Category Archives: Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

Ride reports for everything *but* the Tuesday-Thursday morning ride

Back to West Old LaHonda being fully-closed again

On yesterday’s ride, we were running quite late because Kevin wasn’t feeling particularly frisky (not to say I was…), so we skipped out on the West Old LaHonda loop. Turned out to be a good thing because the road closure (where the slide took out about half of the road’s width) is finally being repaired and, as of yesterday apparently, it’s now completely fenced off. They’ve had “closed road” signs up for some time, so likely nothing to tell you it’s any different from before, so we would have ridden 3/4 of the way back up towards Skyline before being turned around. We would have been REALLY late had we done that!

So going forward, guess we’re back to what we had to do previously when the road was completely closed. Add in some loops that involve the dead-end roads to the west of Skyline. But first, tomorrow morning, we’ll ride as far as the fenced-off road closure to get some photos, so we can send out an email letting people know about it. Pictures tend to get more attention than words. 🙂

Sunday’s ride- A repeat of the ride I did two weeks ago, looping down through Los Altos and then Mt Eden, returning through Los Gatos and stopping at the usual Peet’s in Los Altos for coffee and food. I felt like crap at the start but after 15 miles or so began to loosen up and feel better. By the end I was doing pretty well. Got to figure out how to feel that way at the start! What’s the secret? Really long warm ups?

When your last Pescadero/Tunitas ride was almost 7 months ago…

When you’re doing a round trip from Redwood City to the coast, and not far past the middle of your ride your computer tells you you’ve got 2 good miles left in your legs… that’s what happens when you haven’t done a Pescadero run since August. Not pretty!

Would have been nice to ride as many miles as my age on my birthday, but 68 miles just wasn’t in the cards; it’s been ages since I’ve had a long, hard ride. Heck, I didn’t even do my traditional Mt Hamilton New Years Day ride this year. Life has gotten in the way, big time. Most of the change goes back to my wife’s Stage IV cancer diagnosis; from that point on, priorities changed in an absolute way. I’m only just now becoming comfortable with thinking about things in less than absolute terms; until now, I think I’ve used her cancer as an easy-out card for keeping myself in shape.

August 20th since Kevin and I had done a Pescadero/Tunitas ride. That’s just crazy. And even longer than that since we’ve had a really good cookie face test photo.

It wasn’t an elegant ride; Old LaHonda was pretty tough, but it did come with a turkey crossing not far past the halfway point; that was pretty cool. Stopped to film them before continuing on.

Should add that the weather was really nice, a bit cooler than the prior two days, but I was able to use regular gloves for most of the ride, and didn’t even bring the electric-heated ones. Still needed a lightweight base layer, but there were times when we wished we’d left the leg warmers behind. Did cool down a bit at the coast, as we headed north on Stage Road, as well as descending Kings.

Pescadero bakery did not disappoint! Kevin and I always order the club chicken sandwich, which used to be consistently extraordinary but over the past few years has been a bit less reliable, sometimes with pretty chewy chicken. No issue with that today, and the cookie… they’re back to their monstrous size again.

Saw David K on a classic older bike that’s actually worth riding because it’s so radically different in how things work; most older bikes are just old and less functional than newer stuff, but this bike’s gear system was amazing to look at.

Stage Road heading north went better for Kevin than me. Something about being half my age seems to work in favor of doing well on a tougher ride without having recently done a lot of miles. Hate that. But we were both happy to have finished Tunitas in under an hour (56:25), my “fastest” time since last August.

I really was surprised it’s been 7 months since last doing a ride that Kevin and I used to to twice a month with regularity, sometimes more.