Goofing Off, Sort Of

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After a short and sweet foggy ride on Saturday, I took Sunday just to goof off: watch soccer football, play FIFA ’16, and make food while drinking a few dozen pints of coffee, herbal tea, water, and a few other things completely void of, and starving of alcohol. My Monday was spent doing Monday stuff along with cursing, shoveling and blowing snow, and squeezing in a quick thirty minutes on the trainer combined with my loose, slack attempts at strength training. Fun, fun, fun… (not really, not at all).

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The Fog Before The Storm

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January is notoriously the hardest month for me to get through, especially here in Michigan; it’s long, cold, snowy, icy, and as of late it’s been foggy. Snow and ice on the ground, followed by rain and warmer temperatures meant that a heavy fog rolled into the Mt. Pleazy area on Friday night and it stuck around well into Saturday morning afternoon. Not ideal conditions for getting out for a road ride, but with the rains predicted to changeover to snow Saturday night, I wanted to get a few (emphasis on few) miles in.

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Snirtishness

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Thursday morning after I got B off to school I found myself waffling on when and where to squeeze a ride in, or if I wanted to at all. I should really do that second strength training session of the week, and conditions aren’t that ideal right now with many of the snirt roads being covered with every imaginable form of winter: ice, snow, slush, mud, water, dead squirrels, etc., etc. But with rain in the forecast, which will undoubtedly make the dirt and snow (snirt) into miles and miles of gritty chilled diarrhea, I figured I’d better roll while the rolling’s good.

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Void of Light

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This December has been pretty sweet as far as weather. We here in Michigan aren’t exactly getting the warm sixty-ish degree temperatures that some of the east coast states are getting, but for these parts in December, forty degrees and no snow is just as good, and in many ways my rides have felt more like those done in late fall and early spring rather than winter. Having said that, I feel the need to add: THE SUN COULD SHINE ANY F*CKING DAY NOW!!!

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More of the Same

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After Sunday’s foggy ride, I took Monday off the bike but not off from “doing stuff.” I forced myself on the treadmill for 3 miles of sprint intervals and to do my feeble attempts at strength training with the weights which is about as fun as root canal. Tuesday I headed back out onto the dirt roads for a short ride which was again enveloped in a misty fog.

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Into the Fog

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With the first singletrack ride on the Procaliber under my expanding belt on Saturday, I decided to take it out for a short twenty-six mile spin on the dirt roads north of town on Sunday. I was warned that I might not like how the bike rides on dirt roads, mostly due to its gearing, and as it turns out, I didn’t like it–I loved it and found the gearing a non-issue.

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Blowing & Sucking

Wet and windy outside my box on wheels.

Wednesday night after I helped Wifey out with her strength training, I hung around in the Stankment™ to search through piles of bike crap for a saddle to put on my road bike, a bike which these days stays affixed to my trainer all year round and has been missing a saddle for the past eight months. Knowing that crap weather was fast approaching I searched, cussed, found and installed the saddle in preparation for another day hunkered down avoiding high winds and rain.

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