Tag Archives: Kings Mountain

Two Kevins today! Plus Karl, plus fog, plus gradually learning to edit video

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride, , , , ,

Kevin (my son, not the pilot) is off school this week, so naturally he was going to show up on one of the Tuesday/Thursday-morning rides, right? Preferably both? Yeah, right, the last thing a kid wants to do when they don’t have school is get up early; Kevin begged out of Tuesday’s ride with that excuse, but made an agreement that he’d be there today. So, I got up 15 minutes earlier than normal (not fun; I don’t like getting up when the first digit on the clock shows a “6”) and was happy to see that the forecast rain hadn’t materialized so I could ride my nice bike and we didn’t have to throw fenders on Kevin’s.

We rode up to the start a few minutes early, planning to tell whomever might be there that we’d be getting a bit of a head start. Whomever, in this case, was just Karl, but since most show up for this ride with maybe a minute or two to spare, no more, that wasn’t very surprising. I did expect to see Eric, who is most definitely not scared by even a “5” showing up as the first digit on the clock, but it was likely pretty wet where he lives, in the mountains about Los Gatos.

Kevin and I weren’t riding very fast up the hill, but apparently fast enough to hold off Karl and pilot Kevin, whom we finally saw on Skyline just before descending towards Sky Londa (we’d stopped to put on windbreakers, since it had dropped to 41 up on top). The video tells the story… we were, quite literally, riding in the clouds. Don’t worry, this one’s short (under two minutes). The moving black bars are a result of using image stabilization functions in Adobe Premiere Elements to try and get rid of the shakiness from the camera mount.

Things cleared up just past Skeggs Point, and it was quite beautiful out on west-side Old LaHonda. Unfortunately, we learned a bit more about what’s going on with the road, as we met up with a road crew laying down some patches. They told us there were no plans to do anything about the area where the road is sliding down into the canyon, and in fact they have cancelled heavy maintenance (chip-sealing) because the road doesn’t seem to have a future. Very unfortunate that they are still allowing vehicular traffic without restriction through the failing patch of roadway; I’m sure that the road would last much longer if they posted it as being impassable for trucks. Enjoy it while you can!

New-guy Jim, Karl’s back, Robert makes an appearance and generally yet another great day to ride!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride, , ,

As the weather turns nicer, it would seem normal that more people would show up for the every-Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride, but sometimes the opposite happens, as people find ways to do longer rides later in the day, and don’t want to be softened-up too much by a hard ride up the hill beforehand. But today, I think people just wanted to get out and ride!

A beautiful morning to ride up Kings Mtn. Spring is finally here!

Roll call? New-guy Jim from Foster City (mid-40s so he’s not wrecking the age curve too badly), Marcus, Kevin (pilot Kevin), Karen, George, Karl (back on the bike after taking some time off to play chess) and Robert, whom we haven’t seen in quite some time on our morning ride but I see often on my trips to the coast. Eight of us total, a good-sized group for the morning ride.

A bit cooler than I’d hoped for; very comfortable, no issue there, but at 48 degrees on the initial part of the climb, and never warming up past 50 on Skyline and the far side of the hill, my breathing was labored. I really look forward to mid-60s weather, since that’s when my lungs start to open up and I don’t sound like a leaky steam engine. I hung with the faster riders, who weren’t riding particularly fast, until we got to the steeper sections on the last quarter of the climb. George had already decided he was going to take the sprints today by going off the front ahead of me, and I was in no shape to bridge the gaps… that will come later.

Unfortunately Marcus didn’t head for home up on Skyline, so I found myself trying to stay glued to his rear wheel on the upper reaches of west-side Old LaHonda, well in front of the rest of the group, who had decided to ride at a more-sensible pace and enjoy the surrounding instead of being fixated on the distance between your front wheel and the rear wheel ahead.

The only thing to spoil a near-perfect ride was a red sedan that thought we were going too slowly down 84 so he decided to tailgate the guys at the back, which is never a comfortable situation. The car finally did pass us, in an extremely-dangerous location and nearly sent a car coming up the hill into a ditch… all to save maybe 4 seconds at the bottom, at most, since we were able to catch back up to him pretty quickly. He was probably running 10 minutes late for work and undoubtedly will blame us for the additional 9 minutes, 56 seconds.