Tag Archives: seizure

It’s what I do & who I am

The Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride on the lower section of west-side Old LaHonda

How do we define ourselves? Is it the things we’ve accumulated over the years? Our education? How much we weigh, whether our hair has turned gray (if it’s there at all), having to wear reading glasses… ok, this is heading more towards defining our age. I think that’s a guy thing, or at least guys spend a lot of time talking about getting older. If women do spend time talking about this stuff, it’s not around guys. Getting back to the subject…

I ride bikes. That, aside from family stuff, is really what defines me. Sure, my brother and I own a pair of bike shops, and I’ve had to become much more savvy as a business person over the years to keep things afloat in a world that has increasingly less room for error. But if I were suddenly transported into another culture, an alien planet, or maybe Arkansas, it would ultimately be my cycling that defined me.

Today’s definition included the usual Tuesday ride up Kings, stopping for a few minutes halfway up while Kevin (my son, not the pilot) had a seizure (which happens more often than not lately), followed by an enjoyable dash across Skyline, descent on 84 towards the coast for a few miles, then the always-pretty ride up west-side Old LaHonda before diving back down into Woodside.

I wasn’t feeling great for the first part of the ride; something about 53 degrees showing on the bike computer that explained why my lungs were working worse than usual, but finished fairly strong, including the final sprint at Albion, contested primarily by Kevin (my son, not the pilot) who surprised me by flying past early. Thankfully too early, because I was able to come up to his rear wheel for a moment or two, giving me just enough draft to slingshot past at the line. It was close. Too close. But a win is a win. I’m not dead yet.

I am a cyclist. It’s what I do & who I am.  –Mike–

 

68 miles, 7200ft of climbing, it should’ve seemed easier than it was!

Stage Road between San Gregorio and Highway 1

It didn’t seem like that tough a ride. Head up Page Mill, down the other side to Pescadero, Stage Road to Tunitas Creek and back. Nothing convoluted. But what we didn’t count on was much-warmer temperatures (high-80s, not hot by any means) and forgetting that Page Mill towards the beginning of a ride is just plain rude.

Kevin continues to ride strongly, but our idea of caffeine holding off his seizures didn’t work out as he had two on this ride, one about 2/3rds of the way up Page Mill, and another one much later, about 2/3rds of the way up Tunitas. The first one left him a bit groggy but on Tunitas, he couldn’t wait to get back up on the bike and continue the climb; his total down time was almost exactly a minute, and having recently passed a number of other cyclists on the way up, he wanted to make sure they didn’t have a chance to catch back up.

Oh, guess I should point out that a bit earlier, he had dropped me on the climb and it looked like he was gone for good, but I gradually began to claw my way back up to him, doing the best Levi Leipheimer imitation I could muster.

The high point of the ride? Seeing so many of our customers out there on bikes we’ve sold them, some of them recently, some of them 20 years old.