Back in the saddle

The day after returning home from the eclipse, I took my Bike Friday out for a 30-mile spin. It did not go well. For a start, it was a blustery day. I struggled mightily to maintain any speed on the bike at all. This was, after a week of rest, rather discouraging.

That evening I went to the pharmacy for my seventh (I think. I’ve lost track.) covid vaccination. I didn’t sleep well but rode The Mule in intermittent light rain to Friday Coffee Club. A strong tailwind had me cruising along at 15 miles per hour, something that doesn’t happen very often. While at Coffee Club, a front must have passed through because I was rewarded with a second tailwind on the ride home.

My ride home from Friday Coffee Club featured some flooding

Today, I mowed the lawn for the first time in three, very rainy weeks. The mower kept bogging down in the thick grass. It took about 30 minutes longer than normal. Between the covid shot, my lack of sleep, an extremely high pollen count, and the hard mowing effort, I was wiped out when the work was finished. After a lunch break, I decided to go for a short, easy ride.

The Mule made it about a half mile before it broke into a full on gallop. What the heck? Gusty winds were blasting me through the neighborhood. When I turned into the wind, I completely surprised myself by barely losing any speed. What the heck?

The entire ride went like that. Before the ride, I was expecting to be totally exhausted when I got home, but I was invigorated instead. Dang.

On top of this surprising result, my neck seemed to be nearly better. I still lack my full range of motion but the shooting pains up into my head and the muscle spasms that keep my head from turning from side to side seem to be gone. Dang again.

I honestly don’t know what the cause of my neck problems is or are. It could be a whiplash injury from being rear ended while sitting on my recumbent at a stop light last fall. Or maybe something about the transfer of road shock on my CrossCheck was irritating my cervical spine. I stopped riding this bike a few weeks ago. A third possibility is the Big Three back exercises I’ve been doing for the last several months. One of the big three is a side plank that puts stress on my shoulders and neck. Another is a shoulder lift that, when done improperly, can strain the neck. I stopped doing them during my eclipse week off.

After my post-ride shower, I sat down to do some tour shopping. I bought three things from REI: bicycling shorts (I noticed the pair I have been wearing everyday for weeks is starting to fall apart), a very loud air horn (for my canine friends in Kentucky and Missouri), and a first aid kit (something I should have taken on my previous trips).

Next up was maps. Since I haven’t quite figured out where I am going I ordered the following maps from the Adventure Cycling Association: the sections of the TransAmerica Trail that go from Richmond, Virginia to western Missouri, the sections of the Great Rivers South route between Kentucky and New Orleans, and a section of US Bike Route 66 in Oklahoma.

I also printed out updates for each map set. These give information of changes to the routes and services along the way that post-date the production of the maps themselves. From these I learned that one section of the TransAmerica Trail in Kentucky is unusable. The updates provide a work around. I also learned that my destination in Ash Grove, Missouri is no longer viable. The City Park had a building set aside for bike tourists. The city also allowed bicycle tourists to use the adjacent swimming pool. I might just bypass this bit of the TransAm (as I did in 2019) and head directly to Arkansas. (It only shaves 12 miles off the trip.)

The Great Rivers maps are to be used if I call an audible and ride from Kentucky to New Orleans. I am also bringing a map that would guide me from Missouri to Omaha, in case I decide to head a different way once I get to the end of my TransAmerica jaunt.

I still have a couple of things to buy. I need to buy some electrolyte tablets for my water bottles. My hope is that this will stave off cramps. I also need a power pack for my phone.

Next, I will sit down with my itineraries and the map updates and see if I need to adjust my plans.

Totality Rocks

If memory serves, today was my third solar eclipse. Previously I’ve only seen partial eclipses but this time I went to the max.

A few days ago I drove to my in-laws’ house in northern Indiana. We had been planning to drive 2 1/2 hours to Muncie which is in the path of totality. We were dreading a traffic nightmare.

This morning we called an audible and switched our destination to Portland, Indiana. Portland is northeast of Muncie but is a much smaller town.

Using secondary highways and backroads, my daughter expertly navigated us to Portland in a bit over two hours. We stopped at a gas station convenience store and asked some locals if there was a park in town that would be good for viewing. Sure enough, the town park was one-half mile away.

The park was a bit crowded but we found a parking spot and set up. My mother-in-law had organized drinks, snacks and seating. My wife brought a fistful of eclipse glasses.

