Someone’s alarm went off at 5:30 — and then I was awake

I think this morning marked the fourth time we’ve shoveled the driveway in the last week or so. It’s a small driveway, thankfully, and this was a light snow. Probably it didn’t even need to be done, but it’s become rote. Get up, examine the pavement, and then eat something, maybe. While our little stretch of paved paradise took an hour and change on Tuesday after the biggest snow, it went quickly today.

Mostly I wanted to do a better job of digging out the nearby fire hydrant. One of my former students did a story on this at his station in Ohio this week and I was somewhat guilted into it. So slush slush and heave ho and, oh, look, the city guy that plows the walking path behind us but not the street in front of us came through and poured his best effort into the road.

Because what you want … nah, what I want … is for you to drive down an untreated road and then hit a snow bank you can’t see right in front of my yard and the electrical boxes and the gas line.

I don’t know anything about plowing roads, and I wonder who around here actually does.

So I got that off the road, just being neighborly and all. And then, since I had fully warmed up my core, I decided to go on a little bike ride.

This is the volcano route on Zwift’s fictional world. Some of the environments they offer are trying to be realistic. Some have a bit of a futuristic feel and this one is pure fantasy. My avatar is riding through a volcano there. You go in the volcano twice on the way up and twice again after you ride to the top of the active volcano.

I’m breathing a bit on the bike in the house, which does not smell of sulfur, could you imagine that in real life?

Anyway, I left my bike in one of the harder gears and just dragged myself all the way to the top of this little climb. It’s a good weekday sort of thing. It doesn’t take even a slow person like me forever, and you can still move around a bit when you’re done. I had an hour this morning, and this is what I did.

Zwift charts the King of the Mountain, which is the fastest person up the route. And the current leader is a name I recognize. Dylan Teuns is much faster than I am. He’s younger, stronger, a climber, more fit and also, and this part is incredibly important, an insanely talented professional cyclist. But today I got to the top of the climb in just under twice the amount of time it took him to do it. So I’m putting him on notice.

I can tell by the number of replies he’s not sent that I’m absolutely in his head.

Anyway, that was my second time up the volcano route, and I shaved a little over a minute off my previous time. So I guess there’s something to that snow shovel warm up.

This evening it was back to the studio. We shot the talk show first, new semester, new soccer season, new host.

And Jevan was on the desk to kick off the semester. Were there gifs? There were gifs.

Thursday nights run into Friday quickly into Fridays. Dinner, dishes, and, now, bedtime. We’ll be back in the studio again tomorrow morning. I’m tired already. Can’t imagine why.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2021 at 10:08 pm and is filed under cycling, photo, television, Thursday, Twitter. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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