My free time later this week is going to be filled up with B-Man school activities, house stuff, soccer practices, games, and my MRI appointment, so I figured I’d better front load this week with mile and then hope for the best as the week continues.
Photo: © Michal Cerveny
Jolanda Neff made here first UCI World Cup appearance this past weekend in La Bresse, France, and it was worth the wait. After being forced to start a few rows back, the big haired blonde soon found her way to the front, kicked ass on the climbs, and was amazing to watch on the downhills. Even after crashing hard, flatting once, and losing her place at the front, she battled back for the win.
Sunday was a blissful day off the bike, fucking around in the pre-summer, holiday weekend sun. Late afternoon Wifey, B, and I headed south of town for a picnic with some friends. They live off one of the dirt roads I ride on often and it was a picturesque setting for a cookout. On one side of their house was a never-ending field of recently planted soy beans, and on the other was a wheat field. We had beers, grilled chicken, talked, had a bonfire, and goofed off. It was pretty darn next to perfect.
For some reason I had fitful night of sleep on Sunday (bad gas), and woke up Monday craving more and more sleep, and wishing my gut could rid itself of all that Texas Caviar I ate. In any event, I was happy to have the Memorial Day holiday to chill and get out on my bike.
I thought about driving up for another go at the MMCC trails, but was in the end was content to hang ’round the house for a bit, make some French press coffee, and then head out for a local dirt road ride.
The wind was blowing pretty steady from the west, and those first 8 miles westward were a taint-grinder, only made slightly easier by being all on pavement.
Once off of pavement, the next 17 miles would be all dirt and gravel roads featuring not-s0-bad cross winds, blessed tailwinds, and more than a few cows out munching grass in the Memorial Day sun.
The just over 30 mile loop I did has become my go-to road loop from the house. It used to be roughly 35 miles, but then we moved out of town, and four miles of paved town riding was eliminated. I keep saying that I’m going to make up those miles somewhere out on the dirt, but have yet to really do it. My slack is strong.
Once home it was time to chill on the porch with a beverage or three, watch no cars drive by the house, and listen to some tunes before throwing some chicken thighs on the grill, roasting some asparagus, and cooking up some homemade mac and cheese.
It was a really good holiday weekend, and a great way to kick off Summer 2016.
Later.
With my Saturday morning sadly void of Premier League football to watch, and the Champions League final not coming on until around 3 that afternoon, I decided to once again return to woods for some miles on the PrOcal.
Thursday night I met my friend, and fellow cyclist, Mike at our local brew pub for a couple of pints. While we were sitting there watching the hockey game (LET’S GO PENS!) the song Here I Go Again by Whitesnake came on the pub’s radio. I remarked to Mike, and our barmaid Gale, that for some reason this was my high school class song (class of ’89). Even though I didn’t vote for the song (my vote was cast for Metallica’s Fade to Black), there was a certain sense of nostalgia as I listened to the song and watched the Pens, something that I did quite a bit of through the 80s and early 90s before being priced out of attending games, and turned off by the NHL’s relentless expansion teams.
As I mentioned in my last post, based on recent back issues and the realization that fitness and any sort or racing wasn’t going to happen this year, I had made the not-so-executive decision to sell my five month old Trek Procaliber hardtail. It was boxed and ready to ship when the bike gods intervened and the buyer decided–probably wisely so–to go with his LBS to make sure he got full warranty coverage. I in turn took this as some sort of miracle from above and proceeded to unbox the bike and build it back up.
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Somewhere in the last ten days it went from being 39˚ with sleet and snow, to crusty, dry, and 87˚. Long gone (thankfully) are the soft, deep muddy rutted roads with, pockets of standing water, slush, and half-frozen agricultural smegma. For now they have turned to grids of rolling, 30s era Dust Bowl-like roads and my skin is sunburned red like a baboon’s butt.Having said that, I would rather fishtail through a hot cloud, manure flavor dirt than a freeze my sagging man-udders off. Fact.
I gotta say, last week was a darn good week’s worth of riding. There was no singletrack, and the rides weren’t all that long, but I managed to get 8.5 hours worth of riding in, which isn’t too bad for a beer loving, burrito eating, crap cyclist with a bad back like myself. Speaking of my back…
Opinions are like people taking dumps. You really, really, really, REALLY like to think that the hot mom that smiled at you [which was probably gas] in the produce aisle while you were squeezing the way overripe, insanely priced, $2.50 a piece avocados doesn’t take at least one dump a day, but she does. Big stinky ones (unless she’s one of those shit camels, a universal term that can transcend gender but admittedly applies more to females, who can go like days at a time without a movement at all, meanwhile my cheeks are hitting the throne like seven times each morning!!).
Along with being a serial dumper, she’s probably got a whole shit ton [pardon the pun] of opinions about carbs [OMG DON’T EAT THEM!], breastfeeding [If they don’t suckle from the teet your kids will end up funny, good looking, ginger haired, straight A students who excel at soccer football], the best post-graduate programs for your son’s unborn child [Victorian era, dietary electrical engineering will be all the rage in 2026!], how long to cook chicken on the grill [get a fucking meat thermometer! OK, that was me], whether or not to refrigerate tomatoes [DON’T! Me again], and gravel road bike tires [see below].
I mentioned in a post earlier this week that we had some absolutely crap and freezing weather here last weekend. Until last weekend, I had never seen snow in May in my entire life…EVER. All that seems to be frozen, E. coli riddled water under the bridge right now, as the past three days have been a springtime enema of perfect 65˚ temps, bright sunshine, calm winds, and blue sky. So, as busy as I’ve been with some projects, I’ve been making sure to squeeze some ride time in.
