blast from the past.
Since my stupid camera battery was dead, I don't have any new pictures from my ride today. But here's an old picture, from last July, of Paul and Carla and their friend Dave up at Alice's. This is a nice segue to today's entry, which mentions both Carla and Alice's. Can't you just feel the cohesion?

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I woke up early today and did the usual minutiae: jumped into the shower, fed the cats, brushed my teeth. I kissed the cats goodbye (much to their annoyance), then hopped on the bike. And didn't go to work.

For the first time in probably a year, I rode up Page Mill Road. Lately, my experiences with Page Mill have been of the descending nature, so it was nice to ride it uphill again, and reacquaint myself with those particular horrors. While the downhill ride consists of gravel, tar snakes, hairpin turns and sudden declines requiring heavy braking, the uphill direction is mostly gravel, tar snakes, hairpin turns, sudden inclines requiring heavy acceleration -- all while dodging the commuters tearing down the hill. Apparently, 9am is the time for the sleepyheads to realize they're late for work, since I encountered quite a few of speeding Beemers and SUVs paying little regard to the centerline while sipping lattes and barreling down Page Mill. Fortunately, they were easy to spot in advance and equally easy to avoid in the road.

I'd ridden up with the intention of turning north on Skyline (aka Highway 35) for a little while, then turning around in one of the many vista points overlooking the Bay, and heading back down Page Mill towards Palo Alto. As I was riding, however, two things occurred to me: (1) it had taken me less time than I'd allotted to get to Skyline, so heading into work now would make me arrive over an hour earlier than normal, and (2) traffic at the bottom of Page Mill heading into Palo Alto was backed up for miles when I passed it earlier (Page Mill is the major freeway exit into Palo Alto from the rest of the valley). So, I decided to keep riding. Skyline was gorgeous this morning. The air was crisp but not cold: just at that temperature where you can notice the air flow through the vents, but it doesn't chill you, and the fog was rolling over the crest of the foothills. I did stop at the vista point for some pictures -- as is lately becoming common, though, the camera battery was dead -- and was amazed as always at the view. The very tips of the East Bay foothills peeked out above the fog across the Bay, reminding me of the last time I flew into Seattle and watched Mt. Rainier over the clouds as the plane descended. It wasn't a particularly clear day; I could just make out the Dumbarton Bridge by knowing where to look, but the San Mateo Bridge was totally obscured. It's still a wonderful view, though.

Afterwards, naturally, since I was so close anyway, I stopped for breakfast at Alice's. I was the only motorcyclist there at 9:20am; there's some sort of construction going on in the general area, so there were lots of trucks in the parking lot across the street, but only one other commuter-type car and then me. I did a "first" for me and parked in the Alice's parking lot itself -- normally I choose the lot across the street, since Alice's lot is gravelly and at a massive incline, but since I was the only one there, I parked sideways and didn't care too much about it. Breakfast consisted of a cup of coffee, a huge platter of fresh fruit, and a huge serving of homemade coffee cake. I sat outside at a picnic table, in the sun. Life was good.

I took Highway 84/Woodside Road back down the hill and then hopped on Highway 280 to go back to Palo Alto. I can't remember if I'd ever taken 84 west into Woodside before -- I know I've gone east to La Honda, but I do believe that was my first westbound trip. The road was in good condition, and aside from a brief stint behind a construction truck, my pace was pretty high and I happily swooped my way through the twisties. I got off of Highway 280 at Alpine Road and cut through Stanford University, which is a nice shortcut if you want to avoid Page Mill.

As I approached Danger, it occurred to me that I'd seen maybe 4 or 5 other motorcyclists out this morning, and without fail, every one of them had waved vigorously to me as we passed. I was thinking about how nice that was when I pulled up to a red light behind another rider. I noticed his license plate read "Massachusetts", so I pulled up alongside of him to say good morning. I asked if he was from Massachusetts and he said yes, that he's done about five of these cross-country trips on his Yamaha cruiser. I thought that was just the greatest thing, and told him so. We waved as the light turned green, and I immediately pulled over into a parking spot as he continued down the road towards wherever he was going next.

It's amazing how much a nice morning ride can make the whole day seem better.

After work, I headed down to Mountain View for the monthly Women on Wheels meeting. It was a really fun meeting tonight -- there were some new faces, and some folks I hadn't seen in a while. My friend Carla was there this month (her husband Paul is the one I went riding with two weekends ago), and she brought her friend Holly along, which was really great. The meeting ran a little longer than usual, since people were in a universally jovial and talkative mood. I actually got to talk quite a bit at this meeting, both about Diana and my upcoming ride in August, and about the T-shirt contest for September's Pacific Coast Rally (I'm the souvenirs person on the committee).

I'm at a really nice stage in my membership with the WindDancers. I've been a member for just about a year now, so all the "old-timers" know me, and since I'm the Membership Diva this year, I've at least emailed with most of the new members as well. The WOW gals have always seemed so self-confident and funky and fun to me; it's still hard for me to believe that I fit into this group so well. It somewhat astounds me to walk into the meeting and have Smart Self-Confident Spunky Women say, "hey, we missed you on the ride last weekend; will you be at the next one?" or have Smart Self-Confident Spunky Women wave goodbye to me as one of us pulls out of the parking lot after the meeting's over.

This may sound a little weird for a second here (I promise to keep it short and take the rest to therapy *wink*), but usually in my past, I've always felt a little bit like I was "faking it". Before Peter gets all nervous, what I mean is that I've tended to feel as though everyone else in the group really had their shit together, and I was just sort of making stuff up and everyone could tell. Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone goes through that. But the thing is, I don't feel like that with riding. Sure, I have my moments of frustration and insecurity, especially when doing mechanics with other guys (you know, the type that don't really let you make any decisions and instead just tell you what you should be looking for), but when people actually talk to me, or ride with me, or let me talk or ride, I really know what I'm doing. I mean, really know what I'm doing. Does that sound funny? I've never been in a "clique" -- if you count all my real-life and internet message board buddies all together as a clique -- before where I really felt like a peer. But, hey! Suddenly I woke up one morning, and I must have done something right with my life, because I look around, and I have this amazing machine that I take care of, and there are these amazing roads and twisties and hills and oceans, and I have so many friends that I actually feel that I can't see most of them as often as I'd like to. It's like looking around and realizing, "hey, this is my life" and smiling and nodding, and being OK with it. I was joking with Carla and Holly tonight about how motorcycling sucks all the money right out of me, but to tell you the truth, it's worth every penny.

And that's why I ride.