After a two-hour wait. We started to see some exciting eclipse action. To be honest watching the moon creep across the face of the solar disc over the course of 90 minutes is a bit boring. We could feel the temperature drop. The amount of ambient light was fading.

Then the big moment.

The last bits of the disc were covered as a tiny dot of red on the edge of the sun vanished. We could hear applause and hoots all through the park and across town. A cannon boomed. We sat in awe for some 3 1/2 minutes until the process reversed. We had expected the birds and spring peepers to become silent at totality. They quieted but we could still hear them.

Truth be told our eclipse glasses made it impossible to see the ring of fire of the total eclipse. Stupidly we peaked at the sun and the ring was evident. Wearing the eclipse glasses caused my pupils to be dilated making the ring look thicker than the one I’ve seen in photos.

Still, it was well worth over 1,000 miles of driving to see the big moment. Check another box off the bucket list.

My daughter and I watching the eclipse and getting nasty sunburns.

Tour Options for 2024

It’s starting to warm up and my thoughts are turning to a spring/summer bike tour. I have pared my ideas down to two tours, all originating from home and involving parts of the Atlantic Coast, Trans America, and Great Rivers South routes designed by the Adventure Cycling Association.

Pre-tour Jitters

I have some trepidation about this tour. Of course, pre-tour worry and anxiety is nothing new. It is tempting to let these feelings snowball, what Buddhists call papañca. There is some usefulness to anticipating problems, of course, but, left unchecked, this sort of mental proliferation can ruin your tour. About 50 miles into my 760-mile DC-to-Indiana tour, I was making myself miserable with pointless worrying. I stopped and gave myself a mental dressing down: “You’re on vacation. Relax. If bad things happen, you’ll figure them out.” It worked.

My list of worries is short. For a start, I am not a kid anymore. I was a youngster when I rode across the US alone in 2018 at the age of 62. I’m now 68 and don’t I know it. I have nagging physical issues with my lumbar and cervical spine. Also, I have the usual age-related reduction in muscle strength. The only cure for these things is to walk when I need to and to shorten my riding days to the extent practicable.

A second concern is dogs. The route I am taking is notorious for aggressive dogs. In the past I brought a small can of pepper spray. I never once used it gave me peace of mind. It occurs to me that on a windy day or on a downhill I am likely to spray myself. Yeah, let’s do 25 miles per hour downhill on a bumpy road with a snarling junk yard dog at my heels and get a load of pepper spray in my face. Nope. I am going to find a small horn of some sort and hope for the best.

Weather is always a concern. Since I am heading south, I am sure to encounter much more heat and humidity than last year. I’ll need to stay hydrated and take breaks. Depending on which route I take I’ll could be dealing with serious headwinds.

The topography is a bit intimidating. Like last summer, I’ll be crossing the Appalachian Mountains for a good chunk of the tour. In my mind’s eye this means steep climbs straight up one mountain after the next. That’s not how it works, of course, and I never seem to remember that those climbs are followed by descents.

Now, let’s consider the options.

Option 1: Finish the Trans Am

I have about left over 1,000 miles of the TransAmerica route unfinished: from Ashland, Virginia (just north of Richmond) to Ash Grove, Missouri (just east of the Kansas border). I’d ride south about 110 miles to Ashland then bang a right on the TransAm. And follow it over 1,400 miles to Ash Grove.

A big advantage of this part of the route is the lodging situation. There are something like 21 inexpensive places to stay including campgrounds, town parks, fire houses, hostels, churches, and such. Another advantage is the fact that I will encounter bike tourists along the way thanks to the popularity of the TransAm.

After Ash Grove it makes sense to me, at least, to ride south to Bentonville, Arkansas. This would take about two days and add 110 miles. There’s all kinds of flights to DC from this city thanks to the fact that it is the home of Wal-Mart.

Beyond Bentonville is the possibility of picking off Oklahoma. Tulsa is three days and 130 miles west. Add another 150 miles on old Route 66 and I’d be in Oklahoma City, another city with several flights to DC. All told, DC to Oklahoma City would make for a tour of about 2,000 miles. Tulsa and Oklahoma City have the added benefit of being on Southwest Airlines’ network, meaning I’d probably fly home for free.

