My daily struggles...

I mentioned it before, that time gets the best of me. Something always comes up that infiltrates my plans to ride on an almost day to day basis.  Today, I had yard work.  More so I had family up helping me with yard work that is long over due, so I figured it might be wicked rude of me to peddle off into the sunny day while waving back at my father in-law as he's helping me get my yard in better shape! I can tell you though, in the few hours we spent getting it cleaned up, it looks stellar!

I always go into a day with the great plans to peddle at least 10 miles somewhere, and as I put it off to the next day, my ideal situation is to double up the next day....so  in theory I should be peddling away a good thousand or more miles tomorrow! I am off all day, there really is no reason not to.... At the very least though, I think we will make a trip to The Quinebaug river trail in Killingly CT. It has been on my short list of rides to take now for at least a couple weeks.

Last week I got a chip shot 3 miler in.... which basically was a ride out of my house, down the road and back.  I try to walk away from each ride learning something knew or at least taking something from it.  This one, I can tell you that I did the second day I had the bike and had a tough time with the incline of one of the hills on the way back and then this time around today it was nothing.  I talked through the entire thing like it was nothing.  While I may feel like I am not getting enough saddle time in, I can definitely feel the difference in short familiar rides that I have done in the past!  This time around a friend of ours came with us.  Us being my daughter and I.  Sure cycling is a healthy up beat inspirational sport, this is why we ended this ride with a couple of beers and pizza at a local eatery! You have to mix the good with the bad sometimes!

I picked up a gopro to try and capture some of the sights and sounds around as I go on these little two wheeled adventures so hopefully things will get a little more interesting on here.  I also have great plans to expand the blog a bit in to some educational aspects.  Specifically tailored to cycling.  Time shall tell!

97 ish for the month of August!

Half way through the month of August, during some friendly banter back and forth between my buddy who rides, we decided to have a competition to see who could log the most miles for the month of August.  In true competitive form, I wanted to drop a 20 on this or perhaps lunch or a beer or six... but I'm broke, so I opted for bragging rights only. 

At the time we were both pretty close to even at 80 and it was really anyone's game.  His advantage is that his only responsibility in life other than his job or house is his dog.  Dogs are resiliant.  They can go anywhere! I have a Child.... they require diaper changing, and food, and bla bla bla.  So yes.... I am laying down a path of excuses to inevitably tell you that I lost the bet!

The sad part of this is he rides in the woods and on average hits 5-8 ish miles per ride whereas I do mostly road and can hit 12-20 without a problem.  Frequency however is the problem! I cant find more than a day or two a week to ride, where as my friends out there almost every day! Its pure crap!

I bowed to the winner when August 31st rolled around and he had 20 more miles than me and I had no time before midnight to put rubber to pavement.  SO.... we renewed the bet and come into September 2nd down by 4.6 miles.  We will see who takes September!

Ok, so we didn't ride yesterday, but today we definitely did!

Previously.... on riding with Dana and Tessa....

     In our last episode, I swore I was riding the next day! Well.... I didn't. But, I went into the wonderful day of Sunday with determination!  I wasn't getting out of the weekend with zero ride time! A couple friends had plans to come up to the Commonwealth and visit today, and I saw that as impeding death to my plans to go for a long ride! I had it set in stone though, one way or another I was strapping up the shoes and putting rubber to the road!

    My daughter takes naps (lucky duck!) daily still.  She actually looks forward to them, and sleeps for quite some time.  Today she got down late, which isn't exactly a bad thing, but it could be if today is a marathon nap day.  The days in New England are getting much shorter and winter is fast approaching.  I knew that if I was getting any time on the bike in, she would have to limit her nap to under 3 hours.  Amazed aren't you?? That's right.... I told you she sleeps like a champ! So, she is starting to stir around 4pm, and I went into high speed get her crap together and go movements.  I packed her snacks, her diapers, my sneakers, a hoody for her, ran back up the stairs and kicked down the door to a giggling little girl!

   All in all, we were peddling by 4:45pm. Destination: Wal-mart.  I previously mapped out three different Wal-mart's in the area, one was 7ish miles away, one was 10ish and another was 12.  I'm an educated individual....I know that if its almost 5 now it would be a race against the clock to get us both safely back home before the streetlights come on.  Plus add on to that she needed dinner at some point too. While subway is getting a bad wrap (play on words! haha) these days, I can see through the smoke and still realize that its a lovely place to enjoy dinner. So I wasn't too worried.

