Wednesday’s ride left me feeling like spent dog shit, and on Thursday there was a large part of my even larger body that wanted to say “f*ck it,” and do anything at all that didn’t involve me riding my bike into a steady headwind on a dirt road.
I think it was roughly the time Jake (the dog) wanted out for his fourth pee of the morning that I changed my mind. He peed, and sniffed, and peed again, while I stood on the deck in some ugly ass excuse for pajamas 1 and sipped my third cup of coffee. It was then that I realized that there was barely a breeze blowing, the sun was out, the temps were Michigan summer morning crisp, and the sky was cloudless and blue. With that, I ushered Jake (the dog) away from sniffing his own urine for the umpteenth time, and into the house so I could set about finding a pair of bibs that didn’t have some part of the ass ripped out.
That search proved fruitless, and I settled on an old pair of Twin-Six bibs that have been through so many +15/-15 pound weight losses that parts of them sag like 90-year-old lycra bosoms, unable to give any control top tummy support to my support needing out of control tummy. BUT, they only have one hole in them and that is more than I can say for the two pair of Cannondale bibs I have that have chamois pad stuffing trailing behind me as I ride, and parts of my man hams busting through various seams exposing pasty flesh to mid-Michigan motorists.
Once atop the Boone, I opted to get a long 7 mile stretch of pavement out of the way first, allowing me to settle in and see if my legs were feeling a crap 30-mile pavement/dirt road ride, or a crap 20-mile pavement/dirt road ride.
While there was a breeze blowing out in the open farm land, it was nothing like the days before, so I happily pedaled on, anxious to be off of pavement and onto dirt and gravel.
Once on gravel, I settled on one my normal routes but with a few twists and turns thrown in; one twist to get some pics I had been wanting, and one turn to avoid a deep sand section of Vernon road that literally had me off and walking at one point. In the battle of 36c tires versus 4-inch deep, tractor tire rutted sand, sand wins.
Sometimes it’s the rides that I don’t plan on doing that end up being the better ones, this was one of those rides. The deep sand of Vernon Road was a kick in the chamois covered junk, but compared to Wednesday’s ride that was filled with fantasies of chucking my bike into the weeds, stripping out of my kit, and walking into a scummy cow pond to end it all, I’ll take a brief walk up a sandy hill any day.
The early summer continues to be a busy time out on the dirt roads. Dirt road traffic has increased, yet still minimal, but every field has some sort of activity going down: tractors, shit spreaders, sprayers, tillers, seeders, it’s all going down out there.
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By the tail end of the ride, the wind had picked up, but luckily the cross wind had little effect on me, and I bit off the last mile easily before heading home for a quick bite to eat and a To Do list.
With a busy weekend of soccer coming up that includes an 8:30 AM State Cup kickoff on Saturday, I really should be out on the bike right now, taking advantage of another beautiful day, but instead, I’m typing this crap, catching up on some website updates for folks, doing laundry, making some meals in advance, and checking Twitter every ten minutes to see if someone, ANYONE, will put this country out of our misery and impeach the old ass, orange, bad haired, tiny hand train wreck that calls himself the president. Sadly, as of 1:12 PM he remains in power. But my laundry is done, and so is this shit post.
Later.