Tag Archives: road bike

This road ain’t going nowhere. Not. Let’s enjoy West-side Old LaHonda while we can!

It’s funny the rituals you get into. When it was raining for months on end (or seemed to be), you get into the habit of waking up, opening the shades a bit and checking to see how wet the streets are. This morning, I knew it was going to be nice outside, but I still did exactly the same thing. Woke up, opened the shades a bit and expected to find wet streets. Thank goodness that’s over!

Just a few of us this morning, under bright skies with strong shadows, just the way I like it. Eric, George, Karen and, just for the run up to Skeggs, Marcus (that’s his usual gig; I don’t recall how long it’s been since he’s done the whole ride with us). A pretty easy pace up the hill, although I did try one hard interval, dropping back for a couple hundred meters and then sprinting back up to the lead group. I made it, but with nothing in the tank to spare (thanks partly to the beginning of a cold that I noticed coming on last night and can now confirm its quite real tonight).

This section of west-side Old LaHonda may not have much of a future

Road conditions were surprisingly good; most have held up well despite three solid weeks of rain. Most, not all. That crumbling section of west-side Old LaHonda is becoming narrower by the day, with a very soft, energy-sucking feel as you ride across it. There’s simply nothing supporting the asphalt they’ve dumped onto it, in a cheap attempt to keep the road intact. It’s not going to work; I got the feeling that a single truck driving over that section would be enough to do it in. There are many other areas where the surface is crumbling, but not in danger of falling away, as adjacent hillsides have slipped and basically changed the land the road sits on.

I doubt that the county has the funds to do much road reconstruction these days, and for the few homes along the road, it probably wouldn’t be too much of a hardship for them to have to either head up to Skyline or down to 84 if the road were split in two. The ideal situation for cyclists would be if there remained enough of a cow-path that we could still get through, but not cars.

I picked the wrong wheel to follow this morning!

Today's West-Side Old LaHonda photo. Kevin, on the right, isn't exactly flying in formation here.

The first Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride under daylight saving time meant you wake up and it’s… dark! Hate that. At 7:05am, the world should be bright and the sun should be out and the roads should be dry and a tailwind in every direction!

Yeah, well, whatever. Thankfully the roads were just dry enough to rationalize taking my nice bike (after all, what could be worse than the soaking it got at the end of Sunday’s ride?), and the bike and I responded nicely heading over the hill to the start of the ride. Karen, John, Kevin, George, and a bit later, we were joined by Marcus. We started out at a pretty leisurely pace up the hill, with me being content to sit behind wheels. Funny how that changes the ride; if I go to the front at the start, things get moving too fast, too soon. If I stay behind, the pace remains pretty mellow. For a while. Just past the park, Marcus picked up the speed a bit, and, since I was on his wheel, I wasn’t going to let it go. Follow the wheel. That’s what I do. Just keep that rear wheel 6 inches ahead of your front wheel and stay there. Yeah, sounds so easy, but after a couple hundred meters I noticed everyone else had fallen back, and a hundred meters more and I blew a gasket and dropped back myself. Remember, this is what I do for fun.

Fortunately, I didn’t completely fall apart (a concern I had since I’d missed last-week’s rides while in DC), and I managed to keep my heart rate up pretty high (as high as 177 at one point), an indication that my overall health is fairly good. I was also able to pull fairly strongly across Skyline instead of just sitting on wheels, so maybe I won’t lose as much fitness (or gain as much weight) this winter as I normally do. Let’s hope!