Stan’s Obligatory Blog

It’s been just a bit over three weeks now since I had the surgery for the pituitary gland tumor, and last week, I got clearance from the surgeon to resume most of normal activities. Last week, I came on the bike club ride, and we rode to Glendora. That time, I bailed out at 25 miles and rode the Metro home from Azusa. So my goal for this week was to try and go a bit farther. The route for today was the ‘Big Donut’ ride to La Puente to see the Donut Hole drive-through donut shop. The route is something like 45 miles, but I figured I’d probably bail out somewhere near the end when the route met up with the Metro.

The route is pretty flat, although it begins with the ride up and over the hill through Sierra Madre. I was curious about this, since I was curious to see how the downhill out of Sierra Madre would feel. For the last few years, I’ve been having a sort of low-grade vertigo thing that’s made me doubt my balance on the bike. This has caused problems with both downhills, and also with doing my traditional trackstands at red lights. Last week, I managed to make it all the way to Glendora without having to put my foot down at any of the lights, and that was my goal again for today. And it worked out pretty well. There were a couple of intersections that were off-camber, so I ended up putting a foot down at them, but most of them, I was able to just balance on two wheels until the light changed. So between that, and the fact that the blurred vision I had in my left eye has cleared up, the surgery seems to have done what it was supposed to do.

We stopped briefly for a photo-op at the Big Donut. Then we continued on, making a loop through West Covina and back up to Irwindale and Santa Fe Dam. We picked up the bike path there, and rode that up to Duarte and Encanto Park. At that point, I had about 33 miles, and that was where I bailed. I rode about two more miles to get to the Duarte/City of Hope Gold Line station, where I got on the train to come home. For some reason, the train was packed. There must have been a game of some sort going on somewhere that everyone was going to. But I rode the train back to the Allen station in Pasadena, and then rode the two more miles home from there. So overall, it was a pretty good ride. I think next week, maybe I’ll try for the full 40-mumble miles we usually do on Sunday mornings.

35 miles, plus two more riding home from the Metro station.

Route map and elevation profile