Tag Archives: old la honda

Skyline between Page Mill & Hwy 9- why so much tougher heading south?

One of these days my son is going to finally realize that his perpetual challenge, expecting me to constantly come up with a ride he hasn’t done before, isn’t such a great idea. You see, there are traditional rides often repeated, for good reason. They’re fun, they’re challenging in a rewarding way, and they’re easily described to others because they’re well-known. For example, if you tell someone you did the Pescadero/Tunitas loop, everyone knows that’s shorthand for Old LaHonda, La Honda, over Haskins Grade to Pescadero, Stage Road to Tunitas and back over the hill and down Kings back into Woodside. A great ride.

But we couldn’t do anything categorized as “the usual.” I have to come up with new twists constantly, at least until I run out of odd permutations. Today was no exception.

The Yellow Jackets weren't giving Kevin much chance to eat his pastry in Pescadero

It started out like a pretty normal ride, heading from Woodside up over Old LaHonda, out to San Gregorio and then Stage Road to Pescadero. Then up over the “harder” side of Haskins Grade, and up the always-challenging West Alpine. OK, so far, tough, but nothing out of the ordinary. On Skyline, you’re expected to head North. Why? Because for some reason heading south on Skyline, especially between Page Mill/West Alpine and Highway 9, is infinitely-tougher than doing the same stretch in the opposite direction. Why? The Highway 9 end is only a few hundred feet higher, and heading north, you fly through those 6 or 7 miles. But it’s a whole different story heading south.

Along the way we came across Katherine, out for a 91(.1?) mile ride to commemorate 9/11
West Alpine's "Bridge of Death"

Once at Saratoga Gap (Skyline & 9) we descended to Redwood Gulch and then plummeted (seriously; Redwood Gulch is incredibly-steep) to Stevens Creek. From there it was a long & largely-flat run back north on Foothill, then back into Woodside via Sand Hill.

Kevin got his best time yet on Old LaHonda (21:45) and rode strongly again on the West Alpine climb (famous for its

It's tough to beat an ice-cold Mtn Dew on a tough ride!

“Bridge of Death” shown in the photo, marking the start of the climb), at 44:36. But once on Skyline, heading south, it was another story. Consider Kevin one more person done in by that should-be-easy but merciless piece of road. He was incredibly happy to pull into the fire station where the machine was happy to take his dollar bill in exchange for a Mtn Dew.

The long haul back on the valley floor wasn’t much fun for him which, again, was something I figured would be the case. One of these days he’ll figure it out. The regular loops, the usual rides… there’s good reason for them being “regular” and “usual.”

First pre-France test of Bike Fridays

It was meant to be a longer ride, but that wasn’t the fault of our Bike Fridays. The plan was initially Woodside, Old LaHonda, Pescadero, loop down to Gazos Creek and back to Pescadero, north on Stage and back via Tunitas. Due to the warm weather we decided to drop the Gazos Creek section, but more pruning was soon to come.

Since we were on our Bike Fridays and not our lighter-weight and more-responsive Trek carbon bikes, I knew we’d be climbing Old LaHonda a bit slower than Kevin’s recent and rapidly-improving times, but the presence of large numbers of rabbits (cyclists ahead of us) and the fear of being passed by dogs (cyclists behind) was propelling Kevin strongly; so strongly in fact that, at the half-way point, he was slightly ahead of his best time ever (23:24). But literally within 20 feet of the top he had one of his more-significant seizures, causing great concern among the many cyclists who traditionally assemble at the top of the climb. I let them know he’d be fine in just a couple of minutes, but it’s got to be an odd thing for someone not familiar with epilepsy to see a cyclist struggle to get off his bike and then stagger around a bit before collapsing to the ground. Me? Old stuff. I know he’ll be fine shortly, and just make sure he gets laid gently on the ground (although today I couldn’t get to him in time).

Kevin sitting in the window at the San Gregorio General Store, talking with Dario (friend & customer)
Riders approaching Highway 1 on Stage Road, just north of San Gregorio

Within a couple of minutes he was mostly fine, but had lost his desire to keep going. I knew this was temporary so we moved on, but by the time we got to La Honda I decided we’d alter the ride a bit more and drop the Pescadero loop in favor of a slightly-shorter Los Lobitos addition. Given a bit more time (and, ironically, a bit of climbing), Kevin would have been fine with the original plan, and in fact by San Gregorio he was feeling very good.

Heading north on Highway 1
Kevin on the easy part of Los Lobitos; looking across the ravine you can see the hard part.

We fueled up with a Coke and Clif Bar and then set out to tame Stage Road, Los Lobitos and Tunitas Creek. While it had been getting quite toasty on the bay side of the mountain (and in the picture showing riders climbing Stage Road, you can see it’s rather heat-hazy up on Skyline in the distance), it was a very comfortable mid-70s on the coast. Dario, a customer we came across at San Gregorio General Store, rode with us as far as Los Lobitos and then continued on to Half Moon Bay (where he’d be eating lunch before turning back and doing Higgins Purissima and then Tunitas). Los Lobitos is one of those roads that starts out deceptively-easy and fun, and then turns into a pretty nasty, steep climb that winds around and eventually connects with Tunitas a few miles in from the coast.

The "other side" of Los Lobitos, seen in the prior photo

By this time Kevin was back to his old self again, riding strongly on the steepest sections and taking advantage of his superior lungs. Hearing Dad’s lungs noisily trying to snag spare oxygen seems to make him climb even faster. That’s OK, I still have more power in my legs; I just have to use them wisely, knowing that a sustained effort is going to put me into oxygen debt that I won’t quickly recover from.

Los Lobitos was the one piece of road we saw no other cyclists on. Actually, we did come across one cyclists, riding in the opposite direction, but no rabbits, no dogs.

Kevin riding up Tunitas Creek, clearly working it hard

Tunitas Creek? Same as it ever was. Steep, creek still running (surprisingly strongly), and today, so many cyclists on it you’d think there was an organized ride going on. Kevin kept a strong pace the whole way up the hill, clearly enjoying the fact that his current level of fitness allows him to pass so many others on the climbs these days. We did adopt a mellower pace on the flatter section up on top.

If we’d known how hot it was going to get as we descended back into Woodside, we might have spent more time on the coast! By the time we got home we felt like we’d had a far tougher ride than the 46 miles indicated, but the ride’s main mission, proving that the Bike Fridays were ready to tackle France in less than two weeks, was accomplished. The time I spent Saturday getting it set up identically to my Madone paid off very well. Now if I could just fix Kevin’s epilepsy as easily as I can deal with bike problems. –Mike–