Epilogue... Of Sorts.
I doubt anyone is left reading this blog after my extended absence, and I wouldn't expect them to be. A few spambots and the occasional casual browser will pass through like tumbleweeds through a Sears parking lot, and that's about it. It seems depressingly fitting. Nothing lasts forever, and things just run their course until one day they're demolished to make way for a Starbucks or microbrewery. One day Google will decide that blogs are a horrible waste of bandwidth, and just like that years of posts will disappear- no bulldozer required.
Meh.
I'm riding again, although with no real regularity or sense of purpose. When I feel like riding, I ride. When I don't or something else interferes, I don't. I admit that I feel a bit like a failure in this regard, but that's a conditioned response. Years of riding in one way or another five or six days a week will do that to you.
My power is way down. I can't sustain what I once considered a moderate pace for more than a few minutes. Part of this is getting older, but the vast majority of it is a result of not riding, much less training. I don't do pre-planned "hard" rides. I don't pre-plan much of anything. I just go out and see what happens.
My weight leveled out the last time I checked, at a point I'm not happy with but not disgusted enough about to do something. I notice it every time I start riding uphill. I could blame it on the fact that the Moots Compact is a few pounds heavier than my Madones, but the real truth is that I'm far from my "race" weight, which was still barely in the normal range on the BMI scale.
It's not all bad.
I can still grind my cousin into the pavement, who is rail-thin and decades younger than me. He's been riding a bunch in the mountains around his home in Banner Elk, NC, and yet I still have enough in the legs to drop him. That's always nice.
I did a bit of riding on the Blue Ridge Parkway over the two weeks I was there. Maybe not as much or as fast as I wanted to, but I got some miles in. At times I felt like "myself" again.
I finally finished a preliminary build on the Moots Vamoots DR and took it out for a spin or two. It's a nice ride, but far from what I've become accustomed to. Maybe that's a good thing, and it will open me up to other, non-performance oriented forms of riding. We'll see.
The Moots Compact is evolving a bit. After the initial build, which was just parts I had laying around, I started evaluating what I could make work better and what I could make prettier. I'm a roadie, so pretty is important. It started with an ENVE seatpost I found for cheap on eBay, purchased because my existing seatpost was a pain to adjust. And the pretty. Then there was road vibration causing my hand to go numb, so why not replace the aluminum 3T 17 degree stem I used on the old Russian ti bike to mitigate its tall head tube with a carbon ENVE stem. Plus, pretty. And since I was on a matchy-matchy kick, why not just go whole-hog and get ENVE SES bars, which had the right drop/reach and a wide platform for my large palms. Do swoopy, wing-shaped handlebars really make any sense on a non-aero frame? Nope, but the pretty justifies the expense. That, and I've never been comfortable on the EC90's angled drops. But the main thing is the pretty, always the pretty.
The floodgates were open.
I started looking at STAC Zero magnetic trainers with interest, as a relatively lightweight travel solution for my future career path. I started contemplating the parts pile and which portions needed propping up. I started searching for new and obscure bike tools, lovingly crafted by artisan Hobbits in Middle Earth with the requisite price tag.
It wasn't just rampant consumerism that characterized the sea change. No, I started thinking about cleaning up the trainer dungeon and getting it ready for the winter. Maybe even a redesign. I visited the Arctic Bike Club's road division website and almost signed up for the last crit of the season. I'm still on the fence, depending on weather and other factors, simply because the risk/reward as I change careers might not add up. Plus, I'm fat and out of shape. The D class would drop me on the first lap right now.
I take these as signs I'm not done. I'm still here. I'm still me.
With all of the things that are swirling around my life at the moment, at the core I'm still an elitist, douchebag roadie who enjoys making other people hurt. You can't imagine how comforting that is. My ability and opportunity to express this may be tempered or modified at the moment, but I haven't lost myself.
This is this blog's 881st post. That's a lot of nothing. Sooner or later it will be plain old nothing. Hopefully, long after its tenure will be nothing more than a dark stain upon the history of humanity, I'll be out there on the road.
Grinding away and screaming profanities into the wind.
Meh.
I'm riding again, although with no real regularity or sense of purpose. When I feel like riding, I ride. When I don't or something else interferes, I don't. I admit that I feel a bit like a failure in this regard, but that's a conditioned response. Years of riding in one way or another five or six days a week will do that to you.
My power is way down. I can't sustain what I once considered a moderate pace for more than a few minutes. Part of this is getting older, but the vast majority of it is a result of not riding, much less training. I don't do pre-planned "hard" rides. I don't pre-plan much of anything. I just go out and see what happens.
My weight leveled out the last time I checked, at a point I'm not happy with but not disgusted enough about to do something. I notice it every time I start riding uphill. I could blame it on the fact that the Moots Compact is a few pounds heavier than my Madones, but the real truth is that I'm far from my "race" weight, which was still barely in the normal range on the BMI scale.
It's not all bad.
I can still grind my cousin into the pavement, who is rail-thin and decades younger than me. He's been riding a bunch in the mountains around his home in Banner Elk, NC, and yet I still have enough in the legs to drop him. That's always nice.
I did a bit of riding on the Blue Ridge Parkway over the two weeks I was there. Maybe not as much or as fast as I wanted to, but I got some miles in. At times I felt like "myself" again.
I finally finished a preliminary build on the Moots Vamoots DR and took it out for a spin or two. It's a nice ride, but far from what I've become accustomed to. Maybe that's a good thing, and it will open me up to other, non-performance oriented forms of riding. We'll see.
The Moots Compact is evolving a bit. After the initial build, which was just parts I had laying around, I started evaluating what I could make work better and what I could make prettier. I'm a roadie, so pretty is important. It started with an ENVE seatpost I found for cheap on eBay, purchased because my existing seatpost was a pain to adjust. And the pretty. Then there was road vibration causing my hand to go numb, so why not replace the aluminum 3T 17 degree stem I used on the old Russian ti bike to mitigate its tall head tube with a carbon ENVE stem. Plus, pretty. And since I was on a matchy-matchy kick, why not just go whole-hog and get ENVE SES bars, which had the right drop/reach and a wide platform for my large palms. Do swoopy, wing-shaped handlebars really make any sense on a non-aero frame? Nope, but the pretty justifies the expense. That, and I've never been comfortable on the EC90's angled drops. But the main thing is the pretty, always the pretty.
The floodgates were open.
I started looking at STAC Zero magnetic trainers with interest, as a relatively lightweight travel solution for my future career path. I started contemplating the parts pile and which portions needed propping up. I started searching for new and obscure bike tools, lovingly crafted by artisan Hobbits in Middle Earth with the requisite price tag.
It wasn't just rampant consumerism that characterized the sea change. No, I started thinking about cleaning up the trainer dungeon and getting it ready for the winter. Maybe even a redesign. I visited the Arctic Bike Club's road division website and almost signed up for the last crit of the season. I'm still on the fence, depending on weather and other factors, simply because the risk/reward as I change careers might not add up. Plus, I'm fat and out of shape. The D class would drop me on the first lap right now.
I take these as signs I'm not done. I'm still here. I'm still me.
With all of the things that are swirling around my life at the moment, at the core I'm still an elitist, douchebag roadie who enjoys making other people hurt. You can't imagine how comforting that is. My ability and opportunity to express this may be tempered or modified at the moment, but I haven't lost myself.
This is this blog's 881st post. That's a lot of nothing. Sooner or later it will be plain old nothing. Hopefully, long after its tenure will be nothing more than a dark stain upon the history of humanity, I'll be out there on the road.
Grinding away and screaming profanities into the wind.
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