I hadn’t been on the bike since last Tuesday; a full eight days that seemed to include everything but riding my bike. Many of those days had weather that was more like early March than late April and May, so I don’t feel like I missed out on too much, except the opportunity to burn some calories as I attempt to shed my muffin top.
After last Tuesday’s ride, the rest of the week was lost to illness and shit weather. Thursday night I finally got more than 2 hours of sleep, as a result I felt the best I had in days on Friday. Not “let’s go for a ride” good, but good enough to catch up on some adulting, then hang with B-Man and Jake (the dog) in the yard of the Cul-de-sac Shack, capturing some of the backyard nature that can be found around our home with my camera. Due to a complete lack of doing anything, all of today’s images are from that afternoon of backyard slack.
As I mentioned here in my last digital dispatch of dystopian cycling life, I appear to have contracted some sort of allergy. Since Tuesday morning I’ve been dealing with itchy eyes, sinus pressure, a scratchy throat, clogged ears, coughing, endless streams of snot, and a bright red nose that only goes to further the general public’s assumption that I am some sort of jobless, beer drinking scoundrel.
Alas, it’s taken me two days, and two sleepless nights to finally admit; I don’t think this is an allergy, I think I’m ill. If it’s not illness, it’s one bastard of an allergy, and the trees from which the pollen spores fled should be burnt to the ground by hordes of torch wielding warriors on horseback, Game of Thrones style.
Monday’s 45 mile ride was one of the best rides I’ve had in 2017. Everything just fell into place; warm, but not too warm, low wind, good legs, and a great attitude. Tuesday’s ride… not so much.
After an OK start to last week, the riding sort of petered out; first due to weather, and then to a hectic soccer schedule that included two games on Saturday, lots of driving, and 14+ hours away from home. All that stuff was good of course and I eventually got out to ride Sunday, and both soccer and riding allowed me to bag a few firsts.
As I’ve mentioned here many times before, Mondays are usually my days to catch up on all the stuff that I should have done over the weekend, but didn’t. This Monday was also a day that I should have fired up Illustrator and worked on a project that I keep putting off, and off, and off, and off, because it’s driving me mad, and I have the attention span on a 5-year-old on meth. So, it remains unfinished.
It was Monday, the sun was out, no lives were hanging in the balance from what needed done, and the world creeps ever closer to nuclear war due to the orange troll in charge of our country. So I said “f*ck it,” and rode my bike.
After a lackluster ride on Wednesday, I took Thursday off the bike, limiting myself to getting stuff done, running on the Dreadmill® and lifting heavy thing for no reason. I returned to the saddle on Friday, and got in some much-needed time riding dirt roads; dirt roads that seem to finally be shaping up.
Playing a bit a catchup here after a busy, rainy Thursday which, doing stuff wise, only included 40 minutes of Dreadmill® running, and lifting heavy stuff for no reason in the basement of the Cul-de-sac Shack. So here on Friday we’re lookin’ at Wednesday, and ride-wise, I don’t like what I’m seein’.
Monday was a hodgepodge of adulting, fruitless attempts at a design project that I volunteered to help out with, and other crap-o-lah like lifting heavy things for no reason in the basement. All of that was done while dodging rain drops, enjoying spring temperatures, and waiting for some promised evening thunderstorms to arrive and send those spring-like temps back to into the 40s and 50s, thus making for a more “normal” Michigan spring. Like the saying goes “If your nipples ain’t hard, you ain’t in Michigan.”
I can guarantee you that when I look back on 2017, this week will NOT be in my top ten. Since Sunday the week was spent indoors as rain, snow, and high winds swirled incessantly over Michigan like the tongue of a weather making cunning linguist.
That’s not to say SOME good didn’t happen.