On the road again...

I’m sitting in the airport again.

It’s been like this ever since the DK. The Monday after the race I found myself at the airport heading to Washington, D.C. for a conference covering one of my passions, that my employer has been gracious enough to support. But it meant recovery started with a three-hour flight followed by “road food” and standing for hours while talking about what I’m doing and what we should be doing. Why rest when you can keep going right? Some of the folks from the club did a bit better, they went directly to the multi-hundred mile Ride Across Kansas, the following Monday. I’m not sure I could have handled sitting in the saddle that soon again. It didn’t hurt, but hard benches were not friendly to areas people often only see in passing. Since then I’ve been on a couple other trips, but mostly I’ve been catching up on life, which seemingly was on hold in the month before the DK. My rental had to be rehabbed, cars had to be fixed, children hugged and played with, and I had missed my wife dearly. I think I have been riding a couple times a week. I’ve been trying to keep my spin classes up, for my own work time sanity if nothing else.  I’ve serviced the El Mariachi, finding that a lot of parts have been just fine. I did manage to kill the bottom bracket; The BB-51 is the first complaint I’ve had about that magnificent bike. This is one of a handful of parts I have noticed that Mother Salsa skimped on to get the margin right on the bike. I foresee these upgrades making for some good writing in the future.

I’ve been on some new trails, some beat me some, have been like old friends. I keep riding the Lawrence River Trail, just because I have so much fun there. Most people think that it’s pretty tame, but just about any time you get complacent on this trail, you usually hit tree.

It’s summer’s nearly done now, but that means that the riding gets a lot more pleasant on the plains.