Last night we had another evening of heavy, better grab a life jacket type rain. In my opinion, here in Michigan, we get less rain on daily basis than I was used to dealing with in western PA, but when we do get rain, we get freaking RRRRAIN! It seems to just freaking pour down thick ropes of water.
After working all day at the shop on Thursday, my plan for Friday was to get in some miles on the Boone. Sadly, that didn’t happen. Instead it pissed down Old Testament-esque rains all morning and the rest of the day was filled with FINALLY getting a permanent crown put on one of my teeth and dealing with a backed up main drain which resulted in plumbers in the house to snake it. The only highlight was celebrating Wifey’s 44th birthday.
Thursday was a day off the bike and a day in the bike shop to earn some cash money. The shop was fairly busy and I found myself building up another Weehoo (Weee Hoooo!!). Thankfully I only f’ed up a few things along the way–way better than the last Weehoo build which took me forever due to a parts issue. The rest of my work day was spent getting my balls busted by Napper and Terry, unpacking and checking in inventory, and pimping bikes to folks; including a couple of Mennonite kids that I initially helped out a couple of weeks back.
The last time these two kids were in, they were with their mom looking and test riding. This time the three of them returned with dad in tow, and after his approval they left the happy owners of two new bikes. The boy in particular was stoked with his X-Caliber. Of course I wept a little bit when he wanted a kickstand installed. I waited until they left before I buried my tear filled eyes and chubby cheeks in my dirty palms.
Tuesday brought a hazy and warm summer evening. I had an un-blogworthy 16 mile singletrack mountain bike ride in my legs and a belly full of baked chicken thighs and spicy tomato pasta, but the evening was too nice to waste sitting around the house. So once Wifey was home from work I made the decision to head out and do some fishing for a couple of hours.
Just when I started to think that I might never ride my bike again; I did. I rode last Wednesday then my work schedule (who’d a thunk that would happen?), appointments and weather kept me out of the saddle for four days in a row. While it’s easy to blame all those things, it was mostly just laziness that prevented me from riding. What can I say, I’m pretty swell at being lazy.
As I headed to bed last night I knew what today was going to have in store for me: a trip to the dentist office to FINALLY get the left side of my mouth right (what?) and then working at the bike shop ’till six. On paper that is pretty swell, especially since I would have a few hours in the morning to putz around before work. Here’s what happened…
After feeling good on the bike yesterday, I found myself creeping around the house last night and early this morning like someone repeatedly hit me in the back with a baseball bat. Me thinks that my lower fat back did not take kindly to the hip stretches that I did yesterday, oddly enough, done to relieve me lower back pain! Typical me-ish-ness.
On Tuesday I got out for a quick 35 mile multi-surface road ride. There was little that was impressive about the ride: it was more pavement than dirt, featured little elevation gain and it wasn’t all that long. What was impressive about it was it was a perfect sunny day, there was little wind, I felt strangely good on the bike, and the bike itself [the Trek Boone Disc 5] continues to impress and woo me with its charms, whether I am on dirt, gravel or paved roads.
Jolanda Neff, I try not to write about her, I [sort of] swear! But she keeps on winning and keeps on doing so with large amounts of #Neffness. Which I believe translates into both “rad” and “Braaap” in Swiss [forgive me for my use of the word “rad”].
The weekend ended up being pretty crap for riding; it pissed down a hard rain all day Saturday, and Sunday was sunny, but windier than hell. Wifey got home around 1 PM from Pennsylvania and I had plenty of time to ride, but has absolutely NO desire to ride in the chilly June wind (yes, I said chilly and June in the same sentence, welcome to Michigan).