Posts Tagged → journal-ish

Let’s Go!

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The ushering out of summer is done. Well, almost done. Now it’s on to fall and my Second Season.

The past few days have brought me nearly 60 miles of singletrack (twelve of which were on a borrowed fat bike). I have to say, for a big-boned, has-been, mid-pack racer type who enjoys beer a bit too much (and pizza, pasta and cheese even more) I am happy with that. Sure, there were days in the past that I would do more than that in one afternoon; these are not those days.

My only real goal going into the fall is to get as many miles as I can in while looking for work (I think the miles will be easier to get than the job). If I can even get 8 to 10 hours a week of riding in, while being good bout my eating and liquid refreshments, I think I’ll be happy enough. It would be nice to lose some fat off my man-hams, but I’m not going to hold my breath for that.

This fall–unlike last fall and winter–I am forgoing the gym. Yes, yes, I know, I mentioned (too) many times last year about how going to the gym helped me gain strength, added muscle, got me out of the house, etc., etc., Well, it seems (from looking at my “training” records) that my time at the gym fell off significantly after I purchased the Pugsley and realized, yet again, that being outside is way more fun than being in a gym, even if it is lacking the numbers of spandex-clad lady-types.

Fall may not officially start for another twenty days, but in my world it has.

Later.

Photo: by me. It was the lone photo taken during the second of two, 14-ish mile laps on Sunday.

Photo Dump

Because I’m lazy and a bit tired from riding in the rain and humidity for two days, AND from watching DVRed football for the past few hours (soccer, NOT fucking throw-ball) while drinking a few beers I am going to just photo dump the past two days. Let out your collective moans now…

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Trying Out New Habits

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Old habits are hard to break; like limiting myself to riding during daytime hours since I left my (cash paying) job in March of 2009. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but it’s funny how true it really is and what other habits–good and bad–have come to replace a post-work ride on a weekday evening.

Let me say, this blog post was NOT supposed to be this long, it was just supposed to be a few photos from last night’s ride, but then I got thinking, wandered more than a bit off track and found myself “on the couch.” The short story is that I had a great ride on Wednesday evening (as illustrated above), the long story below is to be filed under Too Much Information or Never Has So Much Thought Gone Into Deciding To Go For a Fucking Ride. I don’t encourage you to read on, but do so if you wish.

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A Weekend of Dirtz

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My plan for Saturday morning was this: get up, drink 2 to 14 cups of Bust Ass Coffee, eat some sort of lame breakfast, watch football (YES!!!) and then head out to ride some singletrack north of town. All of that was on course to happen until I checked the radar on Weather-dot-look-at-all-these-ads-and lame human interest videos-dot-com and saw that my trails appeared to be getting pissed down on with rain by the uncontrollable, loose bladder of Ma Nature.

Plan B was activated.

Plan B was to grab the El Mariachi and head out for a couple of hours or so of pavement and dirt roads. Obviously not my first choice (made fucking obvious by the fact that it’s Plan B, NOT Plan A. But dirt is dirt, miles are miles, calories burnt are calories burnt and a fat, crap cyclist is a fat, crap cyclist).

Upon fetching the El Mariachi (my current “go-to” gravel road bike that is really just a hardtail mountain bike) from the Not-So-Stankment®, I realized that in a raging fit of laziness [surprised?] I failed to rinse the bike off after Tuesday’s muddy dirt road ride. No big, I sort of like riding around with what amounts to an extra 2 to 5 pounds of dried cement on my frame. What’s a few extra pounds of dried cement on my bike when I’m already sporting at least 15 extra pounds of beer, pizza and general fuck-up-ness around my ever broadening and bouncing midriff??? Nothing!

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The Curse of Tuesday

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I’m not going to lie, I HATE Michigan winters. Of course, I also hated every one of the, slightly shorter Pennsylvania winters I experienced in my first thirty-nine years of life before moving here in 2010. On the flip side, MOST of my time here in Michigan has been blessed with some amazing summers and falls. I would have included spring, but our spring is the drunk, psychotic uncle of seasons; cloudy, cold, sunny, blustery, warm, rainy, icy, grey, humid and dry. However, this summer has been pretty darn excellent in the weather department; not too hot, not too humid and sunny most of the time. Except on Tuesdays.

It seems that Tuesdays in central Michigan are reserved for heavy rains, strong winds and storms. Tuesday also happens to be the day that Wifey has the option to work at home, which allows me to get out for a ride during the day. Sadly–more often than not–on the days she has done so, I have awoke in the morning to the sounds of rain blowing against the house. Today was no different.

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What Saturday Is

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Saturday–by the grace of God (as well as Buddha, Allah, WICCA, Lucifer, Jake The Dog, that crazy guy that screams Bible verses at you in the park and everything and anything else that is holy, unholy and plain old strange in this world) is meant for one thing: bike ridin’!! Watching football (proper football), comes in a VERY close second, but thankfully matches happen early enough in the day for we Americans, that once the season gets started (NEXT WEEK!) it shan’t interfere with the divine holy/unholy/strange grace bestowed upon Saturday and the bike riding that is to be done within its hours.

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My Cycling Metamorphosis

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Lately I’ve been thinking about the magical metamorphosis that took place when cycling went from being a hobby for me to lose weight and stay in shape to something that–in many ways–defines me as a person today.

Some Background

As a kid, the extent of my bike riding was rolling around town on my black and yellow Mongoose BMX bike wishing I had the skills, speed and balls to race BMX with my friends Scott and John. The bike was cool, with sweet yellow mag wheels, checkered bar and stem pads and even though I never did race the bike, I rode around with a number plate on it. I was #4, paying tribute to then Pittsburgh Pirate shortstop turned coke-head Dale Berra. A tribute paid only after buying the #4 decal and being asked why the hell I was #4. If eleven year old kids called each other poseurs back in 1982, I would have surely been called one, and deservedly so.

After the BMX days, I sold my bike, stopped playing soccer, stopped playing baseball and turned all my attention to my new hobby; eating. Through my teens and very early twenties, I ate myself to a robust, ruddy cheeked, lonely and depressed 300 pounds. It wasn’t until I was on the brink of exceeding the maximum girth of my size 42 pants and lacked the funds to make the move up to 44s, that I finally did something about my weight (it seems it’s cheaper to lose weight than buy new clothes).

After years of saying I was going to “diet,” I finally just changed my lifestyle. I no longer attempted to starve myself, try diet pills or Slim-Fast shakes. For the first time in my life I started eating healthier foods, cut out between meal snacking (which were actually between meal meals) and started exercising, and IT WORKED!

Keep in mind, that at 300 pounds, my “exercising” consisted of long walks seeking out the biggest hills in town while listening to my Walkman, and that when you go from doing nothing to doing something, things will start to change; regardless, I was stoked to see the pounds start to come off. Then one day while sitting in my room listening to sad bastard music and flipping though a magazine I saw an ad for a mountain bike. It looked cool as hell and on top of that I remembered that this really hot girl I had gone to art school with had one. Cool looking bike… hot girl rides one…. OH, I’M GETTING ONE!

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