My Weekend

Saturday I linked up with a substantial chunk of The Morning Ride, DirtDevilDivision, for 2.5 hours of mountain biking fun. It was the first MTB ride for me since meeting D'Brickashaw, and I was a little rusty. Ordinarily I would take the boinger for any ride longer than 90 minutes, but I seem to have gotten some solvent on the brakes that makes 'em slippery, and they need bleeding anyhow and there's not a Tektro bleed kit anywhere to be found in the house... So it was onto Frankenbike.

It was a lot of fun despite being in crap shape. There were maybe 5 or 6 potholes on the trail but we did the regular Tour De Patapsco lap of the park, and we only needed to walk in that handful of places. Everywhere else the ground was as tacky as gum rubber, dream conditions. Would have been a perfect day to ride the boinger since I can flat out bomb down hills with that... but the rigid single acquitted itself nicely. The highlight of the ride for me was cruising up a couple little kickers that normally brutalize me... the momentum lesson I've learned riding w/t the TMR crew is staying with me. The threshold power... not so much, I was off the bike on Vineyard which is unusual. Maybe it was being conservative; I didn't want to blow up at the 50% ride and then have to totally struggle back in. Most of the people on the ride seemed a bit cracked for that matter; it's been a long winter and nothing really prepares a body for that.

It was a bit of a fitness wakeup call too. I'm doing better than I usually am at this point but theres a hell of a lot of fat to be lost and a lot of fitness to be gained. Time to get after it. Despite being near the bottom of that hill, I felt good because the joy of just riding the MTB again and hanging out with friends carried me. I capped it off with lunch w/t the Rouleur Family at The Honey Pig, a very good Korean diner on Rt. 40 in Ellicott City / Catonsville. They have the best tasting kimchi I've had in a long time and the kimchi jigae (sold there as pork & kimchi soup) was remarkable. Wife of Rouleur's bibim bap was also pretty remarkable, no fried egg on top but otherwise quite normal, only better.

This all left me amped up enough to consider taking the fixie on the commute to work tomorrow.

Release the Hounds!
A Small Cross-Section of TMR at Ride Start

What I Did Sunday Afternoon
1 Wheat, 1 White

And if you're havin' trouble with demonic thoughts about women, or a dirty above ground pool this week... well, you know who to call.