Woke up all ready for a nice calm medium length ride and found a flat.
The damage I did at that last triathlon had returned. The wound in the kevlar I found last weekend had fallen victim to some debris I picked up yesterday. I’ve ordered a new tire, but it hasn’t arrived yet.
So I took off the old tire, pulled out the tube, found the leak was in the same place. Checked the liner there for any junk that’s going to hurt the next tube and cleaned the frame.
I have the my front tire died and my new one hasn’t arrived yet blues. A friend suggested there’s a song for that:
That song applies even when the bike is in working order..
Mondays are Mondays. Mine are usually pretty great. Got in some important work and emailing.
Purchased and mailed a birthday card. (Happy Birthday to all the timely readers!) At the grocery store where I picked up the greeting card I saw this. I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but the championship trophy is shrinking.
I know because I had the pleasure of holding the trophy two years ago. It was the day this happened:
You see, Aubie “stole” the football trophy during the offseason, which led to a series promotional videos. (Happily the Trooper Taylor one is still on the site.) It all led to that home opener. Before the game we ran into someone we knew from the athletic department who was carrying the trophy in his backpack. He let us palm the trophy, Waterford crystal valued at over $30,000. It was bigger than this mockup.
Made a few business calls. Did some other work things. Work things? Yes, it is getting to be that time again.
Took a quick ride around town, one of those days where it didn’t feel especially good, but the time was an improvement. Looked down and the speed was faster. Only a mile per hour faster, which isn’t much given my baseline, but is enough to make the entire, familiar ride seem frantic. And even still I noticed new things in the textures of the road and the signs alongside it. I think that slightest increase of speed came from attacking a few hills a bit harder.
Then, on Red Route One, one of our speed segments where I just go as hard as possible for 10 minutes, I added some nice distance to my personal best. It is almost entirely downhill, I must confess, but it is great segment with one little roller and then a 90-degree righthand curve that lets you dive and accelerate for the next 500 meters. The last mile and a half is hard in the drops or in the ridiculous aero position.
I want to go ride it again just thinking about it.
Did I mention that this weekend I found another rode where I can break the speed limit on my bicycle? I think that makes three. Moving up in the world.
Not really. I’m still a terrible cyclist.
Chinese for dinner tonight. This was my fortune:
That might be my favorite one yet.
And now back to the emailing. I’m sending out varied tips to students who’ll run the newspaper and website this coming year. Lots of details. So many words. They’re just falling out of my fingers like rain.
Hey, rain. Told you we’ve had a wet summer. Some places on the coast recorded more than 20 inches. In July.
The two weather stations nearest us recorded a comparatively arid 8.8 inches and 10.10 inches in just the one month.
Slept in. Long lunch with a friend. And then we rode our bicycles around town.
I had little stretches where I pedaled at 30 miles per hour on flat terrain. If only I could do that over time. And hills.
Ahh, but the hills weren’t bad today. Sometimes it feels like my bike is fast for me, or smart enough for me. Sometimes I feel like it is weighing me down — which is really more about me than the bike. But every once in a while it feels like the bicycle is pulling me over the hills.
That has happened to me twice. It is as close as I may ever get to La Volupte, and that’s fine, because it is a nice feeling on its own.
It was the longest ride I’ve done since we rode in Ireland. (Isn’t that a great sentence?) It is the longest ride I’ve done at home since May. That must be remedied.
But it was a lovely day for it. Just the sun and the trees and the sweat and that one SUV I chased for a long while.
Also, I hit a round number on my odometer. I haven’t posted one of these in a while:
That number should be much, much higher.
Veggie pizza for dinner. Bruster’s ice cream for dinner. Someone brought their well behaved dog, and we learned that Bruster’s gives a little free cup of vanilla to pups that are visiting. Tell all the pooches you know.
Lovely day. They should all be just like this one. Hope yours was even better.
Well I’m back in this space. As I said here previously, and sparingly, in the last month, there hasn’t been a lot going on here. I’ve been doing work and catching up on the blog with all of the photos and videos and experiences of our Irish and English and cruise adventures. Scroll down to see them all.
