
A crap ride on Saturday was followed by a day of slack and nothingness on Sunday. By Monday morning I was ready to take on some dirt roads south of town, hopefully before it got too hot.

A crap ride on Saturday was followed by a day of slack and nothingness on Sunday. By Monday morning I was ready to take on some dirt roads south of town, hopefully before it got too hot.

After a crap ride on Wednesday and a day playing catch-up with house/dad/husband duties on Thursday, I found myself unmotivated to ride before getting tires on the car Friday morning and without enough time to ride after.

After a week void of cheeks in saddle time, I was finally able to get out for a ride on Sunday. With the wind blowing steadily from the northeast at 15-20+ miles per hour I was expecting the worst, but it was somehow tolerable. I guess when you’re that hard up for a ride, anything will do.

Monday was Labor Day and felt like a Monday regardless of the holiday. Tuesday was Tuesday and felt like Monday because of the holiday. Know-what-I-mean?

As I closed my last post, I said that whatever I decided to do with my day—doing stuff-wise—it would be the right decision. That sounded good, and I tried to make it right, but choosing to ride had me wishing that I would have done just about anything else.
I’ll explain, because that’s what I do…

I spent most of Friday at the shop doing things that one does while working in a bike shop and was anxious to get out for some riding on Saturday.

I wasted much of my Thursday morning writing pointless words and posting photos to this digital fish wrap instead of riding. There have been times in the past where I’ve just said “fuck it” and climbed back into bed so as to avoid human contact and find escape in my dreams. But I’ve grown a bit lately (inward and outwards) and instead donned my kit, lubed up the undercarriage and headed out for a quick ride on dirt roads.

I proclaimed loudly (or at least typed some shit here) back in May about how I was going to start mountain biking more. That lasted about two or three weeks, and then I immediately went back to riding gravel roads.

After two weeks of riding that had me in the saddle for nearly 9 hours one week and over 9 hours the next, I struggled to make it over the 5-hour mark last week. And this week I will probably struggle even to hit that. Uncharacteristically it will not be from my inherent slack but from real life getting in the way.

Friday was pretty wet around these parts. So wet that I had to abort a rail trail spin due to the heavy rain. When Saturday came around, I planned on doing Friday’s ride on Saturday; a 25 to 30-mile ride on the paved Jaque rail trail out of Clare. Then I didn’t.