Too much time to think

 I believe I'm suffering from the ride on Saturday. Not the physical side. No, the physical side was just pure and simple a beat down. 

What ride? I joined the College kids here, the fast ones, on a donut ride. Leland put the route together years ago and it flows horribly. Instead of routing it so it goes up from the bottom of a T with a stop sign it goes down them. Like screaming down a hill into a blind stop sign T intersection. A handful of times.

But it was on roads I haven't been on much in years. That was maybe not the best thing, nor was the fact that the route had 25 climbs on the RWGPS route and my Wahoo made sure I was aware of every single one. There were other issues with the ride, routing and getting out of town being one of them. The bigger issue was once we got away from the city and really started riding, it started going up and I'm 2x as heavy and 2x as old and that's not great when you're going up against. or honestly, just trying to hang out with a group.

I caught back up at the first cider donut stop. Had a part of a donut. Got dropped pretty quickly because the next donut stop (orchard) was literally a steady climb from the first orchard. I got there in time to taste one, have a sip of cider and leave. Easily hung out on the downhill section, that was fine. And then we hit another climb and there was 20 miles of riding before the next stop.

So I put my head down and pedaled, and tried, in vain, not to think too much. Of fucking course I thought. Too. Much.

I did roll into the third and final donut stop before they left, but immediately after that was the steepest climb section and it was long and they were gone and I was left alone with the climbing and my legs and my thoughts.

80 miles and many hours later I was back home.

Went for a mtb ride the next morning. took 2 hours before my heart rate decided it wanted to go over 127bpm. Like full on zone 5 breathing, panting, and HR is chilling in the 120s. WTF. 

But 2 hrs of pedaling and suddenly I was getting into the upper 130s and not breathing too hard.

Was some thinking time there. But also a good crash too (landed on soft stuff this time).

But the thinking and head time and maybe a handful of everything else has settled and my previously positive and good mood is elusive. Like a mist or fog or some intangible presence or dark cloud, not really intense but a off feeling just out of reach. Why? Dunno precisely. Hurricane, politics, life, health, getting old, feeling old. I dunno.

But I push on. 

Big cider donut hundo this weekend. Starts at Tyler Munroe's kid's bike shop and hits 5 orchards with donuts, 100 miles of mixed terrain. 

I put gears on the Crockett and ffs 105 10sp shit just works, so damn well. BAM positive shifting, perfect, no hesitation.

Taking photos, developed a roll last night and it is awesome. The roll. I like the process too. I do need to make up another batch of developer, but maybe that'll wait till tomorrow. It'll be a few days before I'm ready to develop anything.

Gonna throw a few links up from today's open tabs.

Mike F's column of course. I did pause to watch Joey's Kora video before continuing to read. It worked really well doing that:
https://nsmb.com/articles/the-lamentable-invisibility-of-nuance/

This kind of says everything I'm worried about with the new Pixel 9 phones, guess maybe I'll be looking at an 8 to replace the 4 when it comes time:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/08/water-thats-not-wet/#pixelated 

Dave's comment raises an interesting thought. If you're selling one of his bikes for that much and he's struggling with healthcare costs why not kick something his way before he's gone:
http://davesbikeblog.squarespace.com/

Stevil went and changed the webpage since I last looked at it. Sorry, we're stuck with this layout for a while. 

Kent went from one post only to now normal posts, and I think he's on his 30th new IG account. Getting to be a regular Hey look who followed me, again, must be a new account time. At least I have a new book on my hold list. I did finish one that was awesome and kind of maybe that's part of the funk, the just finished a great book funk and don't have something awesome to read lined up.

Anyway. People are still posting good content out there. And the believeinfilm crew on Bluesky has been awesome, for me, inspirational and helpful. Not super critical, but that's okay, I'm so hyper critical about my stuff I'm not sure there's anything anyone could say about it that wouldn't surprise me.

But yeah this place needs a facelift

As always: AMOR FATI MOTHERFUCKERS

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