Saw another pharmacist today, got another shot. Pushed groceries into the little room because my lovely bride, who had arrived early at the store, did some shopping. She was getting her second dose in another room. Today an older gentleman jabbed me in the arm. White hair, white coat, giant needle, very official. He could have been anyone though, couldn’t he?

He said he wasn’t counting how many people he’d been giving shots to. Said he’d his first dose. Said I needed to relax my arm. Said I didn’t bleed but, and I quote, “I’ll give you a bandage anyway, so if anyone asks you to do any chores you can point to it and go ‘But uh uh, my arrrrrrrrrrmuh.”

So there I was in a pharmacist’s office, getting a minor medical procedure with major implications, while a rack of ribs sat in a cart behind me.

I thanked him, with eye contact, so he knew I meant it, and pushed the groceries back outside where my wife was standing. She was looking at her phone, pretending to wonder where the groceries went. She had her second shot. I had my second shot. We sat in some chairs to make sure we had no major reactions. We watched the very end of a car chase from Los Angeles on our phones. This is how things are done.

After we waited for a bit, we got gas and went to the house. We put away the groceries and stood by the kitchen counter and discussed how we were fortunate to have gotten through this to the degree that we have. And that was it. She rode her bike on the trainer, I could already feel the side effects coming on, so I just sat down and marveled at the world.

I think I may play hooky tomorrow and wait on my super powers to kick in.

Before our Saturday bike ride I finally changed out the Look cleats on my shoes. I probably should have done this in the fall, but it’s one of those things I don’t think about until I’m already riding and then, hey, too late. Recently my shoe came out of a pedal while I was standing out of the saddle and going uphill and how I remained upright is a mystery. And that adrenaline spike is also a motivation.

So these are the old ones, showing some six years or so of wear on them.

I have no idea how long cleats last for other people. It has to do with how you beat them up while walking around more than how much you ride or anything like that. But I do know that I eeked just about as much life out of these things as I could. And, so after lunch on Saturday I put on these pretty new ones.

So you can sorta tell, in all the places the plastic has been destroyed, how they were prone to user error when they were clipped into pedals. If there’s no there there, you can’t really expect these things to work to maximum efficiency. I’m sure engineers have a term for this concept.

This was part of our ride, a 26-mile route intent to give us our first real hill of the year. This was before the hill, but after the detour. A road was washed out — it’s always under water, seems like — and so we had to find a new hill. No matter! We were in a good place for hills. It found us soon after this.

I saw this little scene about to happen up the road so I had to pedal hard to catch up to capture my masterpiece. Almost all of the colors in her kit were reflected by nature in this photograph. Needed more flowers.

And fewer hills.

We were going up one, remember. I needed fewer hills than one.

Indoor riding this winter allowed me to climb pretend versions of famed climbs from all over France. And while that was fun and challenging and probably beneficial in some way, I am not convinced it helped with actual climbing that much. Or maybe it did. I’ve no real way of knowing. I only know this, at the end of this little climb that was about 240-feet of total ascent, I was ready for more of the flat parts.

I shot a little video of this, so that we could end this on something better than just the idea of huffing and puffing slowly and inefficiently.

I think this part is important. We got our vaccines today. I said, I’m going to sit here and nurse this sudden prickly throat, and The Yankee said “I’m going to ride my bike.”