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.
From my best guesstimate I rode twice this week–Tuesday and Thursday thus far, with high hopes for some sort of crap riding over the next three or four days.
There was rain in the forecast again for Wednesday, and I really didn’t feel like getting caught out in the gritty mud and rain on the bike again, so I opted for a post-chiropractor trip to Deerfield Park for a four to five mile hike with my camera.
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.
My Garmin 500 shit the bed like Spud from Trainspotting last week, and no longer mounts up on my Mac. Despite hours of Googling, scouring bike forums, multiple resets, bitching, moaning, and nearly smashing it to pieces with a meat hammer, it just refuses to cooperate. Since then I’ve felt completely lost on the where’s, when’s, and what’s of my riding. Yes, those rides could probably be summed up with words like crap, crapper, and crappier, but I like to actually see the multiple layers of statistical crap on my computer screen.