Socks

I just had to take a picture and put it up. I got a great deal for 4 pairs of smartwool socks for $25.00 including shipping through bonktown on one of their 30 minute deals and I couldn't believe the bag they sent them in. Big enough to re-use as a small garbage bag. Great deal nevertheless. I love smartwool socks.

Is it really lost?

Brett and his lost summer got me thinking that I've lost seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks this summer. Since the crash I really haven't had the desire or motivation to train or ride any of my bikes for long periods of time. It's like that crash sucked all the plans and motivation I had for this summer. Up until that moment the training was right on. Seems like I put a week or two of good riding (not training) and then fall back into a rut. I get home from work and start doing other things and then I tell myself "it's to late to go out now" And when I do go out I ride for 3-4 hrs and then don't ride again for 3-4 days. Last week I rode 5 times and this week only 2. Motivation is what I need, where do I buy it? Can you imagine if we could buy motivation and drink it like a pill. Well, it would all be artificial. I've been looking for it everywhere but we all know where to find it, it is within, we just have to dig a little harder sometimes. I found mine today while on my ride. I felt great today for not riding much, averaged 19.4 miles for 60 miles with a very deceiving head wind. Granted is was mostly flat with a lot of rollers but I felt good and the legs  responded when I asked for a little more power. That got me thinking...what if I rode and train the way I know for the next few weeks, how will I feel at the end...I'm doing it.
What the #$$%^&was all that about.

Changing the subject, the wedding went good. It rained or mist during the reception but everybody  made the best of it and they danced with umbrellas (outdoor wedding) and had a lot of fun. I had one too many spiked lemonade and I could feel it the next day.

I was looking for "Wonder" and I had only one when this picture was taken.

Dancing in the rain, it really was a lot of fun that day.

Good week

For the first time all summer I feel I had a good week of workouts or at least doing something everyday.
I'm not training for any particular race, I'm just riding and enjoying the bike.
Since my son is getting married tomorrow, it was time to get up early again and ride in to work. Last two half day Fridays for the summer counting next week. I'm going to miss half day Fridays.
Nice ride in again, beatiful morning temps in the mid 60's had me riding a litttle harder than I wanted to but the legs felt good so, why not.
Now that the Thursday spin class for the people doing the rec ctr try is over, I'll be riding in to work at least 3 times a week and am even going to try back to back to back rides. I need the miles for the Gap ride in Georgia. On a normal day that's a 65 mile commute, but I'll be putting in at least one longer day of 70-80 miles with plenty of hills depending which route I choose to go home.
This will give you an idea of what I'm in for:
The Six Gap Century’s ultra challenging route takes you up and down six of the steepest climbs in the North Georgia Mountains. Test your stamina with more than 11,200 feet of vertical climbing over the 104 mile course. Elevations for the six gaps in this ride range from 1,400 feet to 3,460 feet. The toughest climb, Hogpen Gap, will test even the strongest riders, averaging a 7% grade for seven miles, with sections as steep as 15%.

Ouch, it is going to hurt doesn't matter how many hills I climb around here.
Let you go, need to get to work, plenty to do.
Have a great weekend enjoying your bike.

Enjoy the ride

I get my  addictive oil fuel at Costco in the early morning on my way to work and most of the time the same attendant is there. Most of the time I have my bike or kayak on the car and he always comes around and we chat for a few minutes. This morning he came by as usual and told me he had bought a bike at  Walmart and was riding it in the park. He told me he went all the way to the boat docks in Rocky River. He had not been on a bike since the late 70's and was enjoying himself, felt like a litle kid having fun again. Isn't that what riding a bike is all about, having fun enjoying the ride. Too many times we get caught up in the training and don't enjoy the ride. So many times in one way or another we are reminded that riding a bike is not just about training hard, racing and back to the same that we burn ourselves to the ground but keep doing it. Do your training, do your races but take time to enjoy the ride and look at what's around you, Nothing wrong with training hard and racing harder, take time to enjoy the ride. I really don't get tired of saying it because it is exactly what I'm doing, I'm going to enjoy the ride for the rest of my life.
Enjoy life, enjoy your ride be happy for goodness sake. Take it from a more than once burned out rider, I learned my lesson, have you learned yours?
Enjoy your bike today.

Sunrise

What a beautiful morning to ride in to work today. high 50's to low 60's, perfect riding weather. I really love my rides in to work, I get to see the sunrise and for the most part a very quiet ride. The legs still feel a little heavy from the weekend and all the hindu squats I did Monday morning. *&%^$ hindu squats hurt like heck.
The sun just coming out and trying to get over the trees is a beautiful sight. Try it sometime, you'll like it and do it again.
My only problem today...I had a pissing contest going on, stopped 4 times in 32 miles.
Have a great day.