Option 2: Laissez Les Bon Tons Roulez

This town is identical to the tour above until Marion, Kentucky just south of Cave-in-Rock. At Marion, I would pick up Adventure Cycling’s Great Rivers South Route, taking that to the start of the Natchez Trace near Nashville. With the exception of a detour to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to take in a bit of music history, I’d ride to Natchez, Mississippi. After that, it’s a few days of riding to New Orleans. The total mileage is about 2,100. Theoretically, I could take a train home from New Orleans but it would take at least 26 hours.

I once had a business trip to Louisiana in April and could not believe how humid it was. Add ten or 15 degrees and you get pure misery. It probably would make more sense to just fly to Nashville, do the ride to New Orleans, and fly home. That would be about 900 miles and would take me about a month.

March Recap

Riding

I’m finally making a bit of progress on my riding. In January I averaged a little less than 20.5 miles per day. That creeped up to 25.7 miles in February. In March I averaged nearly 31.9 miles per day. I did six rides of 40 miles or more. Two of these long rides were to the Kenwood neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland. The streets are lined with old cherry trees; on the second ride they were at peak blossom and it was a riot of eye candy.

For the month I logged 892 miles, over half of that was on The Mule. I did 70 miles indoors on cold, rainy days with Big Nellie doing the honors. The remaining 340 miles was evenly split between Little Nellie and The Tank.

I hit a couple of cool milestones this month. The Mule passed 74,000 miles on March 22. The next day I passed 2,000 miles for the year. As of March 31, I’ve ridden 2,273.5 miles. I’m on a pace for 9,144 miles for the year.

I continued to do physical therapy exercises six times per week for my lumbar stenosis and my neck problem. I have determined that the source of my neck problems is The Tank. Something about the bike is tweaking my cervical spine and causing nerve pain up into my head. It sure is strange that after 29,000 miles the bike and I are no longer compatible.

Watching

True Detective – Season Two. This eight episode show did not get good reviews when it first aired. Rachel McAdams, Vince Vaughn, Taylor Kitsch, and Colin Farrell are the stars. That’s a lot of acting firepower. It’s hard to say where the series goes wrong. The plot (like all True Detective plots I’ve seen) is a mangled mess. Or it could be the casting. I really didn’t buy McAdams as a hard nosed cop or Vaughn as a small time criminal wheeler dealer until the last couple of episodes.

True Detective – Season Three. In for a nickel, right? Mahershala Ali crushes it as a cop who investigates the case of two missing kids in small town Arkansas. His character is young when the crime happens, middle aged when he is deposed by some attorneys, and elderly and dealing with dementia when interviewed by a TV reporter. Stephen Dorff as his partner and Carmen Ejogo as his wife are also excellent.

My Cousin Vinnie – Another old movie that I had never seen before. Marisa Tomei won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing the fiancee of Joe Pesci’s Vinnie. Very funny courtroom, fish-out-of-water comedy. (Tomei is one of several great actresses who attended my Alma Mater, Boston University. Others are Geena Davis, Julianne Moore, Alfre Woodard, and Faye Dunaway.)

The Academy Awards – Robert Downey Jr. finally won an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actor in Oppenheimer after being stiffed for his Leading Actor performance in Chaplin. Al Pacino won that year for playing a blind man in Scent of a Woman, a movie that bored me senseless. How ironic that the awards show ended with an aged Pacino mumbling the Best Picture winner, Oppenheimer.

The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version). Impressive, even for someone like me who isn’t exactly a Swiftie. It’s always fun to see a performer at the top of her game. How the heck they made this film as quickly as they did is a mystery to me.

Dunkirk – Christopher Nolan’s account of the evacuation of the British Expedition Forces from the beach at Dunkirk during World War II. Expertly made with a cast of dozens of British and Irish actors. Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Ton Hardy, Barry Keoghan, Cillian Murphy, and on and on.

Day 1 of Baseball – I spent the day flicking back and forth between the Washington Nationals game against the Reds in Cincinnati and the Los Angeles Angels game against the Orioles in Baltimore. Both the Nationals and the Angels demonstrated their key weakness: bad starting pitching. It’s going to be a long summer on Half Street in DC.

Reading

Blowout by Rachel Maddow. Everything you’d ever want to know about the intersection of the oil and gas industry and geopolitics. Sleazy executives. Corrupt dictators and oligarchs. Environmental disasters.

