was probably not enough, so he ordered two. Preceding “taco” was the word “super” and in the end, “a” taco was all he ate, and that provided plenty of fuel for the long ride up 9 and across Skyline.

Good thing it wasn’t hot, because by the time we got to 9 & Skyline, the Hot Dog guy with the cokes was gone! No problem, we had plenty of Cytomax, and as mentioned earlier, we weren’t going hungry either. In the end we averaged 15.7mph, 2 mph faster than the same ride the week before we left for France (of course, that was on our Bike Friday folding bikes). I’ll have to look up our average speed for the ride we did a month or so earlier on our regular bikes, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t quite this fast.