BVR trail day

We had a good day of bridge building at camp Manatoc Sunday morning. We all showed up at 6:30am ready to work. Brett rode in from home and the rest of us smart ones drove. Two bridges, some trail benching, leaf blowing, rerouting a trail and we were ready to ride and try them out. It rained hard on Saturday but the trail is so dry that only a few spots were muddy, although there was a lot of wet rocks and roots for your pleasure. Most verybody rode 2-3 laps I only did one, I was beat from the day before. The trail is in great shape and hopefully it'll stay dry for the race. If you've never been there and don't want to race, show up on Saturday and ride all day and demo bikes from different manufactures. There's also a cyclocross race and half marathon on Saturday. Bring your own food or ride, drive to Peninsula for lunch, NO alcoholic beverages it is a Boys Scouts camp and we want to keep using it, please respect the rules.
Click here for more info.
Sorry no pictures from the trail day, they all came out blurry, the camera has finally carpped.
Time to get a new one.

MS ride2

Rolled out of the house at 6am with a bagle in one hand riding to Polaris by Southwest hospital. Made it there with plenty of time, found the guys

and waited at the corner to join them for the ride. We rode conservately for the first 11 miles and picked it up as soon as we hit the century loop. As usual other riders hitched a ride with the 4 of us. Guess what, I didn't even had to tell anybody they had to do their share or get off the line. I get a little testy when people don't do their share of the work. We hit West river rd and on one of the rollers one of the hitchhikers slowed down too fast and the guy behind him overlapped and went down. Behind him Steve was able to avoid the down rider but in the process rode himself into the ditch. He was in the process of flipping over the handlebars but "fortunately" a tree stopped him when he hit it with his face. I didn't have the heart to take a picture of his bloody nose and lip or the tree with the bark off. It was a Tour d France moment. I did tell the guy that made everything happen what he did and he understood what he did wrong. Right after that we come to a stop and Joe goes down, didn't unclip, dummy. What am I saying, I've done that many times. Anyway, we rode a few slow miles to shake the crashes off and after the extra 25 mile loop rest stop we picked up for good and dropped everybody. It's a great feeling to ride at a steady 22-25 mph for miles and miles. We did have a stiff littel wind bugging the heck out of us when we turned northwest on some of the roads. We get to the lunch stop in Oberlin and am so glad somebody else was rushing everybody to keep going, normally it's me rushing everybody to get their sandwishes and eat them on the road. I can't sit for long on long rides, my legs get stiff and it takes me a while to get going, I rather ride slow that stop to many times. We parted company and within a mile of the lunch stop my shifting cable snapped. I thought about riding back and having one of the sposoring bike shops fix it but nooooo I had to keep going. I rode 17 miles on my 39-12 and lucky me the wind had shifted and all the head wind we had going in was now a head wind again, save for a few miles.
Took the back roads to Valley City and after 83 miles called the rescue squad to come pick me up. All in a days work. What a week, I love it, I'm alive, riding and having fun.
Twisted kind of fun, but fun nevertheless.
Hope you all put in a good ride sometime this weekend.
Tomorrow is trail maintenance day for the Big Valley Race on September 4th-5th. Come ride, race, run whatever your pleasure is, kids races too. Bring the little ones, there's a race for many age groups.

It was a long lonely road on the way back.

Saw the Valley City sign and was happy.

MS ride

This weekend is the MS ride which I've done for many years since my wife has MS. But before I go into that, I went to Reagan park for an easy lap today. It was dry and fast but I took it real easy, tomorrow is a 100 miles day. I'm not doing the ride this year buy I'm riding with the guys until the lunch stop and then riding home. That should give me a hundred or so. The weather looks ok for tomorrow but they may get rain on Sunday. This is a real good route, all flat with most of the small rollers and bridges coming at the end.
Tell you all about it tomorrow.

Afternoon ride

Spent part of the day with a bag of ice on my face and the swelling went down a bit. My cheek is still puffy but looking better. I got all kids of comments today,
"get rid of the bike, is going to kill you" "one of these days we are going to the hospital to visit you" "and it doesn't even has an engine on". Well, it happens, is not the worse crash I've had, it just doesn't look to good.
The ride home was a good one, 3 hill intervals and 2 flat intervals as hard as I could ride on the bike and hike which I only passed one more rider going the opposite way. My last interval was climbing out of the valley towards 21 on the big ring all standing after the false flat between the steeper sections. I knew I used all my quarters when I was limping my way up 130th to Drake. Even with my face plant, a good riding day.
It's way pass my bed time but I can't sleep, have a big decision to "sleep" on.
Back to bed it is, just took a couple sleeping pills, hope I can get up for my spin class tomorrow. Good night.