Drift by Rachel Maddow. The founding fathers wanted it to be hard for presidents to wage war and gave the authority to do so to Congress. After Vietnam, presidential war powers were hamstrung. Reagan, Cheney, and others (Meese is a pig) found workarounds, not all of them legal. Defense spending has ballooned since Reagan and, combined with three tax cuts, has undermined spending on non-defense government programs. (Hope you trust that bridge you’re about to drive over.) Maddow’s snarky Drift dovetails nicely with Michael Beschloss’s Presidents at War.

Over the Hills by David Lamb. In 1994 with no bicycle touring experience whatsoever, 50-something foreign correspondent David Lamb, a whiskey drinking smoker, rolled away from his home in Old Town Alexandria and headed for Los Angeles. His route took him through Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. He had eight flats. He stayed all but a few nights in the kind of fleabag motels that I dread on tours. His account of the trip is one of the best I’ve read. It absolutely nails the mental aspect of solo bike touring. I read this 29 years ago. It aged like a good single malt scotch.

How I Became Red Bike Guy by Joe Flood. This is a memoir consisting mostly of contemporaneous accounts of living in DC during and after the Trump presidency. The author is a bicyclist, writer, photographer, and communications professional (and personal friend) who lived in downtown DC through years of insanity. Fed up, he started to use his expertise to fight back. In one such episode, he rode a red bikeshare bike around an assembly of white supremacists on the National Mall, mocking their clothing and ineptitude. This bit of counterprotesting went viral on the internet. The book expertly chronicles how Trump and his enablers traumatized the people of DC, the particulars of which I had put out of my mind.

Blossoms and bikes and yard work

We’ve been really weather lucky lately here in the DC area. We had five days in a row with high temperatures in the 70s. That means SHORTS! Yes, baby. And shorts mean longer rides. Yay.

I have switched to The Mule in the hopes that it will help my neck problems. So far it seems to be working. My range of motion is better and the pain is less. Fingers crossed.

The week of riding started with a two-wheeled recon ride to DC to check out the status of the famous cherry blossoms. Alas, I was a few days early but at least the trees on the way to Hains Point in East Potomac Park were putting on a show.

The next day I rode mostly trails to the Kenwood neighborhood of Bethesda, Maryland. Conveniently located a block from the Capital Crescent Trail, Kenwood is lined with decades-old cherry trees. Alas again, the trees were still in winter mode. After a stop for an everything bagel in the downtown Bethesda, I rode home clocking my first 50 mile ride of the year.

Next up was a family auto tour of the DC tree scene. Once again we were disappointed. As a consolation, we drove to Great Falls Park in Maryland to check out the raging waters of the Potomac River where it passes through Mather Gorge. We followed a path out to Olmsted Island in the middle of the river and saw and, even better, heard the deluge as it passed all around us. After the drive, I did a 30-mile jaunt on The Mule in the area near home. During the ride I spotted the head of a bald eagle peaking above its nest in a tall pine tree in the backyard of a McMansion.

Next was my Friday morning trek to Coffee Club. My route conveniently passes the Tidal Basin on the awesome new cycletrack. The trees were starting their bloom.

On Saturday, I rode to the Lincoln Memorial then back along the Potomac on Ohio Drive in DC. Once again I skirted the Tidal Basin. Now the trees were starting to put on a show in earnest. I managed 31 miles before spending the rest of the day weeding the garden.

Sunday brought what I call my perimeter ride. I ride on neighborhood streets around Mount Vernon. I stay off the bike trail and do mostly right turns on local streets. No tourists. No root bumps. No cold breezes off the river. Just beaucoup spring colors from southern magnolias, forsythia, yoshino cherry trees, weeping cherry trees, bartlett pear trees, daffodils, and tulips. This 30-miler was also followed by a stint working in the yard, doing maintenance on my drainage ditches.

Monday was officially the start of peak bloom in DC. I rode into a headwind to the Tidal Basin and reconnoitered with my wife and daughter who had driven into town after a dental appointment. They were just about done with their clockwise walk around the basin. I continued on, walking my bike counterclockwise around the basin. After passing the Jefferson Memorial I saw a group of people in business attire walking toward me. A few of them were rather large humans. In the middle of them was Merrick Garland, the US Attorney General. He had surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis about six weeks ago so I was happy to see him walking perfectly upright without a cane. The rather large humans were likely with the Secret Service. (Why is it called the Secret Service? A better name would be the Obvious Service.) This was my first DC celebrity sighting in quite some time. The ride home made for another 30-mile day.

