The past four or five days week has been a whirlwind of traveling, soccer tournaments, hanging out with good friends, multiple 2016/17 soccer tryouts, house selling stuff, pixel pushing, physical therapist appointments, Wifey work stress, family time, and worrying about various decisions facing our family. Thank God there were a few dirt road rides thrown in there and that the good stuff seems to be outweighing the bad stuff right now.
When the birds and sun woke me up this morning at four-fucking-thirty A.M., all I wanted to do was sleep. Then it started to rain, the birds shut up, and the sunlight went away. So I slept, and it felt gooooood!
Over the recent year I’ve talked a bit about my use of the Olympus Stylus Epic (AKA the Olympus MJU II) 35mm point and shoot camera. Well just when it looked like I was going to do that again, I decided to utilize my photo heavy site junkmilesmedia.com to do so. So if you’ve come here via the Googles to see a bit about the Stylus Epic, head over there and read the 5th installment of this ongoing experiment.
Later.
With another failed attempt at riding singletrack in the woods on Saturday, I left the idea for a while and set off on the Boone Sunday morning for a dirt road ride from the house. I hadn’t even made mile, and I had already run into three other cyclists. That was pretty sweet.
Of course I hadn’t even made it five miles when my rear tire started making an unusual noise. Actually, it’s wasn’t that unusual of a noise for rear tire on its way to being flat. Shit balls!!
I had planned on a ride at MMCC on the PrOcal on Friday, but in the end opted to put that off until Saturday, save some time by just heading out on the dirt roads for a couple of hours. The ride had a little bit of everything: sun, dusty roads, wet brined roads, sluggish deep dirt slogs, head winds, tail winds, and broke things.
It seems if there’s one thing I know how to do well, it’s pile up junk miles. Rides with no purpose other than to burn off a few beer calories and take pictures. I won’t be setting any distance records, and I won’t be getting back into any of those jeans I have stored away just in case I ever shed those 3o extra pounds, but I am getting outside on my bike and scratching that time sucking, financially useless, creative itch that God cursed me with, so I guess that’s something.
After Saturday’s flat/projectile valve core/short, make something out of nothing ride in the woods, the next two days were filled with me doing a variety of things that fell between doing nothing and everything (ish). That’s fine, an uneducated slacker needs to earn his keep somehow, right?
I woke up Saturday morning in a mild panic, almost sure that this was the day that a trail race was taking place on the trails at MMCC and started making alternative ride plans. However a quick check of the web set my mind at ease, confirming it for next Saturday. With that good bit of news in my empty skull, I ate breakfast, drank coffee, dumped out, and headed up to MMCC listening to a new Spotify mix I made featuring several songs that years of music snobbery has taught me not to like, but that I often shamefully, secretly like (usually as I roll my shopping cart around the super market).
I knew Thursday was going to be a busy day bookended by a 7th Grade “promotion” event at B’s school in the morning, soccer practice in the evening, and a scheduled MRI for me and back thrown in the middle. I had put the idea of a ride out of my mind, and just planned on getting some work done in between all of that. But, the day was too nice, and I am too slack, so I squeezed in a flat, quick (in theory), windy and slow (in reality), 21 mile loop from the house.
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.
