Beach ride. Photo Cred: H.
Dicky has proselytized the death of the cycling blog. Reasons given included "turning to Twitter and Facebook looking for quick tidbits of information as opposed to grandiose story telling." That got me to thinking. Life's current situation has me limited on the amount and timing of days off, so big grandiose races and events are highly rare for me.
JD the water dog playing in the surf. Photo Cred: H.
I was able to make 'great adventure' for a week in the Spring with a trip to Colorado and Kansas that included 2 races and lots of riding. Then I got 3 days when my cousin passed away. And just finished 4 days off for H.'s beach ride. Not a lot of interesting cycling adventures there.
One of my lucky numbers adorns my thru axle.
Tringlespeed. Run whichever you brung.
I did have to completely overhaul the bearings in my rear hub after the beach adventure. So that feels like I did something bike adventure-like. I've also set up the MX RSL as a tringlespeed (15t for commuting, 16t for cross, and 19t for trail) to better accommodate my weekly needs without having to carry extra tools around. Just a 5mm to adjust the sliders. Again, not very notable or newsworthy. Maybe he's right.
Happy to be home and back to our morning adventures.
But then I realized it's not that I don't have stories to tell nor do I lack the desire to write them, I lack the time (and the lack of drive to find time) to write. Tuesdays and Sundays are my days off and are typically filled with chores, local races, or shop events. The rest are filled by work and topped off with early morning rides with the pups, commuting, evening rides of either mileage or just stress releasing urban adventuring, and barn/farm chores. I may not travel a lot, race new and exotic races, but it's never boring.
Why did the chicken cross the ditch?
Like today for example. The 25+ year old poly hose that is our current water line has busted/failed several expensive times on us this year. Typically the day or so before we are to leave town. $7000 to replace the entire line from road to barn. Ouch.
Monster McConnell and JD during hot laps at the Simms'.
Luckily I have great friends. While out enjoying bikes and friends one Saturday night at the Simms' household, I mentioned it to Jim. That led to a few phone calls from them and a visit from Leslie's (Jim's better half) Dad. He could do the job for a 1/3 of what we were quoted and shortly thereafter we had running water at the house again after a week of having limited usage.
So Charles was out finishing running the line from the house to the barn. I was hauling off the large flat stones unearthed from the digging to use in the back. And H. was working horses. The dogs of course, were gallivanting around and playing in the water.
I had just finished laying the stones when I got the bright idea to use some of our remaining gravel pile to fill in the cobbles to make it safe for horses as well as bikes. That's when I did it. I sank the tractor into the swamp without realizing it. Damn you tunnel vision.
Thankfully Charles was still around with his backhoe and was able to get the tractor out. I'm pretty sure I'll be grounded for a while for this one. At least I'll have a solid line through the swamp come wet season. Even if I can't drive the tractor for a month.
H. putting the finishing touches on the cobble bridge.
There are grandiose-esque things in the works though such as several planned local bikepacking and S24O bike camping adventures coming up. The next installment of the Godfather Gravel Ride as well as a long term film project Patrico and I are working on. Getting back to video has been fun. That's where I got my start back in and after college and it's been refreshing falling back into more creative outlets. So, in the interim, updates will probably be sparse, but the adventures won't be. But for poor lil' Dicky's sake, I'll try harder to update more frequently.
1 comment:
Dead to me.
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