Unwisdom

I've all my wisdom teeth
Two up top, two beneath
And yet I'll recognise
My mouth says things that aren't so wise
--Brad Roberts

So today I was unwise. (This will not surprise anyone who knows me.) Anyone who has read my recent posts and committed them to memory (a proceeding which is not recommended by any certified mental health professionals, by the way) knows that I haven’t been able to ride very much in 2010. Well aware of this myself, when I finally made some time to ride, I decided I would do about twenty-five miles. Not a long distance, but better than nothing, right?

When I hit the road, it was very windy and my legs felt like useless blocks of wood. With my twenty-five miles firmly in mind, I turned onto a route that I know is about forty miles long. Why did I do this? I don’t know.

The first ten miles of this route are up and down. The second ten miles are quite flat, but the road is surrounded mostly by fields, so there’s nothing to block the wind. The third ten miles are mostly up without a lot of downs. (I always think it’s somehow unfair when you climb a hill and then, at the top, it simply levels off instead of going down again.) The last ten miles are the hilliest of the route. This means that you hit the hardest stretch of road when you’re the tiredest. (My spellchecker does not like the word tiredest by the way, but I don’t care.)

The first ten miles went by pretty well. There were places where it was a tough pull, but that’s okay. I remember hearing Keith’s voice in my ear: “Pedal up and pedal down.” Well, I certainly have to pedal up the hills, but I didn’t feel like pedaling down the hills. Keith was insistent, though. (This insistence is all the more difficult to understand since he wasn’t actually on the ride and I was simply remembering his words from previous rides together.)

The second ten miles went by pretty well. They were harder than the first ten miles. If all you’re contending with are hills, the road will eventually level out, but, if it’s the wind, you don’t get away from it.

The third ten miles, oddly enough, were the best of the bunch. I don’t know why.

It was during this stretch of the route that I played hopscotch with a Highway Patrol officer. I was riding along the shoulder of a two-lane highway, and I noticed his pass me. Several minutes later, I saw blue lights ahead of me, though on the opposite side of the road. When I arrived at that point, I discovered that he had pulled someone over who was heading in the opposite direction.

I went on past and continued on my way. A bit later, the Patrolman went past me again. Several minutes later, I saw the blue lights blossoming in front of me, and he had pulled over someone else, this time heading in the same direction as I was. This was annoying because traffic prevented me from getting around him for a few minutes, and I had to stop.

Do you know what it’s like when you’re going hard and you suddenly have to stop? Then, a few minutes later, while halfway up a hill, you have to get going again? My legs had things to say to me. They were not nice things.

In fact, my legs had suggested on my last ride that, if they had known I was going to let them in for that sort of thing with no warning, they would have stayed home. They let me know that they’d be happy to pedal around for me, just not right now. Not today at all in fact. They suggested we talk about it next week sometime.

A mile or two later I turned and hit the last ten mile stretch. The wind was right in my face, and the hills were all in front of me.

I was tired. I am not ashamed to confess it. I could feel my thighs swimming in lactic acid, my legs were shouting at me, but I was still ten miles from home, and the only way I was going to get there was to stay in the saddle and pedal.

I’m not sure whether the harder part was the pedaling or the staying in the saddle. I had been out of the saddle for too long, and my sit bones had begun to protest shortly after the ride started, and they were still complaining now.

It was at this point, with my body sore and all of me tired that I began to wonder how I could explain to someone else that I do all of this to myself because I enjoy riding a bike.

All I can say is that you have to try it for yourself.

See you on the road.

Still Here

52+20+37=109

Does that sound like a good number?

It isn’t.

It really works out this way: a temperature of 52 degrees F + a wind speed of 20 mph + only 37 total miles on 2010 = a rider who’s in for a very hard ride. Don’t you think?

That’s what I thought, and I was right.

I engaged first in my usual winter time sport of trying to decide if I was wearing the right stuff to brave the weather. Melanie offered the comment, “You have a lot of clothes on.” I agreed and then hoped that I was wearing enough. (As it turns out, it was just right.)

The wind was atrocious, and it made it seem bitterly cold and my legs were blocks of wood, but at least I was finally out riding again. That counts for something, right?

