Alaskan Pack Fodder

This is Bailey. He's about 7 weeks old, an English Cream Golden Retriever. Cute little sucker. Sleeps almost as much as I do, but I expect that will change in the coming weeks. He has about 10 minutes of tripping over his own feet in him before he needs a nap.    My original plan was to get a female lab puppy of some shade, but my wife was feeling the loss of Piper more intensely than I was. She prefers long-haired, sheddy kinds of dogs, and my plans were altered. I still may be getting my Lab pup, but for now Bailey is more than adequate. He's part of the family. My doofy Lab, Jackson, seems to think so, with only a couple warning growls so far to let the puppy know he's overstepped his bounds.    Each one of my kids have claimed Bailey as their own, but I have a feeling Bailey will make that determination in the coming weeks and months as he grows into a 90 pound ball of loose fur. I'll probably come home to shag pillows on my bed and tumbleweeds of white hair rol...

I knew I was out of shape, but it was humbling.    I showed up for the Sunday morning Evil Empire group ride, fully expecting to get my teeth kicked in. I had no illusions about being ready to ride, after completely giving up on any sort of structured training and not nearly enough intensity for the past couple months.    I got dropped. repeatedly. I couldn't hold the wheels. One minute I was there, and the next I was off the back. They'd wait, despite it being a "drop ride", and I'd eventually wheeze my way up to them. Nothing in the legs and nothing in the lungs.    While I was out there not riding, these guys were training and hiking and living good lives. Cheaters.    Without a race to look forward to, I'm just kinda rudderless. Every time I try to make a fresh start something pops up to wipe it off the map. Each time it becomes a little easier to give in. Each excuse becomes a little thinner.    Getting my teeth kicked in was a good...

I was riding into the wind, just like I've done on every other ride, when I looked up and there she was.    I blinked.    Couldn't be.    Heading in the other direction on the same 15 miles of pavement out in the middle of nowhere, was another roadie.    Not somebody riding a department store mountain bike. Not somebody riding a fat bike. Not even somebody riding a 'cross bike. A real road bike, with rim brakes and skinny tires.  The rider was kitted up as a roadie should be.    We waved.    I briefly considered turning around and joining her, but we're in the COVID era. I have no idea who she is, where she's been, and who she associates with. She knows even less about me. I really, really don't want to get sick. She probably feels the same way. With the number of seasonal workers coming into the area and fishing boats starting to come in, you can't be too careful.    Still, another roadie .    Maybe if...

It's not how you begin, it's how you finish.    I didn't really want to ride, but I did want to ride. If that makes any sense. I didn't want to fight the wind on the same stretch of road I've been riding the last month, but I did want to get out and fall into the familiar rhythm, stretching my legs and forgetting about all of the dissonance in the world, if only for a little while.    I rode into a stiff headwind, but the skies were blue. I pedaled at reasonably decent wattage and could have been discouraged by the speed I was traveling, but I wasn't. I let my mind wander, not noticing the now-familiar yard debris that have become my waypoints along the road. Thoughts came and went, and thousand blog ideas that drifted away with the wind. It didn't matter. Only the rhythm mattered.    When I turned around, I settled in again. Quite a bit faster with the wind at my back. I didn't cruise or push, holding onto my little piece of stability.      ...

I was running around frantically Friday, tying up loose ends I should have dealt with earlier. I Monday morning I had a fight home to catch, and I hate to leave the next guy holding the bag.    Around noon the phone rang. "Hey Mike. Can you stay an extra week?"    Fuck me.    Sure, why not? It's not like I couldn't find something to buy with the money. I called the wife and got her blessing, then told them I'd extend my hitch.    I'd much rather go home and be with my family. I have things to do. I'm tired of the King Salmon-Naknek highway and the constant wind. I miss my goofball Labrador retriever, Jackson. My wife has a golden retriever puppy arriving in the near future, and I want to be ready for that. Shortly afterwards, I'm likely going to be bringing home another Labrador of my own. Then there's camping and riding my bike and... life.    But here I am.    I shouldn't complain at a time when so many are unemploy...

It always goes the same way. The first ride back after a lull I'm tentative, not willing to push it for fear of falling apart on the first day. I may take a stab here or there, but for the most part I'm cautious.    The next day I push it for a little bit to see what happens. The day after that I push it a bit more. This continues until I feel really good about myself. The next day I crumple.    Never fails.    Then I start the real work. I build and build to some vague goal. Two steps forward and one step back. Pushing through malaise and fatigue to attain new levels of fitness. Once the goal is attained or surpassed, I crumple.    Never fails.    The whole cycles starts anew. After years of doing this, you'd think I would either quit (like a sane person would) or find some other pattern to follow. You'd be wrong. Once I find a routine that doesn't work, I stick to it. Just because it failed a million times before, doesn't...