Sadly over 100 cherry trees are scheduled for imminent removal as the National Park Service rebuilds the area around much of the Tidal Basin and West Potomac Park. Stumpy is doomed but most of the trees near the MLK and the FDR Memorials will be spared. Eventually, the perimeter of East Potomac Park will be restored as well. Depending on who you ask, either the water level is rising or the parkland is sinking. Either way, it’s going to be quite a mess for the next couple of years. I do hope that in the process the jersey barrier farm near the Jefferson Memorial will be removed. It’s been there for over 20 years. Other DC monuments had their security barriers upgraded years ago.

Today was cold and blustery. My daughter was headed back to law school so I decided to take the day off from riding to see her off and get more yard work done. I managed to spend about four hours edging the rest of the gardens and clearing and widening the drainage ditch across the back yard. It is safe to say that I used muscles I forgot I had. It’s going to be an ibuprofen night.

I have started to think some about my summer bike trip. I need a few things. A simple water filter, a bigger pillow, a power pack for my phone, and some sort of noise maker (for warding off dogs). I might take The Mule in for a tune up and buy a new tire or two. The front tire still has plenty of tread after over 5,000 miles of touring. My rear tire has been going strong since my flat near Sisters, Oregon in 2022. They may ride like rocks but Schwalbe tires last a very long time.

I still haven’t decided on a route. Three possibilities would involve the eastern most section of the TransAmerica Trail. The fourth possibility is a ride out west in bike over country. Stay tuned.

After driving to DC to see the blossoms with my family,

Mysteries

I know from my running days that wearing long pants and extra layers slows me down. It holds true for bicycling too. I ride about 10 percent faster in shorts. Go figure. Today’s temperatures were in the 60s here in North Carolina. I don’t actual live in North Carolina but the climate here in the DC area is about the same a North Carolina’s ten years ago. I put the snow shovels away a week ago. It’s spring. Climate change is real, y’all.

I went for a long ride today. The 41 1/2 miles was my longest of the year and I could have easily tacked on another ten. All while riding 1 mile per hour faster than usual and while riding some nasty hills. My route took me from Mount Vernon across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into Maryland. Once there I had a 0.8 mile climb to Oxon Hill Road. A couple of miles of level ground was followed by a steep plunge, with my max speed being something like 36 miles per hour by the not-advisable look-down-while-in-flight method. Eek.

I was headed to Fort Washington, a bona fide old timey 19th century fort. In addition to that fun descent I had a nice tailwind for most of the way. This helped as I made the two steep climbs to the fort. Dang, it’s hilly.

While on route, I came upon something you don’t see every day around these parts: a sheep farm with a llama. Yep, just 15 miles from the White House there’s a shaggy llama standing guard over some shaggy sheep (and a goat or two for good measure).

The return trip involved retracing my route down the hills from the fort and past the llama sighting location (my llama buddy and his wooly pals were nowhere to be seen). Of course, this was all into a strong headwind but I was in shorts and kept cruising along. Shorts!

I came to the big climb back up Oxon Hill. I had chosen The Tank for this adventure and it’s sheer mass and unforgiving gearing made the climbs into slogs, none more sloggy than Oxon Hill’s steep beast into a headwind.

I huffed and I puffed and I made it. Asthma, smasthma.

The other day I took The Mule out for a 30-mile spin. Afterwards my neck and back felt terrific. My neck is a medical mystery. Go figure. Oddly, I find that while I’m on the brake hoods on The Mule, my hands bear more weight than when I’m doing the same on The Tank. It seems to me that this should bother my neck and shoulders but it doesn’t. The Mule feels like and extension of my body.

So before leaving home today I took measurements of The Tank and The Mule. Based on this, I decided to slide the saddle back on The Tank and see what happens. As it turned out, it’s still not as comfortable as The Mule but I can’t say that my neck bothered me during the ride. The real test will come when I wake up in the morning. Will my neck feel stiff and sore?

February 2024 – Leapin’

Watching

Chinatown – One of those great movies I managed not to see when it came out (in 1974). Nominated for a truckload of Academy Awards but won only for Best Original Screenplay (Robert Towne). (Godfather Part II won for best picture.) This is peak Jack Nicholson. John Huston at his finest as well. And a dozen character actors that I’ve seen a million times including James Hong who today is 94 and still working.

