Easy ride Monday in the heat; odd ride Tuesday morning

Heading up Sand Hill on a hot afternoon
Heading up Sand Hill on a hot afternoon

After Sunday’s gnarly ride into and out of Portola State Park, it took a bit of doing to convince Kevin that we should ride at all on Monday, instead of just taking the day off. He wasn’t buying into the idea that his legs would feel better after an easy ride around “the loop.” I did eventually get home out there, waiting of course until it had heated up quite nicely, getting in a short 25 mile ride at a not-so-tough pace. And, amazingly, he did admit that his legs felt a lot better after than before.

Approaching the top of Kings... slowly
Approaching the top of Kings… slowly

Now on to today’s (Tuesday morning’s) ride. Not quite so fun; Kevin was having issues again with his meds which dropped him to about 2/3rds normal speed. Not much fun watching the other guys (Marcus, JR & Karl) ride off ahead, and as his head still hadn’t cleared up on Skyline, we sent the guys on ahead, planning to ride the West Old LaHonda section backward to catch up to them. Along the way we encountered the road crews beginning their resurfacing project; nothing cyclists will think much of as we still get really crappy surface treatment in San Mateo County (Santa Clara County, by contrast, is getting a more-expensive surface treatment that is much friendlier to bikes.

But the big disappointment of the ride was missing what we were told was a HUGE gopher snake hanging out on West Old LaHonda!

Adding to the strangeness of the morning was our return via Old LaHonda, due to the roadwork we’d previously encountered. Actually, it wasn’t a bad ride down Old LaHonda into Woodside, as there was very little traffic and you forget how amazingly-smooth the pavement is. Also a bit odd riding with the Tuesday/Thursday-morning crew on Mountain Home Road. Hopefully, Kevin will be back in gear on Thursday, so I’ll get to write again about being dropped on the big climbs. Business as usual.






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