I re ally struggled with whether I should publish the following post. It's overly long, rambling, and poorly thought out. It's just a stream of consciousness word vomit about things I was once taught to revere. It will probably piss some people off. Fuck it. ____________________________________________________________________________________ I usually avoid making political or social justice statements in social media.    It's partly because nobody really cares what I think.    It's partly because, after weighing the cost/benefit ratio, I decide it's not worth it. I don't know how many posts I've deleted after debating their merits. I have family and friends on both sides of the ever-widening political divide, and their sensitivity to hot button issues has never been greater. My opinion in some stupid blog post is not worth the loss of the relationship. We can have that discussion in person, where misunderstandings and points of contention can be discussed c...

Here in King Salmon, I have a total of 15 miles of pavement to play with. Here to Naknek and back is 30 miles. There's little dips and grindy gentle climbs, but the main feature of the route is the wind. The ever-present wind. Some days it's strong enough that I don't make it the full 15 miles before I turn around. I certainly could, but I don't. You go for a while, creeping along, until you've had enough, then marvel the whole way back how that wind that battered your face for so long doesn't have the same affinity for your back.    Usually the ride out has the headwind. Some of that has to do with the time of the day I'm riding. I'm still in the stage of dragging myself out onto the bike, instead of bounding out with the enthusiasm of a Labrador puppy. However, I think the majority has to do with the fact that the tiny trees and mild hills do little to block the winds coming off the water. There's not much you can do about it, so you just put y...

The other day I got this comment on my 30 for 30 post : اسعار شركات رش الحشرات شركة مكافحة بق الفراش بالقصيم اسعار مكافحة الحشرات شركة مكافحة حشرات ببريدة شركة مكافحة سوس الخشب بالقصيم شركة مكافحة صراصير بالقصيم شركة مكافحة فئران بالقصيم مكافحة حشرات المنزل مكافحة حشرات بالقصيم شركة مكافحة النمل الابيض بالقصيم شركة مكافحة الحشرات ببريدة شركة رش مبيدات ببريدة شركات مكافحة الحشرات بالقصيم افضل شركة مكافحة الحشرات Really? As you can imagine, I was blown away by the parallels between the fine work of the  Al-Qassim Insect Control Company in their ongoing war with" insects of cockroaches and mice and bed bugs with a guarantee" and my desire to erase the memory of Lance Armstrong from cycling. I can't imagine a comment being more on-target. Chapeau!    To be honest, I hadn't checked my comments in a year or so, because nobody reads this stuff anymore. No readers means even fewer comments. It's not that I don't care what other people think, it's just that I ...

COVID-19 scares the hell out of a lot of people.    Here in King Salmon, they have good reason to be scared. The only town they're connected to, Naknek, is home to several very large seafood processing plants. Each one of these plants employs a lot of seasonal workers from outside the state and often outside the country in maximum-density dorms. So, these places have a huge potential for an outbreak. To mitigate this, the companies have closed off their campuses and there are various levels of quarantine happening. They're doing their best to have a successful season during a pandemic when the demand for their product has been reduced to next to nothing. Best of luck with that.    Then we get news reports like this . 86 cases on one boat which was headed to Alaska to fish. How much of the rest of the fleet is infected but not detected yet? How long before it makes it into the processing plants. How long before it leaks into the community at large?  ...

I'm not a Lance fan.    I started riding during his heyday. I didn't start riding because of him. I bought an ill-fitting hybrid at REI on a whim, commuted on it for a while, found I liked it, and upgraded to a steel road bike. Mostly I just rode back and forth to work and on the occasional casual ride. I watched the Tour, but not religiously. I may have been affected by the Lance bike boom, but  indirectly. He was just a guy that rode bikes too, just a bit faster than me.    Another reason I started riding was that I was fat. Fat, divorced, depressed, and in a rut. I loved ski racing, but couldn't afford to do it year-round (i tried). I wanted to roll into ski season in shape, instead of subjecting my already-destroyed knees to additional stress from excess weight and insufficient muscle. Well, I got stronger, but I didn't lose weight. In fact, I gained a bit. It wasn't until I had a real reason to lose weight (my daughter), and a means to do it (bicycle ra...