This week has sort of been all over the place; one day I’m doing nothing but random house stuff, the next day I’m walking around in the woods like a crazed hermit with a camera, the next day I’m on my cross bike north of town rolling on fast, hard packed dirt roads, and the next day I’m on my fatty, rambling over, wet, muddy dirt roads in ninety degree heat for just under thirty miles [I think thirty miles on a stock fat bike equals fifty on a regular bike, but I might be wrong on that].
As predicted, doing a quick 32 mile roll on dirt roads really helped the mental condition. I was super busy afterwards, so one pic and some brief words is all I got in me for now.
After a beautiful day weather wise on Friday, things got damp and rainy overnight and into the morning. When I woke up Saturday morning it was dank, dark and rainy, and all I really wanted to do was lay around and watch the first matches of the 2015/16 BPL season.
Friday brought a series of crap home problems for me to deal with, but nothing so serious that the grand tradition of throwing money and other people’s knowledge at them won’t cure. It was also nothing that could prevent me from squeezing in a 35 mile multi-surfacial ride.
With time on my hands the past couple of weeks I have been trying to squeeze in a bunch of stuff before fall arrives: riding, hiking with Wifey, picture takin’, hanging out with the boy, fishing, catching up on all my normal house stuff and getting some estimates for some home improvements we need done before/if/when we decide to move to another part of the MP area. Not all of that is fun, but it’s not all that bad either. It really the least I can do whilst Wifey is out slaying figurative bacon to bring home. Not to mention the stuff that IS fun is PRETTY FREAKING FUN and I am lucky to be able to do it. The crap parts are just things that everyone has to deal with.
Today I had the same plan as yesterday: go for a ride in the late afternoon/early evening on my fatty, take my DSLR, ride about 25 miles, and stop to take pics every so often when something interested me. Not the most intense of workouts, but riding twenty-five miles or rolling dirt and gravel roads on a 32 pound fat bike into the wind is still a pretty good workout. More importantly I would have a chance to make up for yesterday’s creative clusterfuck in which I forgot to put the SD card in my camera.
While I don’t know if I am a firm believer in the existence of a devil per se, I do find that some form of evil will indeed find work for idle hands. So in the interest of avoiding the calorie evil that is weeknight consumption of adult beverages, I front loaded my day with work type activities so as to get out for a late afternoon ride on the Farley and do some dirt road photo rambling. It was great plan, until it wasn’t.
My plan to ride singletrack somewhere other than Mid (the 16 mile trails system on the wooded grounds that surround Mid Michigan Community college) on Saturday was a fail. I had the address, the plan, etc. for another trail system, but then just lost interest in driving two hours to ride my bike when I could ride trails just 25 minutes from my house and still have time to do other things after. C’est la vie.
Today featured a very, VERY short ride. It was a short ride for one reason and one reason only: wind.
After a blazing hot (and slow) dirt road ride on Monday, I made special efforts to hydrate (with water) better Monday night (when not digging hooks out of my thumb). This proved the right thing to do in advance of another hot (for Michigan) 90˚ day on Tuesday.
