Spring Cleaning, Spring Training

Don't you love when you write an entire entry and Blogger eats it? Damn. I'm never as witty on the second go round.

So, as I said in my last entry, there was riding on Sunday. It was a gorgeous day - 65 degrees and sunny. We spent the morning being good and making up for our homeowner slackness for the past, oh, three years, and did stuff around the house all morning in preparation for house guests who are coming to stay in a little more than a week. I really don't want my extended family to know the level of filth we normally live in, so stuff had to be done.

We managed to get a lot accomplished and celebrated with an afternoon ride. Our usual Sunday posse was out on their road bikes (not me. Hate traffic.) so we did our usual big loop, just the two of us. Poor K. Always having to ride with me. We're boring and could have packed up the bikes and driven somewhere different, but it's so much easier to just jump on the bikes and go, you know?

We did all the usual trails and crossed the loathed pedestrian bridge which was filled with weekend weirdos - all walking four-abreast and laden with dogs and radios and coolers and the like. We try so hard to be respectful and yield to pedestrians, but when they're rude and gross, it gets harder and harder. Hate. Ped. Bridge.

We finally got to the peaceful and painful Forest Hill Park trails. I've talked about the trails before, but not really the park. It's a big expanse of fields, with an inner ring of hilly woods. At the bottom of the ring is a big stone walkway that circles what used to be a lake and is now a weird swampy area. I miss the lake - they drained it a few years ago after the last bad hurricane, I think. Too much flooding. Forest Hill originally was an amusement park (which closed in 1925) and it still has a sort of haunted decrepit glamour about it. The park time forgot. I love it, even if the trails make me hurt. And they did. Forest Hill was also the location of the coolest thing we saw on yesterday's ride:

I was riding up a switchback turn and heard something moving fast to my left. I turned my head around and stopped dead - two deer were hightailing it at full speed through the woods. I'm not sure what set them off but it was fantastic to watch them go. So cool to see something like that in the middle of the city.

Anyway, I did much better than on Thursday. I'm still a little horky but it didn't slow me down as much. Please don't misunderstand - I'm still SLOW, just not as slow. Kenny made me lead on the way home and I found that I ride much better (technically and speed-wise) if I've got a little pressure behind me. I'm much less likely to walk something I don't like the looks of if I have someone behind me. It makes me a better rider and I really should take the lead more often. There, I said it. Now I have to do it.

It's going to be 87 degrees tomorrow (!!!) so I think that means I have to go ride. I'll let you know what happens.

Apparently I'm only happy when it rains.

Another ride oh my God. When I got off work yesterday it was starting to get cloudy and the forecast was calling for showers and/or thunderstorms. F that noise, I said, lets ride anyway. So we did. Before we left we fortified ourselves with a square of uber-dark chocolate that made me me sputter "Whereth tha thugar??" Seriously, I like dark chocolate but maybe with slightly more or even some sugar? Just a little?

For this ride we knew our time was limited so we rode down to the bridge and stayed on the Southside. We traveled on the Buttermilk Heights trail (where a tired dog drooled on my leg) to Forest Hill Park and rode a somewhat short-cutty lap there. As we were riding, the clouds got darker, the temperature dropped, uh, a lot, and the wind started to pick up. It was really really cool. We were in the woods when all this was happening and it was dark and spooky in a good way. All weirdly still and blowy at the same time. Shockingly, we were pretty much the only people there. Wusses!

Ah, but, the minute we finished up at Forest Hill the skies opened and it began to rain. Then it rained harder. Then harder. We had a short ride home from Forest Hill park back to our house, maybe two miles, but it feels a lot further when you're cold and soaked to the skin. It was worth it, though. I had K take my picture when we got home. I'm not dry:

K cleaned off the bikes and showers were taken and a healthy dinner was prepared:

Isn't that ridiculous? It was good, as were the brownies we ate afterwards. BROWNIES. Dang, they were good.

A ride! A ride! Not even kidding!

Yesterday was completely sucktastic for me and K was still feeling a little hork-y, so when we got home from work we decided to do a mellow "easy parts" ride (read: we did the big loop sans Forest Hill). The weather was glorious yesterday and I could feel my body sucking in the vitamin D all crazy with the lack of warmth and sun. It could be 80 degrees every day for the rest of my life and I'd be okay with that. (Actually, that's not true but right now it feels true.) Anyway, we got suited up (SHORT SLEEVES YAY) and rode from our house to the Boulevard Bridge, rode across the bridge (rebels!) and down to the North Trail. Almost immediately we ran into a few friends and being that it was a casual ride, we spent a few relaxed minutes catching up and then continued on our way.

One of my favorite things about a casual ride (as opposed to a training ride or group ride) is that you can stop and be all, "Look at that! Isn't that cool?" and you can stop and dig the view without anyone getting annoyed with you for holding up the line. Cool things we saw yesterday:

- one of the Maymont bears
- a fat groundhog hauling ass up a hill
- lotta rednecks
- beautiful sunset
- our friend Glenn's 29er

We continued on across the ped bridge (hate) and rode the top of Belle Isle before heading over to the fire road. We then contemplated riding Forest Hill, then wisely decided there wasn't enough daylight left and rode back to the bridge on the Buttermilk Heights trail, which I lurve. I do, Heights is the bomb.

So that's the first after-work ride of 2007 and it was a really good one. It cleared my head of the crap I'd dealt with earlier in the day and I slept like a baby last night which is the best benefit of all.

Because I need another blog like a hole in the head.

Hi, it's Amblus and apparently I'm bored and need another stupid blog. This one is going to be all my mountain biking and cycling-related crap because maybe it'll actually get updated unlike my Diaryland nonsense. We'll see.

Yesterday was the first race of the season and I...was not there. Between the time change, the new REALLY early start time for Sport Women (wtf?) and a hacking cough I can't seem to shake, it just didn't seem like the time to start getting competitive. See also: hadn't been on my bike in nearly two weeks. Spinning class, while a nice diversion, isn't the same thing. Spinning amuses me because it's the exact opposite of what you actually do in real life. I once complained to the instructor that the "downhill" sections didn't make any sense to me because who pedals rillyrilly fast downhill? Why aren't we pretending to coast? I got a dirty look for that one.

Anyway, I did do a short ride yesterday just to get back in the game - we did the North Trail, Belle Island and I did half of Forest Hill before I had to leave to go to a meeting. As I suspected, my chest congestion was SUPER F'ING HELPFUL on the hill climbs. *hork*

It's supposed to be beautiful later this week, so hopefully I'll get out after work one day, now that daylight savings time has come, robbing me of my precious sleep.