Sunday morning I got up early to see Wifey and B off on their trip back to Pennsylvania. I’m not one to want to waste a perfectly good lazy Sunday morning, so I quickly returned to the Chamber of Farts to sleep for another hour as soon as the car was out of the drive.
After a lackluster blog post earlier Friday morning I scurried out onto the dirt roads for another short ride. The morning sun was hot as balls and I felt like a crispy honey baked ham after just two hours of riding.
A little over a week ago, in the wake of my friend Mike’s passing, I contemplated ditching my bike completely. The prospect of riding my bike on roads and dealing with the ongoing losing battle that cyclists face with motorists was something that I wanted no part of, nor did I want my family to be part of it. Given my ever growing figure, surely I am now built better for such sports as poker, online gaming, and competitive masturbation, more than cycling, so saying fuck it and ordering a copy of The Idiot’s Guide to Poker was at the forefront of my mind. 1.
With the support of friends (some close, some via social media, and emails), I was encouraged to get back on the bike, and to not let the cars win the mental battle (we all know they’ll win the physical battle). As you may have seen in some previous posts, I did get back on the bike, and it was OK enough.
Since that last post, I am happy to say that getting out and riding has gotten easier, but not exactly better.
After a very rainy and busy weekend, I looked forward to getting out on Monday morning for a quick ride. Mondays are by nature busy, but I needed some saddle time to blow the weekend slack off of me and burn some calories.
I took the day off the bike on Thursday and headed down to the shop to fetch the PrOcal that was getting some wrench love. The day off also gave me a chance to rest my left calf which had been giving me some issues while riding. The rest of my Thursday free time was spent running errands and doing summertime dad stuff with B.
After that day of sloth, I was anxious to get back on the bike on Friday morning.
I was proud of myself for getting up early to do some work on Wednesday so that I could get out for a ride before it got too warm and windy. Then just as I was filling my bottles I could hear the distant sound of thunder. Shit.
The past few days were a steady whirlwind of driving, soccer, more driving, visiting family, and more driving. Finally around 2 PM Monday my world calmed down, and around 4 PM the first of many beers were cracked as I mentally decompressed from it all.
As mentioned in the last post, I had been dealing with some off and on again swelling in my left calf since last Friday. Due to my history of DVTs this was very troublesome of course. Despite taking a blood thinner, swelling and slight pain mean one thing to me–another f*cking blood clot. I was hopeful that I just aggravated a muscle during my Memorial Day dirt fest ride, but since it remained for a few days with that familiar tightness, I finally broke down and went to the emergency room.
Wednesday’s ride left me feeling like spent dog shit, and on Thursday there was a large part of my even larger body that wanted to say “f*ck it,” and do anything at all that didn’t involve me riding my bike into a steady headwind on a dirt road.
After Monday’s Memorial Day Singletrack Extravaganza at MMCC, Tuesday was spent catching up on stuff I neglected while away over the tournament weekend and the holiday spent riding.