I would like here to give a shout out to the Grimes family. (Did you ever notice that no one ever actually shouts when they give a shout out?) Hey, Grimes family! I don’t know you, but you had a sign hanging outside your mailbox letting everyone know who you were. Hello!

There were no dogs out chasing me. There were no other cyclists on the road in my area. There were precious few cars out (not counting that really large truck that went screaming past me without giving me very much clearance at all.

Before the ride, I stopped by the bike shop to pay some more on my Lovely Lovely’s bike, which is on lay away. (It’s alright. There’s no chance that she’ll want to go out and ride until the weather warms up, so we still have a couple of months to pay it off.) I ran into Steve, Dave and Chuck at the bike shop, were I was assured that my name was being taken in vain at club rides due to my extended absence.

It was good to see the guys, though I rather see them over a pair of handlebars than standing around a store. I mentioned to them that my Lovely Lovely had told me I needed to get out and ride more. Opinion was divided as to whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll go with the good thing idea.

(I’ll go with the good thing idea? I’ll bet that’s a sentence you’ve never seen before. It’s surely a sentence I’ve never written before. Many of my sentences are peculiar, but that one might be in a class by itself.)

Well, here’s hoping I actually do get some more rides in. After all, the double century is only a few months away, and I’m determined to do it this year. You read it here first, and now you can hold me to it.

See you on the road.

Honestly.

Coldy Cold Cold Cold

From an area newspaper:


Two competing weather systems are pouring a blast of cold air on a wide swath of the nation, including the Carolinas. The result is an unusually long bought of very cold weather that has forecasters and other officials warning residents to take safety precautions.

Ahh, man. I knew I shouldn’t have written that blog entry about how it’s usually warm enough to ride here even in the winter.

I’m going to guess that, even though it won’t be on their list, one of the safety precautions is “Don’t go out riding a bicycle.”

By the way, the result is an unusually long bought of cold weather?

Meteorologists have issued a hazardous weather outlook for the region, urging residents to protect exposed water pipes, check heating units, bring pets inside and make other preparations for the cold.

Like not riding your bicycle? Did I already say “ahh, man”?

The region is experiencing the longest cold spell since 2005 and the low temperatures are expected to last into next, according to the National Weather Service.

To last into next? Next what? Next week? Next month? Next eon? You know, somebody really needs to porfreed these things.

Since Saturday, low temperatures have been around 20 degrees, according to data recorded at
Fayetteville Regional Airport. The lowest temperatures have typically come between 6 and 8 in the morning.

Here is something published on this same day: As of noon today, the temperature in Bismarck warmed up to -21 degrees.

Warmed up to -21 degrees?!! Okay, we are officially wimps here who should be grateful that our twenty degrees is above zero instead of below.

Of course, I’m still not going to go out riding…

Scott Sharp, a meteorologist with the Raleigh office of the National Weather Service, said the cold temperatures were the result of arctic air that is being funneled south by pressure systems over parts of Canada and the American west.

Is it just me, or does it seem like they always blame arctic air? Doesn’t this air warm up when it leaves the arctic? Why is it always bringing the cold to us?

Sharp said the cold spell will continue to produce temperatures between 15 and 20 degrees lower than the average for this time of year. "This is very abnormal for this time of year," he said, "to have temperatures this low for this long."

This is not making me feel better. Will I be reduced to riding the rollers out in the garage? Trust me, as lovely as she is, my Lovely Lovely will not let me ride the rollers in the house. And, you know what? It’s still cold in the garage.


My Lovely Lovely was quite strict with me (but still lovely) yesterday when I suggested going out for a ride because she felt that it was just too cold, so I stayed in. Oh, well.

It has to warm up eventually. When it does, I'll see you on the road.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all of my two wheeled friends!

In a recent post, I referred to geocaching. I meant to make the word geocaching a link to a geocaching website so that anyone who didn’t know what geocaching was could visit the geocaching website to learn about geocaching.

But I forgot. Sorry about that. I think I may have rectified that now. And now, back to our blog about cycling.

If your first ride of the year is an omen of things to come, I don’t know if I should be happy or sad, because my first ride went both badly and well.

It went badly because I intended to join the group ride this morning, but circumstances beyond my control (really!) kept me up too late and I didn’t get up and out of the house in time. When I did get out, I headed toward the start point. After all, it was possible that they would ride in my direction. (Hey, there are only 360 degrees on the compass, so it might have happened. It might have, but it didn’t.)