The Conversation – Another gem from 1974 that I missed. Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola it contains a who’s who of early 70s actors led by Gene Hackman in the lead. Cindy Williams, Frederick Forrest, Alan Garfield, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, John Cazale, Teri Garr. A creepy story about a professional eavesdropper who gets in too deep.

Old Boy – A 1994 Korean film. A man seeks revenge for being imprisoned for 15 years. Very violent and grisly. Intense. And just plain weird. Surprisingly it shares a plot twist with Chinatown.

The Greatest Night in Pop – A documentary about the making of the charity song We Are the World. Way better than expected. Just one great vocal performance after another from exhausted singers, recorded in one night after an awards show. Somehow Quincy Jones and his recording crew blended it all together seamlessly using analog methods.

True Detective, Night Country – Season four of the anthology series. This season’s version is set during the dark days of winter in a coal mining town on the North Shore of Alaska. Great acting with Jodie Foster in the lead. Very creepy. Reminded me a bit of Twin Peaks.

The Marvels – Another confusing mess from Marvel. The story is inane but, at times, humorous. I am a huge Bree Larson fan and she was very good when she wasn’t superheroing. Also, Iman Vellani as the teenaged, Pakistani-American Kamala Khan a.k.a. Ms. Marvel is quite good.

The Two Popes – Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce in the kind of movie they just don’t make anymore. A two-hour conversation. Quite a bit better than My Dinner with Andre. Excellent.

True Detective Season One. Had to re-watch it. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey at their best. Weird. Violent. Set along the southern coast of Louisiana. Time is a flat circle.

Reading

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Peak Dickens. Life was a bitch if you were poor in mid-19th Century England. So many characters and plot twists. I was surprised at how much I liked it. Like so many of his books, it was originally published in serial form in a magazine. I could imagine readers eager to read the next episode.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. David Copperfield re-imagined for the 1990s and 2000s in Appalachia. The poverty and dead end aspects of Dickens’s novel are augmented by the opioid crisis. Brilliant but super depressing.

200 Hard New York Times Crosswords – I solved 97 of the first 100 and then they became much harder. I probably batted .500 for the second 100.

Riding

Another month of riding 30 miles per day, mostly on The Tank, my Surly Crosscheck Thankfully, the rear tire is finally losing its tread so I can justify buying new rubber. Two new Panaracer tires arrived on leap day. Let’s see if they improve the ride.

As far as mileage is concerned, I rode 747 miles. (I rode 730 miles last February with one fewer day.) BIg Nellie did 80 miles in the basement. Little Nellie chipped in 91. The Mule took the month off. The Tank did the rest, hitting 29,000 miles along the way. I also breached the 178,000 mile mark on my four bikes.

I’ve started thinking about my summer tour. I can’t say I am feeling enthusiastic. Hopefully, warmer weather will get my head in the game. For now it looks like I’ll be doing a DC to New Orleans (Or Little Rock) ride. This would be a combination of the Trans American and Great Rivers South routes from Adventure Cycling.

Whiplash and The Tank

Whiplash?

After reaching 29,000 miles on The Tank, my Surly CrossCheck, the other day, I switched to riding Little Nellie, my Bike Friday New World Tourist. As expected the switch from a drop handlebar bike to a more upright riding position made my neck feel better.

It’s been a puzzle as to why my neck has been so sore recently. It occurred to me that maybe I have whiplash. Back in late October I was stopped at a traffic light aboard Big Nellie, my Easy Racers Tour Easy recumbent. The driver of an SUV rear-ended me. He didn’t hit me hard but I didn’t see the impact coming so I wasn’t braced for it. My recumbent does not have a head rest. I am wondering if my neck snapped backward.

A couple of days later I switched to riding The Tank and now I wonder if the impact and the switch to drop bars gave me whiplash. In any case, my neck soreness is slowly going away. I am hoping that in a couple of weeks it’ll be a thing of the past.

Should I Modify The Tank?

The neck thing reminds me that I haven’t been super happy with The Tank recently so maybe it is time for some tweaking. My first thought is to put it on a diet. The bike was sold with cheap, lightweight Kenda tires. I loved the way the bike felt when I test rode it but when one of the tires failed in the first year I decided to put some heavier, more durable Schwalbe tires on the bike. The bike has a compact double drivetrain. The combination of the higher gearing on the drivetrain and the heavy tires may be what is souring me on the ride quality of the bike.

