Monthly Archives: September 2011

68 miles, 7200ft of climbing, it should’ve seemed easier than it was!

Stage Road between San Gregorio and Highway 1

It didn’t seem like that tough a ride. Head up Page Mill, down the other side to Pescadero, Stage Road to Tunitas Creek and back. Nothing convoluted. But what we didn’t count on was much-warmer temperatures (high-80s, not hot by any means) and forgetting that Page Mill towards the beginning of a ride is just plain rude.

Kevin continues to ride strongly, but our idea of caffeine holding off his seizures didn’t work out as he had two on this ride, one about 2/3rds of the way up Page Mill, and another one much later, about 2/3rds of the way up Tunitas. The first one left him a bit groggy but on Tunitas, he couldn’t wait to get back up on the bike and continue the climb; his total down time was almost exactly a minute, and having recently passed a number of other cyclists on the way up, he wanted to make sure they didn’t have a chance to catch back up.

Oh, guess I should point out that a bit earlier, he had dropped me on the climb and it looked like he was gone for good, but I gradually began to claw my way back up to him, doing the best Levi Leipheimer imitation I could muster.

The high point of the ride? Seeing so many of our customers out there on bikes we’ve sold them, some of them recently, some of them 20 years old.

Is Caffeine the answer?

The hardest thing about taking this photo? Riding ahead of the group to get it!

Following up on last Sunday’s successful ride, where Kevin rode 84 miles seizure-free including new personal-best times up Old LaHonda and West Alpine, we tried the Caffeine supplement (a bottled Starbucks Mocha Frappaccino, complete with 100mg+ of the good stuff) again. And again, no seizures!

Big group again, so no attempt to name everyone. It was a Thursday, technically our easier ride, but it didn’t really feel like it, as we did have Marcus, Chris and Kevin (the pilot) pushing the pace, along with Karl a bit later (he tends to come on very strongly on west-side Old LaHonda.

Got a note from Karl after the ride- “No seizure today, but I think the caffeine makes him ride too fast! Was a bit surprised/disappointed to see you both hanging with me up WOLH.” Actually there’s a story that goes along with that. I was determined not to get dropped too early on the run up west-side Old LaHonda (WOLH) so I was hanging onto Karl’s wheel for dear life. Kevin was hanging back a bit with the rest of the group, when Chris told him some variant of “You’re not going to let your Dad get away, are you?” That was enough to kick Kevin into high gear, almost ditching me in the process. Almost but not quite. 🙂