This was one of those weekends that I really needed. This summer had all the makings to be a good one, but then a variety of set backs–some big, some small–caused it to be tolerable at best. Thankfully in the past week, I feel like I’ve started to turn a corner mentally, physically, emotionally, and creatively. This Saturday’s ride was a culmination of all those things coming together.
Friday night Wifey and I finally had a chance to meet up with some good friends for a dinner, beers, and playing Cards Against Humanity until midnight, which is sort of like 4 AM to 46-year-old me who is usually in bed around 10, even on the weekend. Because of this late night caterwauling, I found myself struggling to get out of bed on Saturday morning, and when I did the last thing I felt like doing was going for a ride. However, after a crap breakfast and a few cups of coffee, I finally came around to the idea of rolling gravel north of town on the PrOcal. Sure glad I did!
I didn’t even start my ride until after noon but the temps weren’t that bad and even though there was a breeze it was gentle enough to not be an energy zapper and strong enough to help provide some relief from the bright sun.
Nature was on point, and over the course of the ride I saw multiple deer, red-winged black birds, sand hill cranes, and a red-tailed hawk flying and screeching overhead with one of its young. There was also, of course, plenty of barns, cows, corn, wheat, and a low flying crop duster that had me feeling like a crop ruining nematode about to get exterminated.
I took plenty of time to take some photos and enjoy the perfect Michigan summer day. Actually, I probably spent too much time jerking around with my camera and maybe bit off a few more miles than I could chew on little sleep, a crap breakfast and just two bottles of soon to be foul-tasting tepid water. I thought I was just going to do a quick 25 miles or so, but ended up with 35, covered in salt stains and dust, with the sounds of my stomach growling, longing for food and tempted to tear into the rack of ribs I saw laying along the road.
***
I had little expectations for this ride and looked at it as merely and chance to get outside; it ended up being one of my favorite rides of the summer.
Spent Saturday night with Wifey catching up with Foyle’s War on Netflix, having a few Torpedos, and eating some white trash Mexican food. That capped off a great summer day.
Most of Sunday was spent at the soccer complex with B while he was helping out with their coaching clinic again; nearly four hours of 9 vs 9 scrimmaging in the sun, under the supervision of a variety of club, high school, and college soccer coaches trying to earn license upgrades had B pretty beat and me pretty beat from just watching it!
Sort of sad that it took until the end of July for me to have one of the best weekends of the summer, but that didn’t diminish how damn good it felt.
Later.