Today was one of those perfect days for cycling. I woke up with enough time to get everything ready to head out the door and found a disc of wedding reception music I had put together once upon a time before the wedding. It's hard to believe that next week I'll have been here for two years. Time flies quickly.
Anyway, the Saturday ride was meeting close to the apartment so I threw the bike in the car and blasted down there with the music cranked. Getting there, I find out that we can't park where we normally park and we have to drive across the street. No big deal.
We move and get ready to head out when they announce that we're going to head north towards Monument and Palmer Park and I get 'the phear'. You see, I'm a fat guy... and Monument and Palmer Park are all hills. I'm not a huge fan of hills, and part of the ride was going to be climbing up to where the dirt starts on Mt. Herman Rd (see archives for that ride report) which is in itself a big climb... but I soldiered on.
It's hard to admit that sometimes there are rides that just scare me. Names like Gleneagle, County Line, Mt. Herman, Higby and Roller Coaster are the bane of my cycling existence. If I want to ride my road bike to work in the mornings I have to climb Gleneagle. Gleneagle isn't horrid, but in the morning with sodden legs it's one steady climb. County Line I hadn't climbed, but I'd driven it and I knew how uphill it was.
I guess though that in these past two years of living here I've gotten stronger legs. I mean, you really have to... there isn't anything around it. Surprisingly though there was only 1600' of elevation gain. it looked a lot worse on the map. We topped out at around 7500' before the big descent.
If you must climb, the benefit is that you get to descend and descend we did. I'm good at the breakaway descent. I was riding with a friend of mine this morning and when we hit the descent I said "Let's go!" and popped into my 54 up front and disappeared. He caught up a few miles later when I stopped to wait for him. I had an SUV in front of me that I had to keep breaking for but if it hadn't been for that I would have been well over 50mph. Do you know how good 50mph feels? It's fairly exhilirating. (to say the least)
Anyway, 41.4 miles of distance
22.33 miles of climbing
and 19.08 miles of descending. Not bad for a Saturday morning.
Now I think I'll go wash the salt off my body so that I don't taste and feel like a salt lick and do a shave that I haven't done in a few weeks.
More later.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
A Picture Share!
This just doesn't look like any sort of fun to of... 33 miles of CRAWLING? yuck. More post ride blogging in a minute.
Friday, May 27, 2005
A Picture Share!
Ang is all excited by this fuzzy hat... Me? I'm annoyed I pulled it out of the bin... dang trucker hats. Heh.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
A Picture Share!
Your bizarre self portrait of the day... What can I say? I was bored. Off for home and movies.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
I still find myself catching up from the weekend's trip. I've never
been one for trips if only because of how much they throw life out of
alignment. Depending on the trip it can take quite a while for things
to settle down and this has been one of those times.
Even though we were home Monday night, tonight was the first evening
that I had at home and of course, Angela was off working. I so look
forward to the day when Angela can be home at night and we can do
something together like heading out for a ride.
Instead, I ran errands... stuff had to be returned here, stuff had to
be donated there. Groceries had to be picked up... nothing major, but
all little nitpicky things. Combine it with the other annoying things,
like the $600 I spent on Brakes and Tires for the Santa Fe yesterday
(in preparation for summer trips) and everything just starts to wear
on you a little bit.
Things at work have been blissfully quiet this week as I finish up a
few things and we work on closing sales, but even blissfully quiet
work can be annoying when your body decides that it needs to catch up
with you and promptly gives you a cold.
I'm off to bed to try and remedy that cold. Blogging will recommence
tomorrow I'm sure.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Sunday, May 22, 2005
If there's one major difference here besides elevation... it's the water and the lushness. It seems almost wastefuly green here. There's a canopy that covers almost ALL of the trail the entire way out to Stillwater... and when you're not under the canopy you're riding through cattle grazing farmland. It's quite pretty and amazing that it takes so little to get out of the city.
The only thing I didn't get to do was head across the river into Wisconsin, but maybe next month when I'm back for the Paul Bunyan
The map at the end of the gateway Trail in Stillwater, MN. I used to do this trail all the time.
It's around 20 miles to the end of the trail from my parents house so it used to make for a quite nice 40 mile loop. It was surprisingly harder than I thought it would be, mostly because of this cheap bike I had borrowed that didn't have any big gears on it at all.
the spinning camera lens makes it easy to take pictures while i'm riding down the trail... Fun, fun. I've always been a big fan of looking down and seeing the rushing ground beneath the bike.
The bike I was riding was WAY too small for me, but it was free... which makes it more palatable. It's funny though to have pedals on the bike that are worth more than the bike itself (I brought mine with me)
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