Road closed? Like that’s going to stop us?

road_closed_wolhMost of the “Big Storm” had passed by the time we got out on our bikes this morning, but the roads were still soaked and sloppy, so it was another ride on the ‘cross bikes. We arrived at the start about 45 seconds late (Kevin had some trouble finding his glasses) and found nobody waiting. Could be that they took off on time, could be that we were it. We took off quickly, trying to catch up with anyone who might be ahead of us, but it was pretty clear we were chasing phantoms as we didn’t see a single bicycle tire track in the wet pavement anywhere on the ride.

It wasn’t fast nor was it nearly as slow as our times indicated, which of course is a bit tough to reconcile. We took a couple minutes exiting through Huddart Park to shed some clothes, and we weren’t riding really fast on the wet pavement; maybe that’s where the extra 15 minutes came from?

Then again, I’m forgetting about the extra time on West Old LaHonda. As seen in the picture, the road was “closed.” You could argue we should have more respect for such signs, but then again, these signs didn’t appear until at least half a mile up West Old LaHonda. There was really no debate; we were going ahead. What’s the worst that can happen? We’re on ‘cross bikes, we’ve got shoes we can hike in. Turned out it was a broken utility poll with a cable, could be power, could be something else, suspended about 3 feet over the road. Easy enough to squeeze under with no danger of electrocution, even if it was a power cable. So sure, the road was closed… to cars.

Despite it being not so bad out there, we saw just two other cyclists as we returned through Woodside. Guess most of them were on sunny Zwift Island this morning, spinning away on trainers in their garages. I’ll take a real ride over virtual just about any day. –Mike–






2 thoughts on “Road closed? Like that’s going to stop us?

    1. There was enough clearance that it wasn’t a safety issue, plus it didn’t have heavy insulators at each end so didn’t appear to be a high-voltage line. A piece I later read on the closure indicated it was a “communications cable” so obviously no big deal, but we didn’t know that at the time.

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