I did 120 miles today, making me late for the afternoon rehearsal with Fermat's Last Theremin. I did Woodside-Mountain Home-Portola-Alpine-Arastradero-Page Mill-Alpine-Pescadero-Cloverdale-Gazos Creek-Highway 1 down to Davenport, then back up 1 to Pescadero-Stage-84 back home. Page Mill isn't quite so hard when the sun's not blazing into my eyes. Alpine is, though: the second stretch, off Page Mill, is all tangly, with lots of crap in the road.

I followed a few sportbikers down a turn and found them stopped and preparing for a run. They offered that I could follow them, and described the run: really fast for a while, then slowing down because of a hilly "off-camber" (the opposite of "banked") turn, then lots of twisties. Of course, their idea of "fast" turned out to be something around 85-90mph; this was fine, since it's a nice road, but I stuck to about 65, rather than push it, and it was impressive to watch them blow through the turns. I've been riding by myself, and it's good for the ego and the skills to watch better riders.

A lot of the ride was cold. I need another couple layers under my jacket, apparently.

The ride back on 84 was so delightfully smooth, because I was relaxed and decided not to worry about crashing. There's a samurai saying: "How can you fight if you're worried about dying?". I think you can't ride well (or ski, or do a lot of other things) if you allow your concern about getting hurt to interfere with your concentration on actually performing the action. It's the concentration that keeps you from getting hurt.

Fermat's Last Theremin is sounding more cohesive, which is neat to feel. I think I'm contributing. At the very least, I'm making noises alongside everyone else's noises.