Back in the Saddle again

Back towing the trailer again...

Headed out this morning, tossed a few extra clean shirts for the week, took too much food and grabbed my bag and stuffed it all in the back of the trailer. I had just hooked it up when my Neighbor was headed out the door and mentioned he saw me in the paper, and offered me the section (making sure to let me know he was already done with the paper).  As he was heading back in wicked tall Tatar rode past on the other side of the playground and didn't to much more than turn his head when I shouted his name.  Missed riding in with him but that's probably for the better towing the trailer.  I would have worked too hard and he would have gone too slowly, esp since he didn't race on Sunday.

So my neighbor came back out with the ProJo and we talked about his new used truck (it is pretty sharp) and then I headed in to test the potential effectiveness of a recovery ride with a trailer.  Not that it matters much - the season is almost over, sadly with little real cyclocross weather.

Fittingly it was a warm day today with a fiery start:

We had starting temp when I woke up at 6:15 (late, I know, but the Dog has taken to sleeping in, and I'm not complaining) hovering around 54°F.  It was maybe a degree warmer when I headed in.

There were a good number of tracks headed in on the path this morning.  The high humidity helped record everyone's passing...

The article is fair, and a really nice piece of reporting, interviewing a couple other key figures in the project/detour/challenge.  I hope they keep following through with the road clean up, it's sketchy in some spots out there.  Full on marbles in the worst section again.  But the Trailer adds a bit of rear-drag stability, can't fish-tail quite as easily.

I didn't snap a second picture once I got back to the other side of the bike path but there were just as many tracks up on that side when you combined the shoulder of the Parkway and the bikepath.

As my wife has said a few times if we get a cold and snowy winter this won't be a big change from last year but if it stays warm and 50 degrees until April, wow that's just salt in the wounds.  But then again, that's less salt on the bike.  And the trailer does really help with the buffer.  Now sure, everyone out there things I'm even more certifiable towing a trailer, but it is just for stuff now.  Even my littlest doesn't fit in there anymore, esp with a helmet on.

Last few nights sleep has been eluding me a bit more than I expected, esp with the cessation of caffeine intake so early in the day.  It could be a lot of things, brain in over drive, trying to explain to myself why I sucked so much Saturday compared to Plymouth weekend, or kicking myself for a handful of screw ups in the race yesterday that meant not catching Scott Brooks and getting dropped by Gary, and then snookered by Carl (he passed me just before the off camber up to lead onto the track, a deadly combination that I almost was able to recover from but not quite).

So with stuff bouncing around in my head I reached back on the shelf and pulled out one of my all time favorite book of stories.  half-wheel HELL by Maynard Hershon.  Love that book.  The stories. It brings me back to memories of devouring issues of Winning (like I devour Cyclocross Magazine now) and then his column switch over to Velonews.  The back page was always my favorite.  By Velonews time I would open and check Patrick O'Grady's cartoon, there in the beginning and then read Maynard's column at the back.

One of the guys on G+ pulled out his old copies and found a Look MAXone power meter add. 1990.  Coincidentally it was April 1990 and Cyclocross World's were on the cover.  One thing that gets me is how clueless I was to the whole Cyclcross thing back then.  No one I knew raced cyclcross but plenty of people were racing on the road and they were starting to mountain bike a bit.  Coming across references to it here and there from then make me wish i'd gotten hooked earlier.  Why couldn't Geo have been into CX in college?

So shit back to the "story" (this is getting long eh?)  Last night reading the Intro (after finishing "Three-Percent Men") I came across this paragraph that resonated.

Don't fuss about spelling and grammar; your editor will handle that stuff. Fussing will only smother your newborn creativity. Just get the piece written. Let someone else decide if "its" needs an apostrophe. Who cares, really? Is Arnold grammatical? Is Arnold making ends meet?

No question why it resonates, eh?.  Let it flow.  edit later if at all...

The "Three-Percent Man" interview with Alex and Bob really was great.  And I mean fantastically great esp when you frame it against the old man angst and reality checks going on lately. But that's another post, for another time.  And no, no online link to the ProJo print article...

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