Photos From the Saddle

The funny thing is, the tape was looking pretty good for 10 months of use… until last month, which even then wasn’t that bad until the third week. Turns out that three flats on the road in rainy conditions doesn’t bode well for white tape. Who’d have thunk? So, black tape for the Double Cross now.

Plans for the next bike got rolling yesterday with the arrival of a bitchin’ new set of fenders. Of course, the plans for this bike have been brewing for a while… the fenders are just the beginning of what’s to come. It makes perfect sense that one would build a bike when they’re unable to ride, right?

Went for a walk this morning and pondered the walkability of my neighborhood. Farmer’s market, two grocery stores, a couple coffee shops, two schoools, library, post office, a plant nursery, couple banks, video store, lots of little independent shops and about eight restaurants. There’s a bike shop, too, but it’s (tragically) under questionable management. All that within roughly a half-mile radius of the central intersection, though the majority is within two blocks of it. Not bad.

Apparently, when someone recently started riding the train, their comment was “Everyone has their threshold limit. Mine was $4.25 a gallon.” In the past week, I’ve had several different people send me links or cutouts of newspaper cartoons that depict the use of a bicycle as a means of coping with the rise in gas prices.

I saw a Civia on the waterfront today. Unfortunately, I was in a car so I didn’t get a chance to chat the rider up about their bike. Very surprised, but pleased, to see one. Kinda like seeing a rare import… not flashy, but certainly uncommon.

On his way out to ride home, G gave me a bit of a jab about how I needed to start riding again ’cause he was getting lonely. Trust me, buddy, I want to ride, but every time I do—even for a short 2-mile ride—my Achilles flares up and I’m back to where I started. This is seriously frustrating, but as another colleague put it, if I don’t take care of it now, it’ll haunt me for much, much longer.

So, I’m driving a lot more than I have since the beginning of the year and praying that I’ll heal faster.

I ride to the store. I ride to smile. I ride for fitness. I ride to work. I ride so my kids can feel the wind in their faces. I ride to save money. I ride in plain shoes and clothes. I ride because of curiosity. I ride to feel symbiotic harmony of body and machine. I ride to check out the neighborhood. I ride to save the planet, one revolution at a time. I ride for poetry. I ride to loosen up and not take things so seriously. I ride to keep a competitive edge. I ride to show others that they too can ride. I ride the same roads. I ride because I respect that guy that caught me, uphill, on his single-speed cross bike. I ride because the weather can, and will, get shittier. I ride for a different perspective. I ride for the elegance. I ride because I’m stubborn. I ride to smile at those little unexpected moments. I ride to catch that wheel ahead of me. I ride for that moment, beyond The Wall, where it all disappears. I ride because of great conversations. I ride clean. I ride for community. I ride to see the dawn spread and dusk fall. I ride to fly through one green light after another on a road oddly devoid of traffic. I ride because I asked myself if I could ride there instead of driving. I ride because of a goal. I ride for love. I ride because it scares me. I ride for stories. I ride to understand it. I ride for fluidity. I ride because I won’t ever be the fastest. I ride for utilitarian, multi-modal existence. I ride because this could be anywhere. I ride because of muscle memory. I ride for pain. I ride for little moments of glory known only to me.

I ride to ride.

It’s about baby steps. It’s about starting small. It’s about doing what’s significant to you, even if it’s riding around the block only once a week. I have to keep telling myself that as I’m attempting to let my leg heal.

Thursday and Friday I commuted by bike to the train. My Achilles immediately flared up Thursday morning, but that feeling of being in the saddle again overcame any aches or fears. I needed to ride. Friday afternoon, I headed straight for the pub to watch the replay of the Netherlands v. France Euro game. Those boys are playing some phenomenal footie. On the way home, I passed a couple who were out on a pair of awesome cruisers and decided to wait for them at the next light. We ended up having an awesome conversation on the side of the road. Not unlike seeing someone in Spain wearing a hat from your hometown college, there’s an inherent curiousity when running into other people on bikes in your neighborhood. I hope to ride with them again sometime.

Other bits of randomness… Allergies suck. The sun (finally) came out for more than a few odd hours. Inspired people are awesome.

As I’ve heard it, our June has turned out to be one of the coldest/wettest on record so far. We’ve had only one day above 60°F and have had more rain than the average for October. It’s not even the end of the second week of the month. The winds have looked pretty painful as well. I have to admit, if there’s a “good” time to be injured, it’d be now. When I’ve talked to those that are riding, they shake their heads in disbelief… they’re wearing their winter gear.

I’ve been out a little bit, but not much. I’m missing it… even in this weather. Riding around the neighborhood this afternoon on the One Way, I noticed that my cardio was lacking. My Achilles felt a little tight, but not as bad. The BB on the One Way is in desperate need of attention, though.

Keeping track of Euro ‘08 has provided a nice bit of distraction; my personal favorite is Netherlands, and I imagine we’ll see them, Portugal, Spain and Germany in the semi finals.

And, to wrap it all up… this makes me smile:

I forgot to ride yesterday.

In other words, there was a slight hiccup in the Ride A Day Project… I’d made it 159 consecutive days. It dawned on me a little bit after waking up from a Sudafed-induced coma. There’s a part of me that’s a little disappointed, but at the same time it is what it is… nothing more than that. When I told someone who’s been aware of the daily routine, their immediate response was “Well, now you’re free!” True, indeed. Granted, I’d suspected that I might miss one or two days… but I’d always hoped there’d be some great reason why, like “I was climbing a mountain” or “I was in the midst of a fever-induced hallucination”… not “I forgot.”

I’m planning on trying to ride every day from here on out of course, but there is a certain bit of relief in knowing that I’m no longer shackled to the finite goal… now it’s an imperfect goal, still a goal of course, but an imperfect one, which I kinda like better.

The Achilles is better, but still a bit… off. When weighting the ball of my foot and pushing up, as I near full extension I can feel slight bits of crunch (or ripping). Time will heal it, along with cautious use. The unseasonably cool/rainy/windy weather has continued. When asked how his ride in to work was this past Thursday, F replied “It was a great early April ride”. That sums it up fairly well… April in June.

I’ve been all about the low mileage since Friday; my Achilles has been getting better, thankfully. This shift to low mileage has allowed me the opportunity to rock the One Way around the neighborhood. I honestly do love riding just to check out all the places in the area. There really are some beautiful little homes around here… and each time I go out, I find a new place that makes me think “Hey, that’s not a bad little place. I like what they’ve done with _______.”

Numbers for May:

• Miles ridden: 1,072
• Miles driven: 372 (134,541)

I must admit that I’m pleased with the proportions of miles; even better, I’m responsible for a little less than half of the miles driven, as friends and family borrowed my car a bit at the beginning of the month. So far this year, I’ve ridden 2,566 miles and put a total of 1,599 miles on my car.

Curiosity got the best of me and I recorded some numbers over the past month. Apparently I climbed ~29,778 ft., burned ~46,726 calories and had an overall average heart rate of 129.4 bpm. My fastest speed was 38.7 mph, my overall average was 15.1 mph. It took me about an hour and 35 minutes of riding to complete the morning commute; an hour and 47 minutes of riding to do the afternoon trip. The coldest it got in the morning was 39 degrees, with an average of 48. The afternoons were typically around 61 degrees; the hottest it got was 77. I had three soy chai lattes.

Numbers really are impersonal.