I forgot how tall I am.

BeanSS and I got in a nice, though short, mountain bike ride this morning, but damn if the wife didn't very nearly jinx the event by making a public announcement about it yesterday. In our household, a ride bespoke the night before often happens not. Maybe the curse has been lifted and we can henceforth speak freely about the plans we've made.

And sorry Veelz for not inviting you in on it, but this ride wasn't even a sure thing until we loaded the bikes into the pickup at zero dark-thirty. Its too bad, actually. You'd have fit right in with that geared heathen machine of yours, as BeanSS rocked her full-suss Rocky Mountain. I kept the faith by riding the Chameleon SS though I must admit, its an easy choice when my hardtail gearie has been sitting for almost 2.5 years without a crankset. Now, to address that issue about being too tall...

I haven't ridden my singlespeed since last November, but I thought my strong base of commuting miles, which includes a fair amount of climbing, would have helped me out. Nope. On any part of the ride where the trail pointed anywhere but down, I was dragging ass. I had no leg speed, and I just couldn't get on top of my gear. WTF, are there headwinds? No, it was calm. Brakes dragging? The wheels spun free. Riding in Jello? Just a little sand here and there, but nothing to suck at my tires. Oh, now wait a minute. I remember that SS ride last winter was the first with my new disk brakes and more to the point, the larger chainring needed to create a magic chain length. Only certain gear combinations will center the rotor in the caliper (front to back) on a Chameleon, and I had to go up by two teeth in front. Its hard to believe the switch from 32:18 to 34:18 - a taller gear by only about 2.9 inches - would have such an effect, but it did. Or at least that's where I've chosen to lay the blame for my weak legs. I'm quite sure it has nothing to do with the 15 or 20 pounds I've gained since my last race in early 2006.

What is else? Well, I'm hoping that two new developments have freed up some more time for riding. The first new development is the onset of the heat. Late spring is more like early summer in these parts, and high temperatures can end the riding season in Arizona's low deserts. For me, however, the heat is what finally sends the "good" birds upslope, well out of reach of my binoculars. My loyal reader (no, I didn't mean to say readers) knows that when spring birds are around, I let my tires go flat. Now, with the cool mornings no longer given over to scanning the skies for rarities, I can bike down.

Secondly, I can now actually bird from within the house, at almost any time of day, as two pairs of tyrant flycatchers have established territories centered on our yard. I've heard a brown-crested flycatcher (Myiarchus tyrannulus Müller) calling while composing this post. I had ID'd the BCFL a week or two ago by playing a CD of various flycatcher calls in the front yard. When the narrator called out "brown-crested flycatcher" and the bird's song started, I was unexpectedly dive bombed and shrieked at by a highly agitated, territorial male. I can also intermittently hear a pair of Cassin's kingbirds (Tyrannus vociferans Swainson) living up to the vociferousness stated in their specific epithet.

So there it is: morning rides, birding by ear at midday from inside the house, not to mention my favorite weekend, hot weather, slack-time activity - the afternoon nap. Things are looking up. And just as sure as the wild birds are driven from the desert by triple-digit temps, so too are the snowbirds. The Old Pueblo will soon belong only to the Puebloans. So Veelz, when does school let out?