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.
As I mentioned during yesterday’s short post, I was able to log another 200 mile week last week. All 200 miles were on local pavement, dirt and gravel roads and all were completed atop my new Trek Boone 5 Disc with a smile on my face (except for the times that I was dealing with a craptastic headwind.
When my alarm went off at 6:05 AM this morning I drug myself out of bed in a manner that suggested I’d been out until 4 AM, pounding Jägerbombs with a gaggle of strippers fresh off their shift and looking for free drinks from a desperate, creepy old dude, rather than home, sober and in bed reading at 9 PM with lights out and sound asleep by 9:30. Maybe I’m growing older faster than I think, or maybe my renewed efforts on the bike are making me crave sleep more than usual… Either way, I had made up my mind to ditch riding today before I even had my first cup of coffee. A decision that was confirmed when I walked upstairs to wake B-Man twenty minutes later and my legs felt like I was carrying a fat dwarf on my back.
As they predicted things have been windy and rainy so far this week, so after one of my biggest weeks of riding in some time and a day off the bike on Monday I was back inside spinning and going nowhere in the Stankment today. Since there is little to no interest (from me or you) in a post about riding the stationary trainer, I figured I would post something else of little to no interest– my ongoing dabbles back into shooting photos with film. In particular with the new to me Olympus [mju II], also known as the Stylus Epic.
After being in the saddle every day last week (both on the road and on the trainer) and a big weekend of riding, I needed a day off the bike today. The aging and fat just don’t recover like they used to. With my spare time free to goof off, I decided to take the first roll of film I shot with the new to me Olympus MJU II to get developed. I will say finding a place to develop 35mm film in house is no easy task these days! Right now here in town we are down to exactly ONE place (Walgreens on Mission & Preston for local yokals) that doesn’t send their film out.
After what seemed like weeks of steady sunshine–and cold ass temperatures–we here in mid Michigan have endured several days of gray skies, downpours and steady rain. The extent of my riding this week has been hour-long sessions on the trainer every day since Monday’s short 27 mile loop. Who knew you could ride junk miles on the trainer??
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.
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.
Part I (Friday & Saturday)
After two cold, windy days of riding out on the roads of Michiganderburgh last week I decided to skip riding on Friday and take shelter from the cool winds with a hike in the woods of Deerfield Park. It was nice to be out and enjoying the sunshine and crisp spring temps without having to be layered up in several moisture wicking layers of Lycra and wool. Still, it wasn’t riding.