Better living through chemistry

I said yesterday that the hilly morning road ride would either warm me up for today's trail ride or leave me too tired to face it. And that was before I did an evening session with the weights.

I woke up early this morning and walked the dogs around the block a couple of times. I then threw the bike in the back of the truck, drove over to the G5 parking lot, and hit the trails in the southwest corner of Tucson Mountain Park. I rode strongly. Skillfully. With energy left over. It was totally worth shaving my legs for.

Maybe I have greater fitness and deeper reserves than I thought. Either that, or the dose of naproxen sodium I took before leaving removed my ability to feel pain and later on, when it wears off, I'll feel the cumulative effects of my sore muscles, stiff joints, and every single puncture and scratch I received as I navigated the overgrown trail. Regardless, Advil is out, Aleve is in.

The potential OTC NSAID-induced pain immunity notwithstanding, it was a wonderful, ride. The first couple miles of trail were shaded by a butte to the east, and the air was fragrant with a Monsoon season's worth of plant growth. I was reminded that the three-quarter mile segment of twisty singletrack just south of Kinney and west of the Ironwood Picnic Area is one of my all-time favorite trails, despite its unfortunate brevity. Rufous-winged sparrows called from the brush and a greater roadrunner dropped me like I was standing still. I blew by a key junction and ended up riding further southwest than I'd intended. Just as I entered what I call the "No Fires" wash, so named for the admonition on a trailside sign, I noticed several of the larger trees in the xeroriparian area were loaded up with roosted turkey vultures. A few flushed, but I counted at least eleven of them, warming themselves in the morning light. It was a perfect way to end the summer, and I'm definitely looking forward to more rides like it this fall.

Equinox run up: addendum

As discussed yesterday, the critical path for this morning's mountain bike ride was getting a good night's sleep. I did indeed get the requisite amount of sleep, but I didn't anticipate that doing so would take so damned long. By the time Clayton and Dora stomped me awake for their morning walk, the sun was already above the horizon and starting to heat things up.

The dogs' breakfast, their walk, my breakfast, bike prep, loading the pickup, etc. were going to be too time consuming, resulting in me being on the trail as the temperature moved out of my admittedly narrow comfort zone. I thus decided during the walk that I'd take the road bike out instead. I ended up banging out a nice, somewhat climby loop. I was happy to have never clicked down to the inner ring on my triple, but I sure didn't feel very strong. The ride will either serve as a nice warm up for a mountain ride tomorrow or I'll wake up too cashed in to face the trails.

Here's something curious. My right lower eyelid is intermittently twitching. It's happened many times before, but only when the stress at work has climbed into the red. As on any weekend, my job couldn't be further from my mind. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I've downed nearly an entire pot of coffee. Whatever the cause, I best get on with my day.

Equinox run up

I'm under spouse's orders to not just sit around the house on this, the last weekend of summer.

The air temperature tomorrow morning will be in the high 60s. My mountain bike's tires are free of punctures and need only to be inflated a few psi. It therefore appears that all that stands between me and a trail ride is a good night's sleep and, to ensure that I get it, I'm signing off.

That's more like it

It's Sunday evening, and I'm thinking this was yet another good weekend. Bean27 (aka BeanSS) and I rode Sweetwater in the cool air with Veelz this morning, reprising part of the ride that he and I did there last weekend. There were no desert tortoise sightings this time, though we did see a red-tailed hawk on the drive there and a prairie falcon on the way back home.

It was one more ride with no other purpose than to just pedal along; not a milk run, not a trip to the office. I'm hoping that my reshuffling of priorities makes these weekend rides more frequent and thus, less novel, ultimately freeing me from wanting to describe each and every one of them in this blog.

To help remind myself that it is still the weekend and that I don't need to be at work for another 10 hours, I've got the Meat Beat Manifesto Psyche-Out and Now EPs - complete with their signature SONAR pings and scratchy old record noises - spinning in another window. I'd like to talk about how smoothly a well-deserved beer or two are going down but alas, it is unwise to imbibe when one is loaded up with Ibuprofen. I said the weekend was fun. I did not say it was painless.

Despite the aches and pains, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself for having fixed one of the messed-up struts that hold our camper shell's gate up. It came loose late last week and, in what was a veritable whirlwind of activity considering my general lack of handyman skills and all-around level of sloth, I fixed it this afternoon. My sub-month response time was fueled by an amazing confluence of events. Not only did I know what needed to be done to fix the window, the necessary cordless drill and rivet gun were right where I remember them being. On top of that, the repair worked on the first try. I even repaired the other strut in advance after noticing that it was about to fail, too. I suppose I was also motivated in no small part by the fact that the single operative strut could, and did, drop the window on an unsuspecting cranium belonging to my wife. High on my general sense of accomplishment, I went on to fix the plastic retention dealie on the back of BeanSS' bike helmet. I just hope the custom, zip tie-based kludge holds the brain bucket together as well as the rivets did on the camper.

Despite the myriad other things that need fixing, I'll have to get back to work, and to bike commuting, tomorrow. And despite my constant bitching on the subject, the biking is getting steadily more enjoyable as things cool down. I'm not saying I wouldn't park the commutant immediately if I found a motorcycle, but riding to work day after day is definitely more tolerable when heat stroke is off the table.

