Monthly Archives: January 2012

I like contrast, yes, but not this much contrast

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

I’ve often said that any day you can see your shadow is a good day. I like the sun, I don’t like gray. I like contrast, and when you can see your shadow, there’s contrast. This morning the sun was out for most of the ride, as were quite a few people. No way I’d be able to name them all but I’ll try… Karen, Karl, Marcus, Kevin, Kevin, Eric, George, Todd, Nigel, Mike… including me that’s only 11. OK, that might be right, 11 is a pretty decent size group for our ride.

It was on the climb up Kings where the contrast actually become a bit much for my tastes. The contrast between myself, admittedly weakened a bit by a cold that’s hung on for several weeks, and my son, who’s getting faster and faster. He got to the top of Kings wondering where 9 seconds went (27:08, a very good time for the middle of winter) while I got up just over two minutes later. It was less than a year ago, seriously, that we considered having Kevin start up a couple minutes earlier than the rest of the group.

Shadows & Fog. MikeF, KevinJ & Nigel rounding a corner on west-side Old LaHonda
Shadows & Fog. Shadows are a reflection of what and where you are. They’re definitive, as in, right now, everyone else is faster than me. The Fog represents a potential that may or may not be reached. I’ll get stronger and lose weight as we emerge from winter, but will it be enough? Kevin is at 182, I’m at 173. I hope to get back down to 167 like I did last season, so I have potential. But if Kevin leans out, things could really get wild. Thus a foggy future!

One less car trip (my bike knows the way to Frys)

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

Kevin pulling up to Frys Electronics in Palo Alto. It was only a matter of time before my bike found its way there.
The weather reports had been questionable; it seemed like there would be an opportunity for a quick run to the coast and back via Tunitas ahead of the storm, so Kevin and I got up early enough to give it a shot. Unfortunately, while at 11pm last night it showed the rain not hitting until noon today, at 7:30am this morning it showed it nearly upon us, with the skies confirming that we would, indeed, need to be riding our rain bikes.

Yuck. It was a great ride while it lasted; over a month since we’d last seen any rain, the longest stretch of dry weather I can remember. So instead of riding our Madones it was time to check out the rain bikes, which needed new brake pads, something I don’t have at home. No biggie; we rode down to the shop and got a bit of much-needed work done on them before heading back out onto the now-wet roads. Tunitas Creen was no longer in the cards, because I had to get back in time to pick up some hard drives at Frys. And that gave me the idea of using our bikes to avoid driving to Frys. Why not pick up the stuff via bike? Plenty of room in the rack bag for some hard drives and a copy of Windows 7, and why not walk through the place in cycling garb? The only thing I didn’t plan for was my inability to read product details without my reading glasses! Hate that.

After Frys we dropped in at Mike’s Bikes to check out how they’re doing things; now that we’ve got most of the remodel under our belt I feel a bit more secure visiting other dealers. Funny how that works. Graham, their manager, showed us around. Very nice guy; I should have asked if he’d be interested in attending the annual DC Bike Summit in March.

From there we rode home via The Loop, 48 degrees and raining and generally pretty comfortable… which caused us some amusement when, watching the 49er game later that day, the announcers were talking about the “miserable” conditions at the game… 52 degrees and raining. Wimps. 🙂