I wish I’d had a camera this morning that I could actually access while riding (not just my cell phone stuffed away in a bag). I went out for a ride before work, leaving the house at 6:30 and getting back just before 8. It was a beautiful morning, and a rather marvelous ride. I returned home feeling tired but invigorated and very awake. Usually at 8 I’m just stumbling out of bed and into the kitchen.

Highlights: sunrise and the gradual creep of the sun upward, the wisp of fog still lying on the hills, the three deer grazing in a meadow in Portola Valley. (I looked up from my bike and said aloud “Oh! Deer!” and then laughed at my inadvertent pun.) Realizing that my leg warmers didn’t fall down and it’s probably because I have muscles now.

Lowlights: Sun in my eyes/mirror, people violating traffic laws, that damn third climb on Sand Hill past Whiskey Hill. There’s some particular grade percentage where I hit my climbing limit, and that hill, the steepest part of Edgewood, and Arastradero right past the 280 underpass going north are it.

Still, I managed to push myself decently. Stats:
DST: 17.8 mi
AVS: 14.2 mph
MXS: Don’t know because my cyclocomputer got fooled by a detector, I would guess around 26-27 mph.
Ride time: 1:15 (total time 1:25)

Traffic wasn’t nonexistent, but it was light, especially on Portola where I saw about as many cyclists as cars, and not many of either. The worst spots were Alpine at 280 and Sand Hill between Santa Cruz and El Camino, but mostly even those were fine. 6:30 seems to be a good compromise between “ridiculously early” and “late enough to run into bad traffic issues”.