Weekend, not weakened

Thank Jah it's Friday. Work was a whirlwind this week. I had my usual array of things to do but I was also given an entirely unexpected opportunity to go work on a project in Sacramento. It would have been for a week or two this month and perhaps a couple more in October. I'd have flown out at my employer's expense, been put up in a hotel for the duration, and have had my meals reimbursed. In exchange, I'd have put in long hours and helped my old friends get shit done. I gave it some pretty serious consideration but ultimately declined the offer.

It was a major coincidence. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the trails I rode when I lived there, and wondering if or when I'd get to ride them again. BeanSS and I had a pretty crappy lifestyle in Sacto, but the rides were always sweet. The bad memories have pretty much fallen away, and I'm left with the warm, fuzzy feeling of threading Sierra Foothill singletrack through the oak woodlands and riding the river route next to Chinook salmon spawning on their redds. I've been riding in Tucson for so many years now that it's hard to imagine how buffed some of those trails were. There were no cactus thorns to puncture my tires, my falls were cushioned by accumulated leaves, and what few rocks were present were well-weathered and not at all jagged. In fact, writing about it here further reinforces my desire to get back there and bike down.

And that gets right to the heart of it.

The reason I turned down the temporary job was because all I'd have wanted to do once I touched down in the Big Tomato was ride, and I'd likely have had precious little time outside of work for that. Having flown, I wouldn't have been able to have my own car on hand. I'd therefore have had to choose in advance whether I wanted to ride road or mountain, and then I would have needed to ship the appropriate bike out (likely at considerable expense). I'd probably have gone with my mountain bike, but not wanting to make a mess of a rental car, I'd have been limited to trails to which I could ride from town.

I feel bad for my old friends there, because they're shorthanded and the project for which they need help is as fugly as they get. Still, I'd rather they find someone who is less likely to spend hours looking longingly out the windows that face the Sierra Nevada, an employee who won't try and play hookie every afternoon. It also just so happens that the project I'd have worked on very much resembles the one that, 5 years ago, contributed appreciably to my all-consuming desire get home to Arizona.

Meanwhile, back in the here and now in the Old Pueblo, I'm readying myself for my weekend activities. The dogs will get a walk or two, and I'll probably spend a little time scanning the skies for birds. I rode to work in 65-degree air this morning. I'm hoping for more of the same because BeanSS and I are on tap for a sunrise ride with Veelz the day after tomorrow. The scab from the runner's nipple I received during last Sunday's ride has finally fallen off, so despite having been provided too much information, you at least know I'm ready.

Upon further consideration...

I had a post up here for a day, maybe two. It went into my bike commuting stats and how, despite the personal accomplishment they represent for me, they might be negatively affecting my ability and desire to ride on weekends. I also hypothesized that my feelings about my job may be part of the problem, too. The post was fairly negative and I ultimately deleted it. The take home message, however, was that I need to ride more often for the fun of it, even if that means I lose my status as the office's most-militant bike commuter (I work with a bunch of other tree-hugging dirt-worshipers, so the loss of cred could be considerable).

To that end, I met Veelz at Sweetwater this morning. We went around several of the loops. I rode better than I thought I would have considering how infrequently I've been mountain biking this year. We ran into a coworker of mine and also saw a desert tortoise. I flatted by stupidly backing into a barrel cactus, but the weather was nice, the desert was alive, and I had a pretty damned good time. I came home, cleaned up, threw in load of laundry, and, despite chugging the coffee I'd foregone prior to the ride, promptly fell asleep on the couch, Dagwood Bumstead style.

I woke up with a slight, all-over ache; the satisfying, low-level soreness that comes from having had too much fun on a bike. It was then that I realized something else, too. Between the morning at Sweetwater and yesterday's road ride, I'd reached the point where I would probably be too tired to ride my bike to work tomorrow. And that is the revelation I needed to have. I should be too tired from the weekend to commute, not too tired from commuting to ride on the weekend.

It seems like such a simple thing, but I've pedaled to and from the office so many hundreds of times - riding like a zombie and focused only on bettering my bike vs. car statistics - that I forgot I used to actually enjoy riding a bicycle.

I won't give up on the bike commuting entirely, as BeanSS and I still have to share one car. Also, the rides back and forth from home will get steadily more tolerable as autumn arrives. Lastly, I have my base to consider - no miles are bad miles, right? Nevertheless, I'm just going to have to back off on my dedication to the One less car ethos, replacing it with the another sticker-based piece of wisdom: Work sucks, I'm going mountain biking.

Hello nasty

I said I wouldn't post again until I'd done something. Well, what I did was watch birds for about 12 hours over two successive days. Sunday was the last day to see species I could add to my August at-home list and Monday was the first day I could see birds that would count towards September's tally. It was a productive couple of "big sits" in terms of birds of prey, with three Harris's hawks, two red-tailed hawks, two zone-tailed hawks, two American kestrels, and one peregrine falcon passing by at one time or another. And note that these are sightings of different individuals, not repeated observations of the same birds. Not too shabby for a suburban hawk watch.

I also saw this bird of (dead) prey perched uncharacteristically on the utility pole behind my house. Perhaps it was taking a break from a long morning spent in the performance of ecosystem services, by which I mean a long morning of eating carrion. And for that, this turkey vulture is supremely adapted.