It started out like any other Tuesday or Thursday-morning ride, except that, when I went down to the garage to get going, Kevin was on the floor, having a seizure. Um, ok, not the norm, but he’s been having more than usual lately. It’s over quickly and we’re off, a minute or two later than normal, but should still get to the ride in time.
Should have, would have, if Kevin didn’t have another episode at the top of Jefferson. After this one he wasn’t feeling all that great, slowing our progress and getting us to the 7:45am start at precisely 7:47am. Nobody there. I really wasn’t expecting to see anybody there, and not because it was foggy and cold, but because we leave at 7:45am exactly, no matter what. And they did. And we were in no position to successfully chase as Kevin just wasn’t feeling too hot, at least not until we were well up Kings. That actually made for an interesting ride as we saw many things that would have otherwise escaped our attention at normal (considerably-faster) speed. Like a coyote running across the road, and deer standing by the side, no feeling at all threatened by slow-moving cyclists making very little noise. And a few houses buried way back in the woods, houses we’ve never noticed until now.
And the trash. Just below the archery range, on the last short flatter section before the final steep ramp, Kevin noticed a bunch of trash off to the right, down the hillside a bit. McDonalds and Jack In The Box refuse, tossed out the window by… someone idiotic, someone unappreciative of how nice things can look before we screw it up. So we stopped, Kevin hiked down to pick the stuff up (he had cleat covers so he could do that) (I knew there was a reason I don’t bring them with me!), and then we scrunched it up enough that it would barely fit into our jersey pockets and got back to riding, looking for a trash can. So this helps to explain why it took about 47 minutes getting up Kings today! And the random stop on Skyline, when we found someone’s trash can near the highway.
We ran out of time to do the West Old LaHonda loop, and thought we were so late that it didn’t make sense to ride that section of the ride backward to find the rest of the ride (nor were we sure anybody else was out there). In the end, an interesting ride, and definitely worth encouraging Kevin to keep going after that second seizure. Karl came into the shop later and let me know that they had a number of people out this morning, including himself, JR, Karen, Eric and Mark P. But Kevin and I felt pretty good about picking up the trash.
