Category Archives: Personal stuff

The almost-weekly check-in?

Tough to explain how it was an accomplishment to get up Kings this morning in 47 minutes but that’s all Kevin’s knee would allow. In retrospect we should have stayed down low, but this was going to be Kevin’s last ride for a week and a half (he and his girlfriend are heading to Disneyworld next week for a much-needed break). It was interesting to note that, even at such a slow speed, my breathing was still quite audible and slightly labored. Very much looking forward to the latest series of lung tests starting towards the end of this month!

Distractions. Never could I imagine so many things going on all at once. My wife’s battle with Stage IV breast cancer, which has spread to one of her lungs… if not for Keytruda, she’d probably not be around. Having to constantly monitor blood work, making sure she’s healthy enough to handle more poison pumped into her system, and hoping she ends up one of the many Keytruda miracles who were given a very short time to live but keep pushing that expiration date out, over and over and over again. Tough figuring out what to plan for… how far in advance you can organize a vacation, and having to think about whether a vacation could be costly not just in terms of $$$ but also the ramifications of missing a treatment that in retrospect shouldn’t have been missed. You just can’t know.

And then there’s my mom, being treated for lymphoma that somehow found its way to her central nervous system, something so rare it wasn’t even considered a possibility when they were looking at a mass adjacent to her brain that was causing language and motor skill issues. An awful lot of doctor visits, treatments, hospital stays and planning that, just like with my wife, don’t have the luxury of being able to deal with when convenient. You just have to make time for it. She is, thankfully, doing remarkably well. The irony is that, had the doctors realized the mass adjacent to her brain was from her lymphoma issue and not “just” a meningioma, they might not have operated, and had they not operated, instead of being in a really good place right now, she’d have been on a steadily deteriorating path. At 93, they tend not to offer up somewhat heroic operations (like brain surgery) if there’s anything making it more complex. Complex health issues and 93 year old patients normally don’t have great outcomes. But that’s the thing. They don’t know my mom. Her own mother lived to be 102 after all!

And now son Kevin’s knee, which is happening at the same time he’s also experiencing a pretty heavy uptick in seizure frequency. And daughter Becky’s shoulder surgeries.

It’s a lot of stuff all at once, and it’s not just affecting my riding, but also the business. It’s really tough trying to feel creative and enhance marketing efforts needed to bring customers into the store when all this is going on. It’s not exactly how I thought things would be at 68.

But ultimately I do have to keep a focus on riding. There’s that objects-in-motion-tend-to-stay-in-motion thing. My health is much better when I push my physical limits. There’s a feeling of control in a world where so many things seem beyond my control. It all also reminds me that writing is something I need to keep up as well.

Another solo ride, but at least full-distance. It’s been a tough month.

Last Sunday Kevin and I were supposed to to an easy hill ride, with a few miles. Ride up Old LaHonda then Skyline all the way to 9, down into Los Altos for the usual stop at Peet’s, and back via the foolhills. Didn’t work out as planned; Kevin’s knee was protesting pretty nastily so we cut things short, descending Page Mill and looping back through Portola Valley & Woodside. Under 40 miles just doesn’t cut it for a Sunday ride! But we couldn’t push our luck with his knee. He saw a doctor for it on Tuesday, and a physical therapist, at 7:30am, this morning. 7:30am??? Things are a bit tougher to figure out because he can’t have an MRI done, due to the computer installed on top of his brain. Big magnets aren’t a good idea.

Kevin did ride with me Tuesday morning, but we stayed out of the hills. Feels very very strange doing something other than heading up to Skyline on a Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride. We rode the Loop, including Arastradero, ending up just a mile or so short of the normal distance, but a whole lot less climbing.

Then today, while Kevin was at his PT appointment, it was just me out there. Surprisingly few other cyclists on the road; saw nobody on Skyline or West Old LaHonda. Nice morning as you can see from the video; the fog was further out towards the coast, and dry roads all the way!

Hopefully, with my mom’s brain surgery in the past (having a large meningioma removed, which sounds bad by itself, and add that it’s being removed from a 93 year old…). She’s recovering nicely, and hopefully we can get things back on track at the bike shop now. It just kinda feels like everything began going downwhill after Kevin and I got back from France. Time to reverse that. Time for Kevin to have fewer seizures too; it was 4 today and maybe 7 yesterday.

But this morning, even though riding alone, there was some feeling of normalcy. Heck, at the end of the ride I was even thinking, 9:29am, that’s just 7 minutes off a good time from the fast days way back when. Maybe way way way back when. It really does help having working power meters on the bike, no question.

At least Karen’s cancer seems stable and our November 17th-December 1st vacation is on! Flying into Amsterdam so she can see Anne Frank’s house, then train to Paris for a day, then board a cruise ship where the highlight will be a goat cheese farm and the Rock of Gibraltar. Our 4th cruise, not in as fancy a room as the last two but still pretty darned nice, still an Aft cabin so we can go to sleep with the sound of the ship’s wake through open doors. Looking forward to that! And also looking forward to the TdF route presentation in October. There are some things down the road to work towards. Just have to keep that in mind when things seem a tad bit crazy.