So I ended up riding alone. I don’t know about you, but I find riding alone when you were expecting to ride with a group to be demoralizing, so, demoralized, I still decided to do thirty miles (which was the length of the expected group ride.)

My ride ended up being 37 miles, mostly because I got lost. Just as I was calling my Lovely Lovely to let her know that I had absolutely no idea where I was, I noticed a sign for a school crossing ahead. Figuring that a school was a pretty good landmark, I pedaled over to it and found that it was a school I had heard of. It was also a school that I had never known the location of. Well, I knew the location now – it was where I was, after all – but that knowledge didn’t help me get anywhere that I knew. All of which is a very complicated way of saying that I was still lost.

Then the universe began to play tricks with me.

I saw a sign for a town I knew. Three miles that way. (There was an arrow pointing. The sign didn’t actually have the words “that way” on it.) I followed the sign. A mile later there was a sign saying that the town was now two miles away. Excellent. I kept pedaling. A mile later there was another sign saying that the town was two miles away in the direction I had just come from.

What?

Well, going back didn’t seem to make much sense, and, somehow I didn’t feel like continuing in the same direction, so I took the first turn I came to. About ten minutes later I found a sign for the same town and it was – did you guess it? – two miles away, this time in a totally different direction.

It was at this point that I decided to ignore all the signs and simply ride until I spotted something I knew. The something I knew finally turned up in the form of a church that I had ridden past with Scott on previous rides. I was on firm footing once again (so to speak, since I was still riding my bike) and could actually point my bike toward home.

I called my Lovely Lovely who was relieved to find that I now knew where I was. I didn’t have any idea how I had gotten there, mind you, but I knew where I was. I was rather farther from home than I had intended to be by that time, but that’s life on the bike.

I was pursued by dogs every direction I went. It was definitely a dog day morning, but, since none of them actually caught me, that was okay. There’s nothing like a large slavering dog, by the way, to make you realize that you weren’t as tired as you thought you were. All of sudden, you do indeed have the energy to go faster than you were going.

So, anyway, I got a nice long ride in to start the year, which is always good, even though the ride didn't turn out to be much like I had expected it to be.

I hope we all have a great year and get lots of miles.

See you on the road.

Windy windy windy windy windy

Another day, another ride. How nice is that?

Before heading out I turned on the TV long enough to check the temperature. It was a balmy 50 degrees out. Not bad. I got kitted out and then headed out to the garage to put air in my tires, got hit by a blast of wind and immediately went back inside to put on more clothes.

It turns out that there is 50 degrees and then there is 50 degrees. I hadn’t checked the wind speed when I had checked the temperature, and, since the wind was blowing at 16 to 24 mph, it made a difference. Change the gloves for heavier ones, change the hat for one with ear flaps, add booties and a vest and then hit the road. It was still cold, but that was okay.

It was one of those days where, in the crosswind, your bike leans heavily to one side, in the headwind you ride like you’re Marley’s ghost wrapped in heavy chains and in the tailwind you fly along at a blistering pace. (There’s my Christmas reference for you.)

(Once, after having ridden in a thirty mile an hour wind – the cables on my bike were singing – I headed to the bike shop and talked about the ride with Steve. It turns out I had averaged nearly 18 mph that day. A customer overheard us talking and expressed amazement. Steve explained that I had probably ridden half the ride at 6 mph and half at 30 mph depending on whether I was headed into the wind or riding with it. That was probably about right, too. Steve knows.)

Most of the cars were really quite polite today. I did see one car – a white sports car begin driven by a young man in an orange hoodie. He was either very short or was slumped down so that nothing below his nose was visible above the steering wheel, and the hood of his sweatshirt was over his head and pulled almost down to his eyes.

That’s not suspicious at all.

I got pursued by a very hopeful brown and white dog, and the dog had reason to be hopeful since the evidence indicates that it could have had me for lunch any time it desired. It bounced at me and ran at me repeatedly, cannily blocking my path as much as possible, undaunted by shouts from me and squirts from my water bottle. I finally got away from it, but I admit to having a handful of rocks as I passed by on my way back home. The dog was chained up at that point. This is more regard than I am used to from dog owners, I have to admit. I can remember one time when a dog owner told him dog, “Get ‘em, boy!”

