It’s been a while since I last rode snowless singletrack; I reckon about six months. Most of the delay was due to me being lazy and not having my mountain bike(s) up and ready to go when the Michigan winter finally broke. The rest was due to the fact that I got a new cross bike (Boone!) and have been stacking up hours and miles riding dirt, gravel and paved roads so as to give my fitness a much needed kick in the lard ass and lose a few pounds.
You may recall in some of my recent posts where I spoke of getting back into film photography with such cameras as the Holga 135 “toy” camera and the legendary Olympus MJU II point and shoot. Well, the interest continued on when I picked up another point and shoot camera with a 2.8 lens: the Nikon AF3 One Touch point and shoot.
I scored the AF3 for less than $19 (probably still too much) on FleaBay in unknown working condition. Thankfully, it turns out it works.
I knew after Thursday’s 45 mile ride that the following days–especially the balls of the weekend– would feature less miles due to family commitments and forecasted rain. However that is not to say that the weekend sucked.
It’s funny how quickly things change. It seems like only yesterday I was riding my Farley over frozen dirt roads, with five layer, of woolen, wicking, hi-tech, extreme cold weather gear and still freezing my tits off in 1˚ weather. Today I rode 45 miles of pavement and dirt roads (about 65% pavement today) and came home a sweaty, fat piece of salty baked ham in human form. Believe me, that is in NO way complaining, I loved every hot, sweaty, ham-like moment of those 45 miles! I’m just sayin’.
No, no, no, the “something different” in the title of this has nothing to do with my ride today. The ride was more of the blessed same. It’s all more to do with the fact that I had started a post about something, but decided to save all that for another day. Today’s ride was merely dirt and paved road miles on the CX bike to try and burn off more blubber.
Monday was a planned day off the bike to let my sub-par, crap, fat, aging, sagging body recover a bit from the following week’s efforts. It was also a chance to get some things done around the house, do some work on the Superfly and take in B-Man’s spring school concert in the evening. All that was done with an eye towards riding today: unfortunately that didn’t happen.
As I mentioned during yesterday’s short post, I was able to log another 200 mile week last week. All 200 miles were on local pavement, dirt and gravel roads and all were completed atop my new Trek Boone 5 Disc with a smile on my face (except for the times that I was dealing with a craptastic headwind.
Over the past three days I have been blessed with great weather, getting to watch B-Man play soccer and squeezing in some miles on the dirt roads. I have a few good pics and some of my typical not-so-wise words about all that to share, but right now I am caught up in me, eating food, hanging with my family, and having my well-earned weekend beers.
When my alarm went off at 6:05 AM this morning I drug myself out of bed in a manner that suggested I’d been out until 4 AM, pounding Jägerbombs with a gaggle of strippers fresh off their shift and looking for free drinks from a desperate, creepy old dude, rather than home, sober and in bed reading at 9 PM with lights out and sound asleep by 9:30. Maybe I’m growing older faster than I think, or maybe my renewed efforts on the bike are making me crave sleep more than usual… Either way, I had made up my mind to ditch riding today before I even had my first cup of coffee. A decision that was confirmed when I walked upstairs to wake B-Man twenty minutes later and my legs felt like I was carrying a fat dwarf on my back.
Today called for a more “normal for me” type of ride: a 35 mile ride north of town that was roughly a 50/50 split of paved and dirt roads. Because it’s late, I’m lazy and in an attempt to avoid this site being a blog that recounts every nuance of even the most mundane of the rides I do (like today’s ride), I will just post a few pics and move on. The three pics pretty much represent a few of the many things that are business as usual when riding in rural Michigan.
