Monthly Archives: March 2013

Still not business-as-usual (The Plan wasn’t executed, 40 miles instead of 57)

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

Well darn, it would really be nice for things to resemble “normal” again. After losing rides from being in DC a week and a half ago, then doing the zombie thing (riding just a couple hours sleep, an interesting experiment that I would prefer to not repeat) on this week’s Tuesday & Thursday-morning rides… let’s just say I was ready for something normal. And normal in this case, was going to be a ride of at least 57 miles, figuring that I might as well match the number of miles to my age on my birthday. I should have known better. Kevin’s still having pretty severe kidney stone issues, so I was fortunate to get 30 miles out of him, basically a reverse of the normal Tuesday/Thursday ride.

It was looking like it wasn’t even going to be close to 30 miles; we’d headed up Old LaHonda, down the back side, back up to Skyline and then down the other side of 84 into Woodside, except that, somehow, I convinced Kevin that we should detour back up to Skyline via Skywood Way after following a too-slow car for a mile down the hill. Skywood Way used to be a through-road to Skyline until maybe 30 years ago when they blocked off the Skyline side. No biggie if you’re on a bike, just 20 feet or so that you have to walk your bike. You can see the details in the Strava report below, and, shortly, in a youtube that I’m uploading.

Sleep? Why? You can still ride!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Actually it was a bit tiring, probably finally falling asleep the prior night around 4am for a variety of reasons, not a small part of which had been Kevin’s kidney stones that had cast me in the role of a bad father because I wouldn’t take him to the emergency room for pain meds. The thinking was that, at 11pm, we’d be there for 3 hours minimum, leaving no earlier than 2am, and past history, which replayed according to plan, would have the worst of it over by 1am anyway. It’s just not a lot of fun, seeing your kid in pain like that.

Even though Kevin got more sleep than I did, I was nice and didn’t try to haul him out on the ride. Instead I went through the motions, the same motions I’ve done many hundreds of times before, meet up with Karl, Eric, Nigel and Marcus and head up to Skyline. Since it was a Thursday we went up through the park, and my barely-under-29-minute time was perfectly satisfactory (to me). Nigel actually turned back before getting halfway up the hill, feeling like he just didn’t have it in him today. But for me, well, I just kept going, one foot after the other.

Everything was going nicely until West Old LaHonda, where I got one of my exceptionally-rare flat tires. A flat tire that took longer to take care of than it should have because the first time I inflated it, the removable valve core unscrewed, letting out all the air. No fun! But 10 minutes later we were back on our way.

Just to be clear, given the choice, I’d rather be able to ride with a reasonable amount of sleep than without.