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Felt like turning back early, kept going, glad I did!


San Mateo County's latest efforts to keep cyclists off West Old LaHonda road.
Finally, a day that's not insanely hot, just hot. I can deal with hot, right? I sure didn't feel like I was dealing with hot very well as I started up Old LaHonda! I think the preceding two insanely hot days took something out of me, even though I wasn't on a bike, so by the time this morning came around, there just wasn't much feeling of power in my legs. Old LaHonda felt like the toughest, slowest grind it's been in years, and I was giving serious thought to modifying the original plan, maybe shortening the ride a lot by heading down Kings. Thankfully, I started feeling better as I neared the top, and heading down the other side things started falling into place.

Of course, things came to a temporary stop when I saw the concrete barriers shown in the photo above! Fortunately not so tall you can't lift a bike over them. I've posted a rant on Facebook about them and won't get into all the details here. Clearly we are not wanted on that road, so if you're riding it, you need to consider it as, at best, an act of civil disobedience.

As I approached LaHonda I still had some thought of cutting the planned ride (Pescadero Tunitas) short, maybe by heading up West Alpine, but y'know, on a hot day, climbing the upper section of West Alpine just didn't seem terribly attractive to me! So I dropped into the La Honda market for more water and a Mtn Dew and set off for Pescadero. Amazingly, Haskins Grade seemed not-so-bad! Things just got better and better as I went.

Curiously, very few people in Pescadero today, despite it being a very pleasant 74. I did do something a bit different than normal, heading up the coast instead of Stage Road, thinking it might be just a little bit cooler. Probably was; 72-76 degrees between Pescadero and Tunitas.

Tunitas? I took it fairly easy, stopping twice on the way up (once to take a picture, another to deal with the very large amount of water I'd been drinking, some of which needed to be, er, released?), trying to actually enjoy the climb.

Crazy busy up on top due to the Kings Mountain Art Fair, with quite a bit of traffic on Kings itself. This would not have been a good day to be riding up Kings, that's for sure!

Temps never got higher than 97. I can deal with that! Really glad I didn't turn back earlier. --Mike--
Post date: 2017-09-03 23:38:32
Post date GMT: 2017-09-04 06:38:32
Post modified date: 2017-09-04 00:04:33
Post modified date GMT: 2017-09-04 07:04:33
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