SATURDAY
I spent Saturday working at the shop. It was so busy that our 3 PM closing time came and I realized that I never even had a chance to take a bite of the sandwich I brought. At least the 5 hours went fast.
The day started out with me fixing a series of flat tires for folks (one of my few mechanical skills) but quickly morphed into me selling bikes. Yes, Mr. Not a People Person chatting and selling comfort bikes to folks. How I do it without the aid of drugs and alcohol is beyond me!
The shop’s 10 to 3 Saturday hours provided ample time for a post-work ride, but it was 92˚ by the time I left. Screw that, a ride can wait!
Snake portrait.
SUNDAY
My lack of good judgment, decisions, and choices have been well documented in these digital pages over the years, there is no need to rehash them all. Today, however, I made a good choice.
The weather forecast called for temps in the 90s today. Overweight cyclists and heat don’t get along so well, so I made the executive decision to get my ass up by 7:30 AM on a Sunday (A GODDAMN SUNDAY!!), coffee up, eat breakfast, dump out, and head to my new favorite Dirt Road Launching Pad along the Pere Marquette rail trail1 before the real crotchial heat of the day kicked in.
Love me some “new to me” dirt roads.
To save time, I mapped out the ride last night and uploaded it to my jank, but good enough until my Garmin comes in, Bryton 330. I wanted to keep the ride to under 30 miles to ensure that I could beat the heat and because the aforementioned extra 60 pounds I’m carrying around start to make longer rides less fun.
Nature reclaiming a barnless silo.
There was a pretty stiff breeze coming from the south-west, which made the first hunk of the ride pretty fun, but the middle part sort of sucked; the sun got hotter, the wind got stiffer, and I got slower. However, the last 6 miles or so treated me to another tailwind, so all became right in my world of slack again.
The Boone continued its creaking which Rodney at the shop hypothesizes is coming from the bottom bracket. With no time to have it investigates further on Saturday, I just tried to ignore it today. Often that was easier said than done.
The swingin’ utters udders giving me the look.
Minus the creak and the day’s increasing heat, it was a pretty damn good ride. It was also the first ride that I completely trusted the Bryton’s track feature. Happy to say that while it has its shortcomings, I didn’t miss a single turn.
I finished the ride with 27.7 miles and two near-empty bottles, save for a few drops of piss warm water and a leading sports drink.
Dust + Sweat + Boloney Legs.
UNRELATED NOTE OF NARCISSISM
Today is the three-week mark of my self-imposed four-week minimum alcohol ban (Operation Boozeless™). I am pleased with my ability to abstain from any alcohol at all for this long. This is no doubt a personal record during my adult life. I’ve gone many a work week without booze over the, but never 3 continuous weeks in a row, including weekends. One more week to go and then I can contemplate reintroducing moderate consumption into my weekends. If it looks like I can’t, then I won’t.
Front yard dildo. Why?
Sadly, a recent weigh-in showed that I have plateaued at the 7-pounds lost mark. An average of 3 pounds a week is pretty damn good, not to mention healthy, but it can be pretty disheartening when I see that I have 60 more to go to hit my target. Time to step up my nutrition game.
Hoping that the week to come will provide more miles and a few more pounds shed.
Later.