Some days it’s fun to go out and pedal through the drizzle, mud and crisp fall winds; the past two days were not those days.
Posts Tagged → being a michigander-burgher-ite
Feeling Lucky
With yesterday’s stomach bug seemingly gone, I embraced my chance to get out amongst the corn and bean lined dirt roads of central Michigan today.
Adequate
I mentioned in an earlier post today that I was off to ride, try out the WTB Nano 700 x 40c tires I picked up and try to make peace with my Kona Jake The Snake. Well, you may or many not have seen my afternoon edit on the post, but if not I will mention again: the tires were most excellent and well worth it, but I think my time with the Jake is done. I just don’t feel good on it… it’s almost painful. I doubt I’ll sell it (unless you want it?), but it may become a townie or a two-wheeled paperweight.
Bullet Points
I’m lacking time for my normal verbal diarrhea of a blog post, so I’m going all crap sales meeting Power Point presentation on you [not really] and doing it all with bullet points of random information nonsense. The only thing missing is a wig wearing sales director in a bad suit, bored as hell employees doodling sketches of him being chased by an angry bear with a knife and poor slide graphics (not designed by the in-house graphic artist, but instead downloaded from the web at 72 dpi and enlarged stretched to 900 dpi for that cool, “What the hell is that a graphic of?” look).
Bad Ideas Turned Good
As I mentioned the other day, my buddy at the shop lent me his Trek Farley* to ride for a few days and see what I thought. I did a lap on singletrack last Saturday and thought it felt a bit harsh compared to my Pugsley and made the pre-mature decision to shelve any ideas of considering one in the future. Then I got to thinking: whether I buy one or not, I think my assessment was a bit rash and not all that fair, given that while I have ridden my Pugsley on singletrack, I have only done so for 10-12 miles at a time to mix things up after I’ve done a “real” lap or two on my Superfly, or when conditions were shit.
I’ve love the Pugs in the snow and on the deep sand ORV trails, so I figured I should give the Farely another go before I return it this week, and ride it on surface that would be more akin to what I would actually use a fat bike on. The trouble is (thank God!), there is no snow on the ground and this week won’t really allow for me to head north to those ORV trails. So I had an idea– I would use the Farley for my dirt road ride today. Afterall, some of those roads are pretty sandy and pretty shit… It was a bad idea; sort of.
This is Tuesday
Today is Tuesday, which (as I touched on before) means two things: the time for me to get a weekday ride in and for rain to descend upon Michiganderburgh. Oh Tuesday, I might hate you. Actually, I KNOW I hate you. Stupid non-feeling, rainy ass day.
A Weekend of Dirtz
My plan for Saturday morning was this: get up, drink 2 to 14 cups of Bust Ass Coffee, eat some sort of lame breakfast, watch football (YES!!!) and then head out to ride some singletrack north of town. All of that was on course to happen until I checked the radar on Weather-dot-look-at-all-these-ads-and lame human interest videos-dot-com and saw that my trails appeared to be getting pissed down on with rain by the uncontrollable, loose bladder of Ma Nature.
Plan B was activated.
Plan B was to grab the El Mariachi and head out for a couple of hours or so of pavement and dirt roads. Obviously not my first choice (made fucking obvious by the fact that it’s Plan B, NOT Plan A. But dirt is dirt, miles are miles, calories burnt are calories burnt and a fat, crap cyclist is a fat, crap cyclist).
Upon fetching the El Mariachi (my current “go-to” gravel road bike that is really just a hardtail mountain bike) from the Not-So-Stankment®, I realized that in a raging fit of laziness [surprised?] I failed to rinse the bike off after Tuesday’s muddy dirt road ride. No big, I sort of like riding around with what amounts to an extra 2 to 5 pounds of dried cement on my frame. What’s a few extra pounds of dried cement on my bike when I’m already sporting at least 15 extra pounds of beer, pizza and general fuck-up-ness around my ever broadening and bouncing midriff??? Nothing!
The Curse of Tuesday
I’m not going to lie, I HATE Michigan winters. Of course, I also hated every one of the, slightly shorter Pennsylvania winters I experienced in my first thirty-nine years of life before moving here in 2010. On the flip side, MOST of my time here in Michigan has been blessed with some amazing summers and falls. I would have included spring, but our spring is the drunk, psychotic uncle of seasons; cloudy, cold, sunny, blustery, warm, rainy, icy, grey, humid and dry. However, this summer has been pretty darn excellent in the weather department; not too hot, not too humid and sunny most of the time. Except on Tuesdays.
It seems that Tuesdays in central Michigan are reserved for heavy rains, strong winds and storms. Tuesday also happens to be the day that Wifey has the option to work at home, which allows me to get out for a ride during the day. Sadly–more often than not–on the days she has done so, I have awoke in the morning to the sounds of rain blowing against the house. Today was no different.
What Saturday Is
Saturday–by the grace of God (as well as Buddha, Allah, WICCA, Lucifer, Jake The Dog, that crazy guy that screams Bible verses at you in the park and everything and anything else that is holy, unholy and plain old strange in this world) is meant for one thing: bike ridin’!! Watching football (proper football), comes in a VERY close second, but thankfully matches happen early enough in the day for we Americans, that once the season gets started (NEXT WEEK!) it shan’t interfere with the divine holy/unholy/strange grace bestowed upon Saturday and the bike riding that is to be done within its hours.
Metaphors Aside
I recently found this photo amongst the hundreds of unused, crappier than most, photos I take while riding my bike. It’s obviously not all that good, yet I find myself liking it. I like it–if for no other reason than–because in the past, every time I have ever crossed over this particularly heavily trafficked intersection (heavy for being out in the middle of Bumfuck, Michiganderburgh) where the North Higgins Snowmobile Trail crosses a Roscommon County seasonal road, I have been forced off my bike to walk. The sand is too soft and the numerous tire ruts from trucks, ATVs and dirt bikes too deep.