After working all day at the shop on Thursday, my plan for Friday was to get in some miles on the Boone. Sadly, that didn’t happen. Instead it pissed down Old Testament-esque rains all morning and the rest of the day was filled with FINALLY getting a permanent crown put on one of my teeth and dealing with a backed up main drain which resulted in plumbers in the house to snake it. The only highlight was celebrating Wifey’s 44th birthday.
As I headed to bed last night I knew what today was going to have in store for me: a trip to the dentist office to FINALLY get the left side of my mouth right (what?) and then working at the bike shop ’till six. On paper that is pretty swell, especially since I would have a few hours in the morning to putz around before work. Here’s what happened…
The weekend ended up being pretty crap for riding; it pissed down a hard rain all day Saturday, and Sunday was sunny, but windier than hell. Wifey got home around 1 PM from Pennsylvania and I had plenty of time to ride, but has absolutely NO desire to ride in the chilly June wind (yes, I said chilly and June in the same sentence, welcome to Michigan).
My original plan for today was to go to the shop, work ’till 6 and get a couple of loops in on the Alma mountain bike trail after. Well, heavy rains last evening may have left the trail too soft for proper riding, so I ended up aborting.
Some late day reports said the trail was firm enough to ride, but by quitting time I had convinced myself otherwise and was content to just help myself to some carbon prep to aid the Superfly’s slipping seat post, work, and get home to see B-Man and Wifey.
I was also content to finally nab a pic of one of the buildings in the back alley of the shop. I wish I would have got it with one of my 35mm cameras (and still may) but for now was I am happy with what I got with my iPhone. Not sure why I get some enamoured with back alley shots, but I do.
Successful cycling, or at least ENJOYABLE cycling, is a about many things: fitness, diet, the bike and a foolhardy commitment to a sport that 99.225% (that stat is made up) of America doesn’t even recognize as an actual sport, and forces its participants to face varying degrees of mocking, hatred, violence and derision [MURICA!!].
What the racers, pundits, and gods of the cycling world fail to mention–to pretty everyone–is that sometimes, success or failure as a cyclist comes down to one thing and one thing only: the shoes.
After squeezing in a 37 mile dirt road/road ride on Monday, I THOUGHT I knew what Tuesday would bring: time in a dentist chair getting two cavities filled and a crown mold formed. What I didn’t know is just how much pain I would endure during the procedure and/or how long I would be in said dentist chair getting the procedure done. It turns out that it was two hours of non-working novocaine, copious amounts of puckered butt sweat, armpit sweat, saliva dripping, and burning dental drills–pretty fucking miserable!
I’m not sure why, but the past few days and the weekend have been a bit of a blur. As predicted, most of Friday was a soggy mess. So I took the time to head down to Terry’s in Alma to swap out some brake pads on the Superfly.
I knew after Thursday’s 45 mile ride that the following days–especially the balls of the weekend– would feature less miles due to family commitments and forecasted rain. However that is not to say that the weekend sucked.
Monday was a planned day off the bike to let my sub-par, crap, fat, aging, sagging body recover a bit from the following week’s efforts. It was also a chance to get some things done around the house, do some work on the Superfly and take in B-Man’s spring school concert in the evening. All that was done with an eye towards riding today: unfortunately that didn’t happen.
I realized today that I haven’t ridden a mountain bike on singletrack (dirt) in roughly six months. I rode some snow packed fat bike trails on the Farley this winter, but I haven’t been on dry, woodsy singletrack in six freaking months! That’s sort of unacceptable… except when it is.
