okay, Im' comin' home

the 28th.

Pick me up at the airport?

When we ridin'?

F#*& it

No bike to Texas. Less time in Texas. Been crazy stressed out.

Stressed you guys, I'm goin' home and ridin'.

Stupid bike transportation costs and hassles.

Next time, road trip.

Yeah, I know, slacker!

Uh, I started working, dating, riding, living in general, but I'm back, sort of.

My sister's got 70 acres, my daddy's got tractors and stuff, and my nephews have dirt bikes. We're going to build a dirt course out there. I need something to do for 19 days. Stay turned for pics and reports starting next week (or sooner).

As the Wheel Turns

Cycling has its own cycles, even in semi-non-seasonal NorCal. My cycle was disrupted for me, being it was dirt season. Now it's my road season, and it is a good season.

I miss my dirt buddies. I miss my road buddies, too. My favorites are all married away, moved away, stopped riding, or got too fast for me. That's always part of the cycle, too.

This last week or so I've been spinning for a couple of hours, messing around with going as slow as possible and keeping a solid balanced spin. Just me and the old bike. No expectations, no other people's speeds, routes, or training plans to worry about. Just the bike. Just me. Feeling it out. Feeling what hurts the chest, what doesn't. Good news is it's no longer bad pain, just irritating when I jump out of the saddle for a standing climb. I've been looking at the world around the ride, and I live in a damn beautiful place.

Being forced to slow down was good for me. That's part of my cycle, too. No matter what I do to try to control my ride time, I eventually over-do it, ignore that I'm tired, then fall down stairs or something else, like impaling myself on a section I usually would have been fine on.

Performance-orientation can be so dangerous: it's weird, the same time I was knocked down a peg on my bike, my grades stopped being A's on my assignments, and went to A-. I'd been powering through the work, absorbing everything. I was powering through my workouts, forcing myself past exhaustion, ignoring minor crashes as signs of fatigue. Then, boom. Out for the count, and my brain doesn't want to learn anymore.

It's the time-out part of the cycle. I'm not getting paid for any of this. And the payout seems to be pain.

I'm not a natural, and that's okay. Everyone I ride with is faster than me, and that's okay, too. However, the A- grades need to be brought back up. I can't suck at everything I do, after all.

Is it Wrong to Still Want to Do It?

Two strange men got to see my breasts today. And they were paid for it. Since I tried to impale myself on Stumpy's bars at Northstar on Saturday, I've had a very disturbing pain in my chest. So I decided to go on down to Doctors on Duty and see if I had a broken rib or something.
Funny, when it happened, my first thought was to go see the medic to check if I could keep riding. My second thought was to invest in body armor. Allie had lent me a full-face helmet that day, so of course I took it in the chest, not the face. I went down on terrain similar to this, I messed up at the bottom of a small rock drop:



Besides the usual checks of temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, I received tender compressions all over my chest, comparing the pain in my right breast to my left (that's a visual for Jimbo in case he stops by), stuff stuck to my chest, arms, and legs for the EKG, and a chest X-Ray. I have never seen my ribs, lungs, and heart before. It was pretty cool. Unfortunately, It looks like I swallowed my Heart Rate Monitor:



Turns out it's just soft tissue damage. It hurts like a !^%$*( &^$%*!, though. I'm not supposed to fall down until it's healed. I am also supposed to do deep breathing exercises so my lungs get some action. Each breath hurts. A lot. So does laughing. I guess I need to stop being funny for a week or two and make an effort to only hang out with really serious people. And I plan to be just on the road bike for at least this week. Poor Stumpy isn't made for Northstar. Her Matchmaker got cracked. Any day now the part that keeps the shifters and brakes on could go. Sigh.
I want a bigger bike. The spending never ends, does it?

I'm so dirty

It's been a lot lately. All kinds of dirt. Downieville dirt, Northstar dirt, UCSC dirt. And today I got water in my ear, too.

The Stumpy's been hitting it hard. Ride three was up and over loose rock, loose dirt, and next to scary ass drops in Downieville. She climbed a little, descended a lot, and went over crazy rocks.

Ride five she went up chair lifts and descended down super loose dirt, swooped up into the air a little, and crashed me on my face. No blood, just a scrape. New love for Northstar, oh yeah.

I'm getting a full-face helmet.

Ride six was actually near my house. A group, learning to do jumps. I flailed, but I know what I need to do, now. Start small to get the body English wired. Combining an uncomfortable speed with unfamiliar technique is too hard for me. Besides, I don't like learning in front of an audience, no matter how cool they are about my learning curve. I learned to snowboard like that. Lessons didn't help, poor ex-boyfriends suffered frustrated rants until I figured out I needed to teach myself on almost flat terrain how the board moves before I let gravity take over. I've never been a physical prodigy. New things that can hurt you are hard for me to learn.

Thanks to you all who have been so cool lately: Devil-D who let us stay at his home last weekend, Alex for encouraging me, even though I was scared, Dave for the b-day cake, Nic for the bell, Chris for suggesting Northstar, Caroline for my birthday oatmeal, Thomas for taking me helmet shopping. Cool people make the ride more fun.

July Fourth. Too many parties. Parties are usually good, but my homework is killing me. Tomorrow will be hell, because I know I am going to be bad tonight.

Because They're There