It seems like it’s been forever since I headed south of town to ride. I got in the routine of some northern loops, and then with all the flooding we had a few weeks ago, many of the roads were jacked up and impassable, so I continued riding north of town, or worse yet, not riding at all.
Fun fact for you (not really a fact, more of a story), about 3 years ago I bought a white button down shirt at a local department store to wear for a job interview. Or maybe it was a funeral? Either way, it was for something un-fun. Anyway, I bought the shirt, got it home, took the 2,000,000 pins and plastic clips out of it, tried it on and realized that the sleeves came up to my elbows. Shit, I need to return it.
I gathered up the shirt, the pins, and the plastic clips off the bed, shoved it into the bag and headed back to the store.
The past week has been a blur. It started well enough with an awesome dirt road ride last Wednesday, then we started getting nightly thunderstorms and things went pear shaped. Continue reading
I took the day off the bike on Thursday and headed down to the shop to fetch the PrOcal that was getting some wrench love. The day off also gave me a chance to rest my left calf which had been giving me some issues while riding. The rest of my Thursday free time was spent running errands and doing summertime dad stuff with B.
After that day of sloth, I was anxious to get back on the bike on Friday morning.
I was proud of myself for getting up early to do some work on Wednesday so that I could get out for a ride before it got too warm and windy. Then just as I was filling my bottles I could hear the distant sound of thunder. Shit.
The past few days were a steady whirlwind of driving, soccer, more driving, visiting family, and more driving. Finally around 2 PM Monday my world calmed down, and around 4 PM the first of many beers were cracked as I mentally decompressed from it all.
As mentioned in the last post, I had been dealing with some off and on again swelling in my left calf since last Friday. Due to my history of DVTs this was very troublesome of course. Despite taking a blood thinner, swelling and slight pain mean one thing to me–another f*cking blood clot. I was hopeful that I just aggravated a muscle during my Memorial Day dirt fest ride, but since it remained for a few days with that familiar tightness, I finally broke down and went to the emergency room.
These days, it seems that I find myself typing things about busy schedules, traveling around Michigan for soccer, and a subsequent lack of quality riding more and more. This post is no different. Last week I got out for a few rides, including one hell of a fun mountain bike ride at MMCC, but then the weekend came and that meant two days of 5:30 AM wakeups, driving, spectating, cheering for, and photographing B’s soccer games. Not going to complain about that, that’s all great stuff, especially since I watched B’s U13 team make it the whole way to the Michigan State Cup U13 D2 Finals on Sunday. They lost 4-3, but to make it that far was a hell of an accomplishment, and B had excellent games in both the Semifinal and Final playing as a winger and a right back at times.
Wednesday’s ride left me feeling like spent dog shit, and on Thursday there was a large part of my even larger body that wanted to say “f*ck it,” and do anything at all that didn’t involve me riding my bike into a steady headwind on a dirt road.
After Monday’s Memorial Day Singletrack Extravaganza at MMCC, Tuesday was spent catching up on stuff I neglected while away over the tournament weekend and the holiday spent riding.