I was up at 6:15 AM on Friday to embrace whatever fresh hell moderate inconveniences the day might throw at me. It’s been raining for like three days straight, and when it’s not raining, it’s gloomy as fuck as if it were raining. So it took a few extra guzzles of coffee and the promise of sunshine later in the day to finally convince me to start thinking about possibly leaving the house to ride my bike.
WEDNESDAY 7:53 AM
I’ve been up since 6:30 AM, which is pretty normal since I usually go to bed by 9 PM these days. Oddly, it’s dark as night with threatening clouds leftover from last night’s thunderstorms, and I have a feeling it’s going to be like this for most of the day.
Given the rain overnight, I’ll be keeping my Roscoe and its new 29er wheels with low-profile Kenda rubber out of the mud and in the garage1. Instead, I’ve developed a plan to tackle 2 to 3 laps of the Bundy Hill Preserve, hopefully without being struck by lightning.
Not to sound like a broken record, but allow me to apologize for the previous post. The stomachal mayhem that I dealt with for four days was not particularly good blog fodder. I want to say it will never happen again, but you and I both know that it will.
Wednesday, I needed to shoot over to the local lab to get some bloodwork done, and then it was home to the savory arms of a 225 calorie Soiled Egg Sammich2 before getting into some kit, looking at myself in the mirror, thinking about taking the kit off and downing a bottle of gin, aborting that boozy plan for some reason, and then going for a short 20-mile dirt road ride that hurt like it was 120.
Sunday brought a reprieve from five days of heavy rain and thunderstorms. I had no real plans for the day, but in the late morning, I decided to do a quick walk around the Sylvan Preserve with my macro lens. Wifey tagged along to get some real exercise while I took photos, and then we met up for a bit somewhere in the middle of the trails to finish out the walk.
Against the better judgment of the weather goof on TV, but falling in line with my 49 years of poor decisions, I headed out into Summer Monsoon-A-Go-Go 2021 for a walk at Meridian Park on Saturday.
It’s been real build an ark-type weather here over the past week, so any outdoor activity needs to be inside. 3 In other words—it’s been raining a lot, so unless you don’t mind getting wet (spoiler alert, I don’t), you’re better off inside.
We’ll start this unneeded post back on Friday, ’cause that was the next time I did something since the last time.
As I sat and sipped my A.M. coffee on, I started to get the itch to ride. Knowing that I am full-on mother fucking out of shape and the heat outside was some real swamp-ass type stuff, I knew it wouldn’t be a long ride, but I wanted outside. The plan was to ride the paved mid-Michigan pathway (or whatever the fuck it’s called) from MP towards Shepherd, then jump off for some dirt roads and then back. All in all, it would be about a 20-mile lollipop of a loop with a dogleg left and a cul-de-sac.
But it never happened.
It seems as if the Dog Days of Summer have arrived before summer even has; it hasn’t rained in weeks, the temps hover around 90˚, I sweat like a preacher (AMEN!) and that strange summertime boredom that usually doesn’t hit me until August has set it. At least until my bikes are healthy and in-country (rear-wheel repair and new bike build), the weather cools a bit, and I feel like leaving the house for more than a sweat-soaked hour at a time.
Oh well, the nine months of Michigan winter will be back soon enough, so I will reserve my bitching for then.
After a week or more of feeling like a mental shit show, I woke up Thursday morning feeling unusually refreshed and even more unusually inspired to ride my bike.
