As I rapidly age and discover, and rediscover, other interests like eating and drinking to excess, worrying about the dog urine spots on my lawn, and taking photos, there are days that I just don’t feel like stuffing myself into a Superman outfit and riding. Somedays I’m content to satisfy my urge to be outside with a walk down the road to the local park and traipse around the woods for a bit with my camera and then do some yard work. Don’t judge. OK, go ahead judge, I probably need it.
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.
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.
Thursday night I met my friend, and fellow cyclist, Mike at our local brew pub for a couple of pints. While we were sitting there watching the hockey game (LET’S GO PENS!) the song Here I Go Again by Whitesnake came on the pub’s radio. I remarked to Mike, and our barmaid Gale, that for some reason this was my high school class song (class of ’89). Even though I didn’t vote for the song (my vote was cast for Metallica’s Fade to Black), there was a certain sense of nostalgia as I listened to the song and watched the Pens, something that I did quite a bit of through the 80s and early 90s before being priced out of attending games, and turned off by the NHL’s relentless expansion teams.
Playing Catch Up, Monday 1o:50 PM
This blog is funny in that if I go one day without posting something, I get the itch to post something; whether it be some unfunny commentary, tales of one of my short and shitty rides, or just a couple of photos. However if I go more than four days without posting I reach blissed out on Valium and sleep med levels of apathy about ever posting anything again. Then once I hit five days without posting something, apathy gives way to creative ennui, or I actually go for a ride and have something that I feel like blathering on about.
In the midst of various home and freelance work projects I looked at the weather forecast for the week and saw that Tuesday looked to be the one day over the next few that I could finally get out on some singletrack. Despite my left hip and lower back being in various stages of suck, I forced myself to load up the PrOcal and head up to the trails.
I had hoped with our move over I would be back to a semi-normal riding schedule. Sadly, this week things have not really come together. First weather got in the way (hard to believe it’s nearly May given how cold and crap our weather is), then a long “to do” list was presented to me by our realtor in regards to our old home which is going on the market in two to one hundred ninety-six hours.
I, er I should say we, are finally getting completely settled into the new crib and totally digging it on so many different levels. As a bonus I finally have a desk for my Mac and junk, and it only took me four hours to put together. Thanks Staples! (Not really, maybe next time you could get it shipped in 500 different pieces instead of just 400?). In any event, I have a desk and it looks swell in my office. Even better than finally getting settled in a new crib is getting in two-days in a row in of riding.
The past week has absolutely flown by! It seems that everything has been moving non-stop: house walk-through, house closing, moving boxes, traveling for B’s soccer, moving day, un-packing, sorting, arranging, getting things done to get our old home on the market, picking up a new lawn mower, mowing the small patch of grass at our old hose (15 minutes), mowing the large patch of grass at our new home (45+ minutes), taking B to soccer practices, getting some light “at-large” web work done, and doing all the other stuff that is expected of a father/husband done.
I woke up Friday rocking some sort of allergy/head cold thing. I was less than thrilled, but it’s not too bad and hasn’t slowed me down too much. Of course it’s hard to get slowed down when doing nothing. Saturday morning we got a dusting of now, so I figured I’d wait it out and see if it would melt. The sun came out and the snow did indeed melt, but with the temperature struggling to get into the low thirties, and the wind gusting out of the north, I had no desire to be out freezing on my bike. Instead I grabbed my camera–so as to take some crap photos–and did a short hike around one of our local county parks to get out and blow the stink off me.
