It took a while, a week to be exact, but I finally got back in the saddle. And it felt great.
After a day spent working at the shop on Thursday, I was up early on Friday to make Wifey breakfast before she left for work and to get some writing and photo editing done before I headed out for a ride north of the Cul-De-Sac-Shack.
Note: This is a pseudo cycling blog. This post is not about cycling; it is about my recent trip to the U.P. with my family. It’s a long account written—as per usual—more for me than anyone else. The trip will be broken into four parts. The time betweenst each of these posts will be filled with my usual tales of crap rides, short hikes, “needs work” photos and bad writing.
Thanks,
Management
We got up Saturday morning and finished the last of our overpacking before heading off into the rain for a three and a half hour drive to Paradise, Michigan in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
We’ve been to the U.P. a couple of times in the past. Twice we’ve gone to Marquette, so I could race the Ore to Shore and do Marquette area stuff, and then on to Copper Harbor to do Copper Harbor stuff like chill on the beach and mountain bike the shit ton of trails there. Honestly, I had never even heard of Paradise, Michigan until Wifey suggested that we go there for a summer getaway after our original plan of a trip to Colorado was shelved.
I had no urge for a cycling vacation but always prefer a trip that is geared towards outdoor activities rather than overpriced, stand in line organized fun that always lets me down. Wifey assured me that there was plenty of hiking to be done, waterfalls to enjoy, low-key beaches to chill on, woodsy beauty to soak up, wild critters see, and plenty of opportunities for me to click some pics. I was in.
The great thing about this trip was that in just a little over three hours of easy driving we were across the bridge and at our destination, ready to get our Yooper on for a few days.
When I woke up on Thursday morning and thought about all the shit that I wanted to/needed to get done during the day, I assumed that a ride would not be happening.
The plan Wednesday morning was to get up, coffee up, dump out, hit the road and get home to get shit done as quickly as possible. I did eventually get out but had to deal with a curve ball first.
I seemingly had a hundred things to do on Tuesday but managed to fit in a 27 mile loop square of dirt roads north of the Cul-De-Sac Shack. I was geeked to have got out, but not entirely geeked with how I felt. Well, for at least half the ride.
People say that life is full of bad decisions, that you can learn from your mistakes and all sorts of bullshit like that. I hope that there is some truth to in those words, but rarely in my life have a learned anything from my bad decisions — other than I make a lot of bad decisions.
Thursday brought another “early for me” ride on dirt roads. As much as I would like to come up with something to make the ride sound like it was more than it was, I can’t.
Not sure what got into me but I got out the door for another early-ish morning dirt road ride north of town. ‘Twas pretty good.
With Wifey and B in Pennsylvania for a few days, I’ve been struggling to find some structure to my days. Monday had it all worked out for me with 8.5 hours at the shop.
With Tuesday open, I headed to the Dirt Road Launching Pad™ for some south of town gravel goodness, always a fave.
After a beautiful ride in the July sun on Friday, I did everything I could to motivate myself for another ride on Saturday. It didn’t happen.