   From our house to Wal-mart its all along a heavily traveled Route 12.  If you aren't familiar, its not quite a limited access highway, but it is a highly traveled State road with many intersections and at three points, three lanes of travel.  It is a gradual incline all the way there with a few dips here and there but a steady up hill ride for the most part. The problem that I found was that some years back, a pipeline was laid into the road and the repave job that was done was HORRIBLE at best. So I spent a lot of the time ridding the fog line, on the traveled portion of the road, fighting off falling into a poorly paved sink hole.  Then, throw in the fact that the Town (or State) seemingly forgot about cutting back the brush along the road way, either I or Tessa's cart got a few good whacks from overgrown brush making its way into the roadway.  I suppose its one of the risks you take riding in the road, but knowing it exists I can tell you that this path of ours may be limited for future rides.

    Aside from the brief rain shower that we incurred, and the falling darkness, overall our trip to Wal-mart for a camera bracket wasn't all that bad.  Tessa had a couple crying fits and didn't feel like riding anymore, and she took a milk bath on the way to the store because it seemed like a good idea at the time. All in all it was about 15.5 miles.

IM RIDING TODAY! No.... no I'm not.... BUT TOMORROW! TOMORROW IM RIDING!!

I never pictured my self getting so into riding my bike that I would actually get bent if I didn't get to ride for a couple days.  Here I am, laying in bed, 10:32pm and I'm slightly pissed that I didn't get any ride time in. Tomorrow though..... tomorrow I am going to ride somewhere!

Tomorrow is a Daddy daycare day, just Tessa and I. In the event I never mentioned it, and you don't actually know me.... Tessa is my daughter. She and I do fun things all the time during daddy daycare days.... like Tea Parties, or watch Frozen 48 times in a row, orrr go for bike rides all over the place! Tomorrow we have a couple small errands to do in the morning around town, and after nap (hers....mine... who is keeping score really?) we have a BBQ to go to on the other side of the next town over.  I already google mapped it.... 4.4 miles up hill one way.... 4.4 miles down hill back. Not a bad little ride for the afternoon! 31 minutes there according to good ol' google! So I think we will pack up the cart and a back pack and head to the BBQ in the afternoon for a few hours after she gets up.  There's a pool there, so even if its hot, we can jump right in!

As I said, I never pictured my self getting bent over a day absent of riding.  I also never in a million years thought I would love to ride nearly as much as I do.  Tessa has the bug too! Its gotten so bad, that we saw a segway at the mall and she started yelling "BIKE, BIKE BIKE!!!" while pointing at it and flailing about.  She loves to go for rides and so do I.  Apparently she gets spun up when we don't....so do I. So tomorrow we definitely ride.

I have found that its wicked easy to apply the phrase "tomorrow I'll do it" to so many things in life that I push even more to not make it just a phrase in this case.  When we ride, we see things.  We experience the world around us.  A year ago if I heard my self saying this I would throw some horrible insults at bike me and laugh. Now, I can tell you have a greater appreciation for the world. THE WORLD. Its huge! There is so much to be seen! Even if its a few miles at a time, its a few miles of something I didn't do yesterday and I would have put off before. I MUST get out and ride. I rode to the post office a few weeks ago on my bike and found that its actually a decent trip to and from.  I rode down the road, past a cemetery looped around and back again and found that the cemetery

is very well manicured.  These are all things I never knew until I rode.  So now, I ride. I ride often and absolutely love it.  I always look forward to the new thing we find on a bike ride. Tomorrow I'm riding.

 

Embrace the Lycra

Long ago I had a room mate who dated a girl who was a borderline professional cyclist.  She lived, breathed, ate and shat cycling. It was obnoxious! I couldn't tolerate it, so when the little bike stand was set up in the living room with first person point of view videos of the Tour De what ever playing in front of her (and him since he had to conform) I had to fight back all that I had not to go find the nearest stick and jam it in their spokes!  The problem here is it wouldn't send them ass over tea kettle in the living room like it would on the road.

Fast forward to where I am today.... almost a professional cyclist, planning my next Century or half century (never knew those meant anything until last week!) I found that I have become more and more like those granola eating douche bags I once waived an angry fist at every morning.  Oh yea...annnnd I am not even remotely close to professional!