Here are some ways to tell if it is windy.

If you turn a corner and your speed suddenly drops by eight or ten miles per hour even though the road is still flat, it’s probably windy.

If you coast downhill and find yourself losing speed, it’s probably windy.

If you turn around and suddenly gain five mph with no extra effort, it’s probably windy.

If your vest, which you thought more or less fit you okay, suddenly turns into a drag chute, it’s probably windy.

But, you know what? At least you’re out riding, so good for you.

See you on the road.

Merry Christmas

So, it turns out that I have a blog. Who knew?

Well, if you’ve been reading this blog…or, rather…not reading this blog, you may know that I keep trying to ride my bike and life keeps getting in the way. (Mind you, I don’t like the sound of “life getting out of way” as that sounds uncommonly like something unpleasant. I have been getting outdoors a bit, though, doing some geocaching.

Lately I have been wondering if the name “Lunicycle” suits me. Not, you understand, because there is any doubt about the first half of the name. It’s the second half. Can you call someone who only longs to ride his bike a cyclist?

I finally did get a ride in (and there was much rejoicing). It was a brisk 50 degrees out, but there was very little wind. I figured my legs would be just so much dead wood, but it turns out they were still legs after all, and they were still up to propelling a bicycle around at a reasonable rate of speed. I figured I should enjoy that while it lasted, but it turned out that it lasted for the whole ride.

I rode hard all the way. Too hard, as it turned out, since I had to pull over and hang over the handle bars while I waited to see if my all to hastily eaten lunch was going to pay me a return visit. (It didn’t.)

When I got back home I was tried and quite surprised to find how fast my average pace was.

Well, maybe I can still call myself Lunicycle after all. What do you know.

Now, if I can just make good use of my vacation time by getting some more miles, life will be good, even if it does get in the way sometimes.

See you on the road.

Maybe I'll even have something to post tomorrow. Wouldn't that be a shock?

It Isn't Over Yet

I went to the bike shop today. I like going to the bike shop. I like seeming my friends. I like seeing all those rows and rows of gleaming bikes ready to hit the road. I even like the way a bike shop smells – an amalgam of metal, rubber, lube and who knows what else. Sweat, probably.

Despite my (ahem) limited riding schedule of late, I somehow managed to run out of chamois cream. I figured that, while I was there, I would also pick up some carb-boom (apple cinnamon if you really must know) and ogle all the lovely toys I couldn’t possibly afford to get.

Steve and Dave were both there. “Hey, do you remember this guy? Didn’t he used to ride with the club?”

That would be me. Did I mention my limited riding schedule already? I did, right? I thought so.

Looking at the chamois cream I laid on the counter, Steve asked, “Given how much you’ve been riding lately, does this stuff taste as good as everyone says it does?”

In the course of the conversation, the approaching end of the year came up. People are looking at closing out their mileage logs for the year and people (and, by people I mean me) are looking at their rather dismal mileage totals and vowing to do better next year. (Hey, If I can just get in a couple of thousand miles in the next three weeks, my mileage total for the year will look fine.)

So, what about you?

Do you live in one of those unforgivingly cold places, so your bike is already languishing in the garage? Or do you live in one of those luxuriously warm places that earn you the undying enmity of everyone who lives in one of those unforgivingly cold places, so you’re trying to figure what all the fuss is about? Or do you live in one of this in-between places – sure, it’s cold, but you can still ride.

(While we're on this topic, check out Cyclin' Missy's blog.)

Of course, but you can still ride is rather in the eye (legs?) of the beholder. I know people who will cheerfully (or grimly) ride when the temperature is in the thirties and other people who won’t put on lycra if the temperature dips into the sixties.

As for me, well, I just bought all that chamois cream. I guess I’ll have to use it somehow. (No suggestions, please.) I have two weeks off over Christmas, and I intend to see how many miles I can get before the year is over.

Weather permitting, of course. (Jörg says, “Don’t be a weather weenie.”)

Pretty soon it’ll be time to break out the winter cap with the ear flaps. I may look like a goof (and I was forced by circumstances to stop worrying about that a long time ago) but at least my ears won’t fall off.

See you on the road.