With Brennan off on a camping trip with his school as of this morning and Wifey out-of-town on business again until late Thursday night, I pretty much had nothing to do today. So, after I got B off to school/camping, ate breakfast, drank 62.3 ounces of coffee, dumped out two to eight times and came to mental grips with the fact that I indeed had nothing to do, I decided to head down to ride some of the North Country Trail.
I’ve read things over the years in regards to diets, er, “lifestyles” that say if you follow a healthy lifestyle for 80% of the time, you can stay on the right track. I am pretty sure over they years I have done just that, especially in my mid 20’s through mid 30’s, but slowly I started making the WRONG choices 80% of the time.
While Wifey has been out-of-town on .gov business this week I did everything a proper father/person should do, and that I do anyway (for the most part): Made all the meals, did laundry, got B to soccer practice, made sure his homework was done, mowed grass, did the shopping, did the dishes, took the trash out, ate properly, didn’t drink booze, smoke crack, shoot up, kill anyone or solicit prostitutes.
Given all that clean living I REALLY thought that I was up for a larger than usual (but not THAT large) multi-surface ride today. Sadly, my want to putz around taking photos, an unforeseen detour, a lack of on the bike nutrition, wind, deep sand, and higher than usual September temps turned me into a gelatinous heap of bonked suck praying for a passer-by to shoot me down like a gimp dog.
Today felt like Monday in every way except the fact that it was Tuesday. Of course all of the things that went and felt wrong about the day were trivial in comparison to the fact that B-Man had to take a trip to the ER because he had a fever of nearly 102˚ this afternoon. That boy, he will never just let me complain and moan about my petty problems without making me look like the self-absorbed, slacker douche that we all know I am (or at least the way I come off like on this blog, on social media, on the phone and in person).
Thankfully the boy is fine, he just has a bit of a virus and the fever is coming down*. Great! Now we can turn the focus back to me and how the monsoon of a day ruined my ride plan but made my hiking plan.
Recently Wifey and I said goodbye to some good friends that moved to Mt. Pleasant at the same time we did back in 2010. Wifey worked with the woman and we hung out with her and her husband a lot over the past five years, especially since they lived just a couple blocks from us. Anyway, they moved to Florida, leaving us to deal with the long Michigan winters on our own now. In the moving process they ditched us with generously gave us a bunch of stuff they didn’t want/couldn’t take with them: Adirondack chairs, a snowblower, hundreds of pounds of salt (to melt ice), a kick ass drum kit (it’s very therapeutic to belt out a Neil Pert like solo once a day) and a ton of potted vegetable plants. There were tomatoes, red and green bell peppers, banana peppers and jalapenos.
This morning I sat at the computer drinking coffee and mapping out a ride that I hoped would come close to yesterday’s mileage and have me in the 40 to 45 mile range. Then I walked upstairs.
After two days off the bike for various reason (laziness + shit to do) I was back on the bike for some miles today. With my time at the shop on hold for the foreseeable future, my thesis in limbo (that’s a joke of course) and B-Man back in school, I can now start to set my sights on trying to get some longer (for me) rides in and try to burn as much man fat as I can in between my husbandly duties (don’t judge!). Because before you know it, the snow will be flying and I’ll be reduced to twenty mile fat bike rides on ice packed dirt roads while freezing my tits off.
Sometimes you get up and go for a bike ride. Sometimes you don’t. Today I did not, but I did stick to my almost daily plan of doing something outside and doing something creative by going for a quick three-mile hike in the woods in between bits of real life.
My ride today sort of got foiled, but for good reasons. Well, not GOOD reasons, but reason. I’ve been struggling to find some parts for a sliding shelf that broke in our pantry for a week. After exhausting the big box hardware stores in the area I finally took the time to stop in a local kitchen and cabinet place see if they knew what the part was even called, if they had any, and if so, where could I find said part. Well, they didn’t know what to actually call the part, but they dug around in an old parts bin and found me two parts that were ALMOST what I needed and gave them to me nuthin’.
In any event, the parts were close enough to what I needed and all I had to do was put add a little 1/8 shim (actually taken from the two broke parts) for it to work. The fix is pretty ghetto right now, but the drawer is back in pantry and it slides; for now that will do. At least I’m on the trail of what the part actually IS and should be able to order some soon to make a more permanent ghetto fix.
Busch Light on dirt.
My Monday morning was spent in my doctor’s office for a six month check up on my blood thinners and to get some blood work done. After that I drove all over Mount Pleasant looking for (and failing to find) some replacement parts for sliding drawers in the panty. I probably could have squeezed a ride in there somewhere, but to tell you the truth the low, dark clouds that hung over central Michigan, gusting winds, and temps in the high fifties just made me want to drink coffee and curse the reality of being a home owner. HOUSE GODS, WHY DO YOU MOCK ME??