When I started to get into this, I was told by my friend to "Embrace the Lycra".  I found that this took on so much more meaning after I rode in the PMC.  I hated.... HATED... those bike people. In fact I used the term "bike people" as inflammatory as some of the worst insults that you can conceive.  However, I realize that thousands of millions of bajillions of people CAN'T just be trying to be trendy. There has got to be an actual meaning and use for the Lycra stuff.  On top of that, I felt that I didn't have the most appealing body for Lycra....its skin tight, and not forgiving! All that aside, I donned the Lycra head to toe for the PMC and at the first drops of sweat that spewed from my body I instantly knew the first reason for the Lycra!  It wicked the moisture away and didn't soak up like my T shirts and basketball shorts did. Aside from that there was the comfort and ease of riding, the aerodynamics, the warmth/cooling.... the list goes on.  So the trendy cats that I thought just wore this stuff because it was the cool thing to do, wears it because it serves a purpose! Who knew?!?

I have almost 76% embraced the Lycra now.  I realize all of its purposeful reasons to be worn and...I own it. So why don't I wear it regularly? Purely because of self image and self confidence! Riding alone, I am the only one seen, riding in a pack of every shape, size and ability I am just that....one of the pack! I blend, I fit in, I have a feeling of acceptance among the masses.  Why allow that to bother me? I have no reason. It just does.  Slowly but surely I am gaining the confidence to embrace the Lycra 100%, 100% of the time because honestly it is necessary and functional.  So, maybe next ride I will have it on from head to toe!

Embrace the Lycra!

Webster to Chepachette

             Since I have started this bike riding thing, I have gone to a seasoned veteran of riding that I am friends with for pointers and tips and stuff.  She has family that lives close to my inlaws and has always said that a ride from our house to their house is a pretty challenging ride, especially when you get to Palaski road.  Its like a giant hellish hill taunting you with every stride of the peddle.  So.... yet again, that competitive nature of  "I can do it..." takes over. So during one of the hottest and most humid days of the year, of course I decide to pack my daughter into her cart and ride on.  The plus side... or the light at the end of the tunnel if you will...theres a lake anxiously awaiting our arrival that we can swim in. Boom. done. sold. Im there.

          All in all it wasnt too bad of a ride.  Definitely has a number of hills that were strenuous, but over all functional.  The added weight that I am pulling definitely is noticable throughout the entire ride let alone on the hills! You would be surprised how much an extra 28 pounds is while riding! If you really want an idea, get on your bike and drag a couple cinder blocks behind you...and talk to them. Thats right.....I just compared my daughter to a couple of cinder blocks. What?

           It is a great ride with great views along the way! It takes you by Webster lake and two others.  They are all pretty much well kept and beautiful views! In fact at one point my daughter kept pointing things out saying "Daddy, pretty!".  Normally I would just say she was likely calling her Daddy pretty....because lets face it... I am pretty! In this case though, it was obvious it was the exhilarating ambiance she was enthralled with!

         Half way through the ride, I stopped to make sure the silence in the cart wasn't due to a severe case of dehydration and heat stroke rendering her unable to speak..... So we parked in someones driveway along 193.... all was well. She was just napping... who knew! So a quick temperature check revealed a cool dry child who was resting comfortably on our traverse across three states! Of course though, this woke her up.  From here I would venture a guess that the lay on looker thought maybe I was insane, we pretty much sang the ABC's a hundred times ending with a wicked loud YAAAAYYY!!! and clapping all through Thompson. By the time we hit Rhode Island, we were counting to ten over and over again together. In the event you weren't aware.....counting to ten is 1....2.... 6...9.....6....9...TENNNN!!!!! Yaaaaay!!!!

      All in all, no stops were necessary aside from the one pulse check we did at the half way mark! That is of course until we got to Palaski road.  That required two (2) hops off the bike and pushing up some hills that I swear were purposefully placed on my path solely to try and kill me. Either way, my daughter was happy, had a fun time and I rained enough sweat to resemble a small monsoon hit us on the way.  Great ride, fun times, cant wait until our next!

Thompson River Trail

               Two days after the Pan-Mass Challenge I decided it would be a good plan to ride again.... even when I was still sore and hurting from the PMC! So I packed up the hoopty and took my wife and daughter to the Thompson River Trail just down the road from us in Thompson CT!

                It is a nice place but slightly confusing as to where to go and how the path runs, so we basically just did our own thing! We left from the parking area near the Gazebo and rode down the path, through the Town Hall parking lot, over a bridge annnd basically found what I assumed was the next portion of the trail.  All in all I would say its pretty nice! It seemed to be the best idea in order to work out the pains of the distance ride, get back on the bike and ride more! Logical right?  So onward we peddled!

            If youre cool with dodging piles of broken beer bottle glass and sandy sidewalks have at it! There are some really nice off road sections that go along the river that is wicked nice! I would say this would be a much better ride had I had the off road mountain bike tires back on it, but either way still a fun couple of hours with the family!