Dirty rollers.
I got 48.6 (NOT 50) miles of dirt and pavement in my legs yesterday but I felt surprisingly fresh and eager to ride more today, especially since my plan was to ride a bit less. I figured I should get something done besides jack around on my bike for hours (although I that would have been fine with me).
There are days when riding my bike in the bitter cold, ice, snow and relentless winds of a middle Michigan winter makes me want to fellatiate a loaded .45. However there is one thing in the back of my mind (other than the handgun fellatiating) during those cold winter rides– days like today.
After yesterday’s 41 mile road ride (with a dash of dirt thrown in) I was eager to get back out on the bike today for some mileage. For today’s ride I had mapped out a ride that was a nugget’s hair over 50 miles and about a 50/50 mix of pavement and dirt roads. In other words, it was perfect.
After a piss-poor, windy and cold ride on Saturday I was in need of a good ride. I had hoped that would have come on Sunday but waking up to an inch of so of heavy, wet, sloppy snow changed my mind and had me hunkering down to watch football and make a VERY nontraditional Easter supper of meatball sandwiches and oven fries. Thankfully I was able to make up for weekend’s lack of quality enjoyable riding with a semi-good ride today.
Over the past couple of weeks, we have had more than our share of sunny days and blue skies here in Michiganderburgh. I have no idea why, but I’ll take it. Granted we’ve yet to see temperatures above 60˚, but bright sun and blue sky at least 95% of the time is pretty sweet for this transplant who was raised on Joe DeNardo predicted Western Pennsylvania “partly cloudy skies with a chance of showers.” However, today was NOT one of those days. It was damp and chilly and everything–and I mean EVERYTHING–was various shades of fecal matter brown, baby vomit, and slate gray.
Sunday brought little in the way of riding, but much in the way of gusting winds and even some blowing snow at times. It also brought me and Wifey to a local furniture store to buy new mattresses and our first set of bedroom furniture that wasn’t a hand-me-down or dug out of a dumpster. It actually felt kind of nice to finally do that and will probably feel even better to sleep on a mattress that doesn’t feel like it’s stuffed with dead pigs.
While we were out and about, I dropped off a roll of film that I recently shot with my Holga 135. It’s sort of fun to shoot pics with the $35 plastic Holga. It’s also a roll of the creative dice pretty much every time you click the shutter as to whether the crap photo will be a GOOD crap photo, or just a crap photo.
In a post earlier this month I mentioned how happy I was to be back on skinny (40c) tires and off of the Farley for a while. That time off of the Farley lasted about two weeks. It’s not that I found myself longing to ride slow, soft, heavy, four-inch tires on dry dirt roads or anything, but with Saturday’s ride time temps hovering around 30˚ I figured I might as well roll fat and slow, work harder and thus stay warmer.
After two three days of poop [literally], gusting winds, falling temperatures and local streets littered with drunk college kids dressed in various shades of dumb ass, green and vomit, I was finally able to pinch off [no poop pun intended] a short, hour and forty minute ride today: the Better Than The Trainer Ride (North Dirt Version)™.
After a lazy Saturday of not much riding, I made the executive, and oh so correct, decision to NOT watch my (adopted) Spurs get their asses handed to them by the dreaded Man U. today. Instead I opted to get out on the Jake (The Snake) with its newly re-mounted WTB Nano 40c tires to get my first true dirt road ride of 2015 in. I gotta tell you, it felt goooood.
I stayed up late Thursday night to greet Wifey when she arrived home from her week of dropping knowledge on work peeps in D.C.. After a brief meet and greet where we tried to catch each other up on the week’s events, it was off to bed so as to be up early for B’s parent/teacher conferences in the morning. Thankfully his school is literally right across the street and his conferences are usually a breeze. We were happy to get a good report from his teacher and even happier with word of continued straight A’s (pardon my proud dad moment, but straight A’s is something I NEVER saw in school. Hell, I’m not sure I ever got an A in anything besides my art classes).
Once home, B and Wifey headed out for the 6.5 hour drive back to western PA for a quick visit with family and I set about getting my bike ready for the day’s road ride.
