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I seem to have found myself on another streak of continuous days of riding/running. Since my two days off on Jan. 2nd/3rd, I’ve been out every day.
This past week was pretty light, with more easy commuting than I’ve done in a while.
On Sunday morning the alarm went off at 9am. I was supposed to meet friends in Bent Creek for a 10am Up & Over ride into North Mills River. I did a quick assessment of the situation: I was feeling pretty sore from the previous day’s ride of Squirrel Gap, the temperature was barely above freezing and wasn’t going to be much warmer any time soon, I had two cats laying across my legs, and the blankets were toasty warm and my pillow was comfortable.
Yeah, screw the ride. I’m staying in bed.
While out riding on a Friday evening ride with Jon and Patrick, Jon asked me if I was riding Saturday. Well… what a silly question. Of course I would be! But I had no idea where, when or how far. He asked if I wanted to join him for a, “Squirrel Out & Back”. I had heard of Squirrel Gap trail and knew it is one of the favorites among local riders, but didn’t know anything about it. Jon said it would take about three hours. Without asking any other questions I said, “Sure!”
As near as I could recall, the word most often used in conjunction with Squirrel Gap is “fun”.
So how much do I like my new mountain bike? Well, when I got home from riding one day last week I was so happy with it I gushed a totally ridiculous, adolescent sounding post on Facebook, “O M G the new bike is A W E S O M E ! ! !” This was was met with some derision from a couple of my cycling friends who apparently have little tolerance for totally ridculous, adolescent sounding posts.
Well too bad. I’ll gush about my awesome new bike if I wanna gush about my awesome new bike.
On Saturday evening, when I brought the Rockhopper into Motion Makers for an overhaul and replacement of the front derailleur, I was standing at the service counter talking to Sara, one of the employees, and I said, “It seems silly to be dropping this bike off and not have a bike to ride for a few days when there’s a brand new bike on layaway in the back room.”
Sara replied, “Yeah, that is a bit silly, and it’s a sweet bike you’ve got back there”.
The streak of continuous days of riding/running end at 61 after New Year’s Day. I was tempted to keep it going by riding with Julienne since I had Monday the 2nd off, but decided it was best to end it. Otherwise I’d be trying to ride every single day of 2012. My level of amusement was waning, and really… why else do it besides amusing my ownself. And amusing a few friends as well.
C’mon, admit it. I bet you were interested in how long I’d go, weren’t ya?
As I mentioned in the previous post, I was “on vacation” the whole week between Xmas and New Years. Although I did quite a bit of mountain bike riding in Bent Creek, I also got out on two rather epic road rides on the Parkway. Neither one was supposed to be epic, they just sorta turned out that way. The first was due to some unexpected weather changes and a wardrobe malfunction, and the second was due mostly due to the fact that sometimes I just don’t know when to quit.
Or more accurately, I know when to quit but keep going anyway.
For the past six years that I’ve worked for One Call Now, I’ve always had a few personal/vacation days left over at the end of the year. Being a fairly healthy individual, I just don’t take that many days off, and only rarely take a vacation longer than the occasional three or four day weekend. Since I’ve had those extra days every year, what I have typically done is take a so-called “working vacation” during the last full week between Christmas and New Years. I set email replies to “out of office”. I don’t schedule any meetings or conference calls. I tell coworkers I won’t be around. And then, since I have a solid week of mostly uninterrupted time, I get a ton of work done.
I also get a ton of riding done.
Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first time I’ve ever done rides and runs in Bent Creek every day for a full week with no other areas covered. Considering the last five days of last week were the same, it’s actually twelve days, so I’ve got a little “streak within a streak going. The full streak is now at 55.
That may happen to me someday, but I doubt it will be any time soon.
After spending a week riding and running from my friend’s house in Arden, and riding solo the previous week’s SORBA ride, I was looking forward to meeting friends in Bent Creek. I was especially looking forward to temps in the upper 50s. That kicked off five days of time spent on Bent Creek trails. No matter how much time I’ve spent on these trails in the past year, I’m still finding new ways to explore them. Some of the hard core riders I know say the trail system has been “dumbed down”, or that they get bored.
That may happen to me someday, but I doubt it will be any time soon.
As soon as I unloaded the car from the Ohio trip, I loaded it up again to head over to the house of my friends Otis & Kathryn, where I’d be house/pet sitting while they were on vacation to Portugal. Me and Fred the cat would be spending some quality time together, and I’d be doing my rides and runs from a different location.
And I even snuck in a swim.
After my Stumpjumper test rides I took the bike back to Motion Makers and set to packing for a trip to Ohio for a company holiday party and a couple days of meetings and work sessions with fellow administrators/managers. Normally I head up and back on weekdays and never get a chance to be there on a weekend., but this was an oddly timed trip, I’d be heading up on a Saturday and have to stay through the weekend before beginning the work week. Which meant I had a full day on Sunday to do some riding with friends. Unfortunately, Mother Nature took this as an opportunity to punish me for my disrespect and taunting.
Despite my claims otherwise, sometimes it does rain on me. And sometimes… it rains a lot.
© 2012 Dobovedo's Journal of Journeys | Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS)