Painful ride in to work

With the riding we did over the weekend in PA I took Monday off and swam on Monday. Last night got all my stuff ready to ride in to work and went to bed to get a good night sleep since I have to get up at 4am out by 5am to make to work around 7am depending how I feel. Well, rolled out of the garage with my backpack on one shoulder to put the PD in it since the paper guy is up earlier that me, it rolled off my shoulder and into my front wheel and I hit the driveway with my face and shin, scrapped my knuckles and mostly my pride got hurt. How dumb can I be to do that (you don't need to agree). I went back inside and it didn't loook that bad, snatched a paper towel to dry the blood off on my way to work and rode into the sunrise. Get to work, looked at it and it's not looking good. As usual I'm going to get the "look" and the questions "what did you hit now" and what's wrong with you" plus comments "that bike is going to kill you" "put training wheels on the thing". I only fell once all weekend riding off road and it was a minor stupid fall, I ride the road bike hit the deck harder and have the scars to show
you.

Morning drive wildlife

The wild turkey population in northeast Ohio has really exploded in the last few years. I had to brake and wait for this family to cross the road at a snail pace. I drive the park roads morning and afternoon to and from work everyday and I get to see all kind of animals. Not that I've never seen wild animals and birds, but lately is more frequent.

Driving through the park gives me time to relax specially in the afternoon on my way home if I didn't commute on the bike. That's unless you have a jackass on your tail using the park roads as a short cut, looking down at the speedometer and then his watch, I just love driving slow through the park. I love making the soccer moms slow down. Speaking about soccer moms, I haven't seen anymore soccer practices at tthe fields by the train station and I like it. I've had a few close calls there because they are in such a hurry to drop off their kids they don't watch where they are driving. Most of the time I just ride the path up the hill and I've seen them driving half way in the path and fidling with their phones. Hopefully, no more soccer practices down there.

And that's my rant this morning, I'm not relaxed anymore. I need to breath deep and count to a hundred.

Raystown take 3

3rd time in about 2 months that I made it to the Allegripis trails in Pa. Ray and I drove Friday and rode for 1.5 hrs, Ken and Randy drove down on Saturday. We met them at the Walmart outside of town and drove to the trail head and put in 2.5 hrs. Today we got up early and were at the trail head before 7:30. We rode for 1.5 hrs came back to the cars and I was shot. I have no geared 29er bike yet and will not have it until mid December. Can you believe that they ran out of them? And I ordered in mid April. We went to the bike store in town to buy a 22 tooth cog, first they looked at me like I was crazy and then they laughed. We ride with an 18 or 19 there, what do you need a 22 for they said. Well, punk you don't have 55 year old knees and I can feel them today. There's a lot of climbing that you don't even notice. By the end of todays ride I was running on fumes and only had penies left, I spent all the quarters, dimes and nickels I had. I rode harder than the first two times I was there chasing the guys all over that place. If you have the wrong cog there comes a time when you start fading back on the climbs because you are grinding your way up and the darn gear guys are spinning their way up. Ray rode his 29er SS but he had a 22 cog and he could ride some of the stuff sitting down while I had to stand up. Tell you what, that place is single speed heaven and I love my 29er SS. I could go there once a week if I could. We stayed an this hotel which looked like it was out of the 1950's, but it was clean and the people were friendly, what else do you need?

We went to dinner and on our way back to the hotel stopped at Pizza Hut and ordered a large pizza. we were still hungry.

Good day and evening

Rode in to work yesterday morning in great riding weather, 65-68 degrees. It was a very quiet morning, hardly any cars on the road, just how I like it. My wife picked me up and we spent the evening at her cousins house in Beachwood. My nephew is a customs officer and recently was transferred from Montreal to Houston and this was one of his stops on his drive down to Texas. Had not seen him in about 5 years and we spent a great evening together with family. Hope to see them again soon.
No riding in to work today, went to bed too late and had too much food, I'm still feeling the effects, I feel stuffed.
I didn't even bring myself to  fix my lunch this morning, couldn't even look at food just the usual fix, a great big mug of puertorican coffee, good enough to wake-up the dead. Took some pics but have to wait until the wife e-mails them to me.
Later.