I’ve been working in Campbell, CA for the past few months. I started towards the end of March. Until yesterday, I hadn’t been on my bike at all since moving here. I don’t currently own running shoes. It’s pretty pathetic. I’ve gone “walking” a few times, but it’s really pathetic. I have used my achilles pain as an excuse to either not start an activity, or to cut it drastically short. Yesterday I walked all the way home from work and I didn’t die. I didn’t even feel any pain. I think the excuses are over… at least the ones related to that. :-)

Charmaine had a grand vision of us riding over the mountains to Santa Cruz and back. I decided I was on board. I didn’t believe I could make it, at least not without taking all day, but I was on board anyway. Luckily for me, we couldn’t find my gloves. I normally have 3 pair of gloves: My favorite pair (gel vent), my backup pair (gel), and my full fingered winter-in-utah pair. Today we could only find one glove from my backup pair. That’s not enough to ride. So we ordered some new gel vent gloves on Amazon. Then we found a second glove, but we had missed the morning ride window, so we decided to do a shorter (more sane) ride in the evening.

San Jose has really interesting weather. It’s usually nice and cool all morning till ten or eleven. Then it heats up like crazy, shooting up almost 50 degrees. Then it drops back down to nice and cool even faster than it warmed up. By 5:00 it’s usually back under 80 and by dark it’s 60 or less. It’s been over 100 at the peak on some of the hot days, but we haven’t had to run our air conditioner yet, because it doesn’t stay hot outside long enough to heat up the house.

So we went riding tonight. Charmaine has been doing a bit of riding around town without me (since I’ve been milking my fake excuses), so she knows all the roads and paths and everything. I was following her until the turn off to the 17 path. I totally missed it, then we got separated while I tried to find my way back. Then I went north while she went south, etc. It was a proud series of actions on my part.

But we finally got back together, rode the trail south, then got on the nice road up through the foothills of Saratoga, then took Saratoga down to Cambpell, then came back home. It was a great ride, but it was about all my poor butt could handle. Let’s just say I’m not used to sitting in the saddle anymore. I guess I need more practice.