Otherwise there were the few other things that I mentioned here. And then there was a little bit of riding and some running and eating healthy things and cutting back on a few of the unhealthy things and petting the cat and enjoying what has heretofore been a mild summer and so on.
There is a bridge close to home that has been out for forever, at least since March It is on a two-lane country road that drops down and bottoms out at the creek bed. And it is a little bridge, the name of the water ends with the word creek. Why it is has taken so long to repair or replace the bridge is a mystery.
I could ride over the bridge, so closed is something of an open proposition at this point. But the crew was still working on it, well into the evening hours. Behind me, as I enjoyed a bit of shade and some water and pondering my new plan — because I had intended to go over that bridge, back up the other side and over one of the bigger hills we have here, but now I can’t — a deputy sheriff pulled up. She’d driven down to see if she could find out how much longer this bridge work was going to take.
So it is safe to assume no one knows.
Recently the county received $15.6 million from the state for road projects, so we’ll see more orange barrels in the future, I’m sure. It seems the county planners are looking at other bridges.
So I ended up going a different route this evening. I went up roads I normally go down, and down roads I normally go up. It never fails to amaze me how much of a difference that makes.
Stopped at one red light and found the large gouge in my front tire that likely contributed to my triathlon flat. It looks like a puckering stab wound, but without the blood. It is a kevlar tire, and kind of slow anyway, so I’ll wind up replacing that soon.
Speaking of good rides, this is one of the best finishes of the year, I’m sure. Taylor Phinney is one of my favorite riders:
The other big news is that we dropped Charter. After three years of poor service, shoddy repairs and entirely inept customer service — the kind which somehow managed to cost us money — we’ve moved on to Directv. We’ll miss the TiVos, which I considered the greatest entertainment technology to emerge in a generation, but they’ve been replaced by needlessly complicated user interfaces and more channels and cheaper bills and a signal that, so far, just seems to work.
Tonight we were taking advantage of some of the On Demand features to catch up on Parks and Recreation. There are no large commercial breaks, which is nice, but in between segments they have inserted new The More You Know PSAs. And they aren’t especially good.
Based on these commercials the biggest problems we, as a society face, are password security, retiring teachers and plate size. Also among the things that we should be concerned about are how we are not dancing during commercials, being green on dates and being an actual, you know, an actual parent.
Some of them are just silly.
And another about recycling … handcuffs?
Considering the audience they’re aiming at … why are they aiming that?
Back again tomorrow, as we return to something approaching normal around here once again.
It is slow here. Have you noticed? July is slow. I am doing other things, like catching up on old posts and catching up on email — there’s a special filter in my email called “You thought you were done, but no” — and catching up on other important things.
Plus, none of it, so far, is terribly exciting. I’m riding and running, but that’s about it. So July is slow. (Not unlike my riding and running.) Have you noticed?
But I did want to say this: One year ago today I was having surgery, getting titanium and screws, thank you very much, because 53 weeks ago today I was falling, destroying my collarbone, hurting my shoulder and whacking my head on asphalt.
So after a year of that: six months of fuzzy memories — and some periods I just don’t really recall at all — and lots of travel for work and pleasure, physical therapy, impatience and somewhat starting to feel like myself again, finally starting to ride again and wondering, for months, if I was ever going to really feel like myself again … I kinda do.
I still have some muscular issues in my shoulder, but I carry stress there anyway. I have, on occasion, finally started to notice the absence of pain in my collarbone. The surgeon said six months to a year, but I’d given up on all of that.
Last month, though, for about an hour one day while snorkeling, I realized that nothing was hurting. And it had been 11 months since I could say that. Nothing. Hurt. (It is hard to pry me out of the water anyway, but I almost willfully got left behind that day. The absence of pain is a pretty incredible feeling on its own.)
This week I’ve noticed a few times where I have to willfully turn my attention to my shoulder and my collarbone. Are you still there? I don’t think I notice you right now.
This dawned on me last night. Delightful progress.
Of course right now that section of my upper body is singing the tune I’ve come to know so well this year. It has been that kind of year.
But it is getting better. It isn’t perfect, but it is better.
