My brother geezers were already abandoning the Monday ride on Sunday. Cold, wet, no thank you, please, etc.
I bailed too, mostly because I’m taking antibiotics and steroids to beat down a sinus infection, but also because I had my fill of cold and wet in the Before-Time™, when I fancied myself a cyclocross racer.
My interest in the activity started to flag after a few years living on our wind-whipped rockpile outside of Weirdcliffe, in Crustytucky County, Colo. (“Gateway to Gardner”).
I actually had some of my best races while we lived there, because I was living at 8,800 feet and training even higher, running a ton, riding a ’cross bike almost exclusively on the indifferently maintained and largely unpaved roads, and doing laps on my own short homemade course.
But evil weather was both my strength and my undoing. I needed a course with lots of running to have a chance against the roadies, who are like cowboys, reluctant to dismount from their steeds and proceed on foot. So, yeah: rain, mud, snow, anything to suck a few mph out of those tree-legged, leather-lunged sonsabitches.
But getting to the races in the kind of conditions that favored my limited skillset — run around for 45 minutes while wearing a perfectly rideable bike — could be something of a project. The nearest one was 90 minutes down and north in good weather, and it was the race I and my club put on twice a year in Bibleburg. The others were in Franktown, Littleton, Lakewood, Longmont, Boulder, Mead, Fort Collins, and like that there.
It got to where I would book a motel room, drive north the night before a race, eat dinner out, breakfast on coffee and energy bars in the room, get my ass handed to me at the event, clean up in a car wash, find something to eat, and drive home. After a while it began to feel a lot more like work than recreation, even if I did well, which mostly I did not.
Unless I saw heaps of snow on the deck when I got up on race day. Yay. And even then I had to drive home in it.
The travel got a little easier when we moved back to Bibleburg, but the racing never did. I was working a lot while training less, and at a lower altitude, too. The flesh was unwilling and the spirit was weak.
I could tell I was over it in 2004, when I rode my main race bike to a ’cross in Bibleburg . No spare bike, not even a spare wheel. And when I flatted about halfway through my race, I wobbled off the course, resolved the puncture (who brings a pump and saddlebag with spare tubes and tire irons to a friggin’ race?), and rode home.
And it wasn’t even snowing.
Mad Blog Media 
Snow! Bah humbug on snow. It should stay in the mountains where we can just visit it and then leave.
Tomorrow night will be spent watching Robin Hood, remastered Errol Flynn version on Blu-Ray, that I found at an estate sale shop for two bucks. Then Strange Brew whic just seems appropriate for the “pestilential erection.”
I thought the weatherpersons were having us on. Snow? Yeah, right. As if.
Then I checked last year’s bloggery and saw we got a bit of the white stuff just about the same time. How soon we forget, eh?
Damn boy…insult to injury getting a sinus infection and having the weather turn funky. Hope you get on the upside soon. You’ve reminded me to get out my NeilMed irrigation device and keep it handy now that the furnace is blowing dust and whatnot around the joint.
Well, I guess I’ve been lucky, Herb old irrigator. I haven’t had to take drugs for a sinus deal in many a moon. But this pernicious invader just flat refused to surrender my snotlocker without medical intervention.
The good news is, with both antibiotics and steroids on the menu, in a week or so I should have a functional sneezer and legs like a track sprinter.
I should put a double filter in my furnace. I think it will still work.
Ah, the good ole neti pot. I have a stainless steel version. When things get clogged up, it flushes them out with noticeable relief. Some folks just can’t use one though. A
Last night we turned on our furnace for the first time this season.
I’m one of the sissies who can’t do the neti thing, Paddy me boyo. I just know I’ll wind up being the dude who gets the brain-eating amoebas out of it.
This is assuming the amoebas (amoebae?) can find anything to eat, and if so, it’s not toxic to them. I ran a lot of dubious substances through the old brain-case Back in the Day®. The landfill between my ears should probably be a Superfund site.
Get well soon. Was snow, slush, sleet up here. So I went up to Bombtowne since it was too crummy out to enjoy the day. Found sleety-ice on one bridge which brought to my attention that the weather was inclement.
They actually had a few inches of the white stuff up in LA. So I made sure I left before the crowd left. The crowd always makes life interesting. Like last week, being aggressively tailgated at high speed by an SUV while on my motorcycle because it is a two lane double line road with traffic. Guy finally passed me and gave me the single digit salute for not going fast enough. I’ve got to figure out a way to mount a CN gas tank on the bike that I can release at times like that.
Or caltrops maybe?
Met a gal a few years ago while pumping petrol who had a good size camera on the rear deck of her Camry pointed backwards. I checked it out and it appeared to be held fast by a suction cup which it was. Curious, when she came back to her car from inside, I asked her about the set up. She popped the thing off and handed it to me and it weighed nothing since it was fake!! She told me that she was sick of getting tailgated and this solved the problem. And….ready for this Khal….her husband who rigged it up put one on the seat bar of his Harley after having a dust up with an asshole in a pickup.
Once home I bought two fake surveillance cameras and mounted them strategically on house and driveway and for years they got noticed by anyone coming here. Cut way down on religious nuts driving in to save Old Herb from Satan. With a looong driveway, I eventually put in a driveway alarm which gives me time to prep for anyone coming up the drive. This usually means putting on pants or shoes.