As I rapidly age and discover, and rediscover, other interests like eating and drinking to excess, worrying about the dog urine spots on my lawn, and taking photos, there are days that I just don’t feel like stuffing myself into a Superman outfit and riding. Somedays I’m content to satisfy my urge to be outside with a walk down the road to the local park and traipse around the woods for a bit with my camera and then do some yard work. Don’t judge. OK, go ahead judge, I probably need it.
I knew Thursday was going to be a busy day bookended by a 7th Grade “promotion” event at B’s school in the morning, soccer practice in the evening, and a scheduled MRI for me and back thrown in the middle. I had put the idea of a ride out of my mind, and just planned on getting some work done in between all of that. But, the day was too nice, and I am too slack, so I squeezed in a flat, quick (in theory), windy and slow (in reality), 21 mile loop from the house.
With my Saturday morning sadly void of Premier League football to watch, and the Champions League final not coming on until around 3 that afternoon, I decided to once again return to woods for some miles on the PrOcal.
Thursday night I met my friend, and fellow cyclist, Mike at our local brew pub for a couple of pints. While we were sitting there watching the hockey game (LET’S GO PENS!) the song Here I Go Again by Whitesnake came on the pub’s radio. I remarked to Mike, and our barmaid Gale, that for some reason this was my high school class song (class of ’89). Even though I didn’t vote for the song (my vote was cast for Metallica’s Fade to Black), there was a certain sense of nostalgia as I listened to the song and watched the Pens, something that I did quite a bit of through the 80s and early 90s before being priced out of attending games, and turned off by the NHL’s relentless expansion teams.
As I mentioned in my last post, based on recent back issues and the realization that fitness and any sort or racing wasn’t going to happen this year, I had made the not-so-executive decision to sell my five month old Trek Procaliber hardtail. It was boxed and ready to ship when the bike gods intervened and the buyer decided–probably wisely so–to go with his LBS to make sure he got full warranty coverage. I in turn took this as some sort of miracle from above and proceeded to unbox the bike and build it back up.
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Somewhere in the last ten days it went from being 39˚ with sleet and snow, to crusty, dry, and 87˚. Long gone (thankfully) are the soft, deep muddy rutted roads with, pockets of standing water, slush, and half-frozen agricultural smegma. For now they have turned to grids of rolling, 30s era Dust Bowl-like roads and my skin is sunburned red like a baboon’s butt.Having said that, I would rather fishtail through a hot cloud, manure flavor dirt than a freeze my sagging man-udders off. Fact.
I gotta say, last week was a darn good week’s worth of riding. There was no singletrack, and the rides weren’t all that long, but I managed to get 8.5 hours worth of riding in, which isn’t too bad for a beer loving, burrito eating, crap cyclist with a bad back like myself. Speaking of my back…
After two attempted rides at MMCC last week that ended prematurely do to back and hip pain, I returned yet again on Friday with a different bike and a different attitude, and was treated to better results.
Playing Catch Up, Monday 1o:50 PM
This blog is funny in that if I go one day without posting something, I get the itch to post something; whether it be some unfunny commentary, tales of one of my short and shitty rides, or just a couple of photos. However if I go more than four days without posting I reach blissed out on Valium and sleep med levels of apathy about ever posting anything again. Then once I hit five days without posting something, apathy gives way to creative ennui, or I actually go for a ride and have something that I feel like blathering on about.
In the midst of various home and freelance work projects I looked at the weather forecast for the week and saw that Tuesday looked to be the one day over the next few that I could finally get out on some singletrack. Despite my left hip and lower back being in various stages of suck, I forced myself to load up the PrOcal and head up to the trails.
