Remember when mountain bikes were called “fat tire” bikes? Yeah, me too. These days fat usually denotes fat bikes which utilize 3.8″ wide tires and up. And now there’s 29er and 27.5 plus bikes too. I’m at a loss on what exactly I should call my mountain bikes that run 2.2″ tires.
I was up at 6 AM today to start my weekday process of coffee drinking, crap taking, breakfast making, boy waking, and lunch packing as I get Wifey and B-Man out the door. Once they were gone I did a few quick web edits that needed done, drank more coffee, and thought about when and where I wanted to ride once I got back from my next to last useless chiropractor visit.
Monday was Labor Day, but I just think of it as Monday, as I have no place of work to stay home from. Of course that didn’t stop me from not doing any work, goofing off all day, and getting another 30+ miles of dirt roads in to cap off four straight days of riding dirt roads and singletrack.
Sunday was another blessed day of sleeping in before the school year REALLY starts in earnest this Tuesday. Yeah, sure, B started back last Monday, but it all seemed like educational masturbation. This week will be the real start, PLUS two soccer practices, and a tournament come the weekend. It will be a real test for B, AND for us! But let’s not put the shitty, school year cart before the summertime horse. We still have another day!
Friday morning, just before Wifey and B took off for PA to visit her family, Wifey gave me a hug goodbye, I copped a feel, and she told me to have a good weekend, but not to do that thing where I ride singletrack, experience back and hip pain the whole time, get depressed, and come home and drink to kill the mental and physical pain of being old and shit. My mind and mouth said “yes dear,” but my heart and legs said “Fffffuckkk off! You don’t own me woman! I can do what I want, yo!” (not really, not even one tiny little bit).
And with that I was good. I ate some breakfast, drank coffee, looked at the inter-web-o-sphere, and then went for a 31 mile dirt road ride south of town.
After Sunday’s muddy, rain-soaked, dirt road slog on the Fatterson, I was off the bike on Monday to let things dry out, go to the chiropractor, get some things done, and take advantage of the cooler, dryer conditions to get the lawn mowed, thus freeing up more time for later in the week for outdoor hijinks.
After three months of hot, dusty, dry weather, we finally had some heavy on/off again rains Saturday evening. Because of that I had resound myself to not riding on Sunday, or riding the fatty to plow through the soft sand and mud on the dirt roads. While the first the first option was extremely appealing, I opted for the latter.
After last Thursday’s OK-ish short and quick double loop on Sally’s Trail, I returned to dirt roads on the Fatterson on Friday. My chiropractor recommended limiting myself to shorter rides, but since it’s hard for a fat, crap, cyclist to make his short rides even shorter, I somehow managed to ride nearly thirty miles of dirt roads on the fatty. Not sure that qualifies as “long” in any world other than the one in which the person in charge of my spine lives; I rode it nonetheless, and it felt OK.
Dirt and gravel road riding has continued this week with a 30+ mile late afternoon ride on Monday and a 30 mile early-ish morning ride on Tuesday. I rode the Boone north of town both days, and most–but not all–of the roads were thankfully void the deep washboard ruts that are currently prevalent to the south.
The corn is huge right now, with most fields towering over me as I ride. I’ve ridden past corn fields for my whole life, but it wasn’t until I moved here that I really noticed how much you can actually smell the corn as you ride by. It’s as if I have my nostrils right down to an ear of corn sniffing it like I was doing lines of coke. Or something like that.
Sunday morning I sat at the computer and wrote a blog post about Saturday’s mountain bike ride. Then Wifey came into my office with some sort of failing DVD workout drama and interrupted me. I never did get around to actually publishing that post, and it was probably for the best. See, Saturday’s ride on singletrack didn’t go so well in the back and hip department, and I aborted after about 7 or 8 miles of riding. This left me in a hell of a funk, swearing that I would not even attempt to ride singletrack the rest of 2016, that all that physical therapy was a waste of time and money, and that I should just spend my Saturdays sitting in a comfy chair watching soccer, drinking until I pass out, blah, blah, blah, blah. And most of that stuff is true (especially the blah, blah, blah part).
Regardless of how poor the ride was, or how disappointed I was, I decided there was no point in spreading that self-pity around, and to focus on the fact that I had three rides under my expanding belt before I headed to MMCC to ride on Saturday, and those rides were just fine, so just get out to ride instead of sitting around bitching about one ride.