Reflecting and the week

 Cleaned my office a bit last night and today. Visitor is always a good motivation but then the visit sometimes means more to me than them. At least my office is clean now.

Taking photos, a few, here and there. Not as many as I'd like. I have too much film for as few photos as I'm taking.

Would love to travel with the camera but I need to go light, need to take a full on break from everything, even though the week will be as crazy as it can be. 

Packing everything in before leaving.

Not to mention so much more extra to deal with on top of it all.

This weird space, strange place.

A good place maybe. But not totally. 

May have international travel for the first time in decades (not counting Canada) and part of that has me wondering and hoping the new Pentax i ordered shows up before then, and then that has me wondering if I shouldn't just buy a color version and the other lens. 16-50 and a 50-300 with the PLM focus motor with a color back and a monochrome back? Kind of insane to think about doing that, esp since I'm not a pro photographer. 

At some point I meant to write up smackdown. It has been a bit of a shit show lately. Wasn't feeling terrible, and planned on just hanging in and surfing wheels. And did that for the most part. Then we rolled up on a crash from the A group. Wheels overlapped and someone wrecked some clothing and busted a helmet. 40 people were all packed on Pine, a narrow road with bad sightlines and nearly edge to edge. 

Things got sorted and the groups all took off. A group headed out, B group grew with folks who didn't want to have anything to do with the A group anymore and well pretty soon there were three evenly spaced groups, A, 'B' and then Justin me and a pile of people who weren't quite ready to go apeshit. We got up and Burke was dangling and Justin and another along with me looked back and started kind of waiting but the group started going faster and Justin and the other took off to jump in, I waited for Burke and then set a brutal pace and dragged him all the way back to the group, got there just before Rocky Hill, totally cracked. Breathing had just barely recorvered when we made the turn on to Rocky Hill and I got a little gapped there going up, Burke made the transition and I started riding solo. Again.

But I did, I could see them, some of them and I put my head down and just held a pace. Pushed it, hard. No one to draft, just me. Caught a straggler towards the end of Carpenter, caught Kelli and ? and Burke after the turn, and I paused for a minute, sat on burke's wheel and then went to the front to keep chasing, A car on perryville slowed the chase a little and we lost sight of them.

But i wasn't giving up and I kept it pegged...  Burke came around and gave me a breather until we made the right turn and I went by him there and dropped him before hillside and was alone passing milo headed to Jacob/Broad. made the right turn, saw a few up there, caught Ben from Ride July bikes, and kept pushing it, saw some blinky lights way up Prospect and just kept the hammer down.

For most of this I kept hearing Aimee and Kevin singing Jeff Buckley's Halleluiah at the show on Sunday night, and at one point, I kind of felt Mark, have been reflecting on loss, death, cancer, a student of mine is working on GBM research, an almost student put on a performance about TBI and death...

And at some point, it clicked again, but in a way that made more sense and gave me more energy. The way Mark literally rode every smackdown that spring, like each one was going to be his last, until the one that was, was, and like every other one he was on, he crushed it. And I pushed the pedals harder, kept the HR higher, found some weird new source of energy. 

A recognition that one ride, at some point, will me my last. I don't know how long I can hold on to it, but hoping I don't let go of it, not because it isn't true but becuase it is powerful and motivating. Relishing the slow relaxed rides, the woods, fast or slow, smackdown, with the group or alone chasing. 

It feels very fatalistic, and is I suppose but I now understand a bit more behind what drove him and his energy and joy in everything he did.  

I didn't quite catch the group, but I got to 152 before they left and just behind the stragglers that they dropped. I passed and dropped a handful of people chasing, worked harder than I had on the bike in a while and felt good.

On top of it all I actually slept pretty okay given how hard I worked. So that's a nice sign that I'm getting used to the load and can go hard. But kind of not sure what to do, goal race was 24HOGG again, but I guess that probably won't happen if I'm in Paris, but that's not certain yet. Maybe I should race a MTB even. Kind of still want a road bike but hey whatever the one i'm riding works. Maybe i just need some decent wheels that didn't come out of a garbage bin.

I was going to leave the office early today. 

It is still earlier than normal if I leave soon but no where near early enough. 

The weekend starts soon. Best get at it and home and start doing everything that needs to be done.

Amor Fati Motherfuckers

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