As a first step to remedy this issue, I ordered a couple of Panaracer tires, the kind that I used on Big Nellie for many years. They weigh about half as much as the Schwalbes. Of course, the weight savings comes at a price. The sidewalls are not as stout which sometimes results in blowouts as the rubber ages. I’ll have to keep an eye out for small gaps in the sidewalls as they age. Also, Panaracer tires don’t have a thick rubber tread so I can expect them to last less than half as long as Schwalbes.

After 29,000 miles, I expect The Tank’s rims to meet their maker soon. I could replace the stock Mavic rims with stronger, lighter weight Velocity Dyad rims. The Dyads work really well on both Big Nellie and The Mule.

If the tires and rims help, I will consider swapping The Tank’s drop bars for flat bars, as I did with Little Nellie. My guess is that this will cost $200 or so.

Thoughts on a Day Off

Errands Galore

It’s been 19 days and 488 miles since I took a day off from riding. I planned to take today off so I could donate blood. And so I did. I walked to the bloodmobile at the hospital down the street. I opted to give a unit of whole blood instead of a double red. The latter involves extracting twice as much hemoglobin. It’s not a big deal but I’d prefer not to feel like I’m living at altitude for the next week.

After my blood donation, I walked to the bank to get some cash. Oddly, getting cash is something that I used to do on a weekly basis but I use cash about as often as I use gasoline these days.

While at the bank I realized that I had neglected to get a t-shirt after donating blood. It’s not like a need another one but why not? So I walked back to the Bloodmobile to claim my prize.

I walked home and drove to the drug store to pick up a prescription. The pharmacy charged me $125 for a two-month supply of my asthma medication. Last month it charged me $112 for a one-month supply. I am not complaining about my good fortune but this is just another example of the inscrutability of the US medical system.

After the blood donation it was off to the barbershop to get a trim. I didn’t specify what I wanted so I got what I deserved, something close to a crew cut. It’ll grow back.

After a stop at home for lunch I drove to the voting place down the street and voted in the presidential primary. It was weird seeing only three names on the democratic ballot, two of whom have absolutely no chance whatsoever.

Seeing an octogenarian’s name on the ballot reminded me. It’s time for a nap.

Leaping into a New Year – January 2024

Riding

The month started out a bit slow and stayed that way. I think I ate more cookies than miles. By the end of the month, I found hills to be a bit more challenging. Ugh.

I rode 634.5 miles for the month. This was my lowest mileage month in two years. I did 90 miles on Little Nellie, 307.5 miles on The Tank (my CrossCheck), and 237 miles indoors on Big Nellie. (I convert time to miles based on 10.5 miles per hour.) The Mule took the month off.

My long ride of the month was only 35.5 miles and this was split up into three rides. I rode 30-miles round trip to Friday Coffee Club with a detour to a hardware store on the way home. I followed that up with 5.5 miles on two short rides running errands to the office supply store and a different hardware store.

I ran a ton of errands by bike this month. The errands help me get motivated to ride outdoors on cold days. I have noticed that the daylight is lasting much longer now. I did lose about a week of outdoor riding because of two light, but messy snow events.

My indoor riding has helped me get some reading done (see below). I am currently halfway through David Copperfield which is turning out to be not quite the slog I had anticipated.

Watching

The Big Dig – I began listening to this nine-hour podcast from WGBH News last month. It tells the story of the biggest urban highway project in the country in which Boston’s infamous elevated Central Artery was buried and a new tunnel to Logan Airport was built. I learned only after listening to seven episodes that a video version is available on WGBH’s YouTube page. If you are into transportation, construction, infrastructure, urban planning, and such, you really should listen to this. The entire ordeal reminded me of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and Panama Canal as described in books by David McCullough.

Loki Season 2 – Oddly well acted mess of CGI and multidimensional nonsense. There’s this sacred timeline and it’s spawning branches but the time loom can’t control them so the time lines will break and everyone who lives on them will die. Or something like that. YMMV.

Echo – Another mediocre Marvel miniseries centered on Maya, a Choctaw, deaf, amputee, who is a badass fighter, of course. Promos make it look as though Daredevil has a big role in this but he’s in it for all of a minute. Hawkeye, played by Jeremy Renner, is in it for a few seconds.

Armaggedon – A Netflix Ricky Gervais stand up movie. Crude. Funny in parts.

The Enemy Below – Robert Mitchum, U. S. warship captain, faces off with Curt Jurgens, U-boat captain, in WWII. I saw it as a kid and loved it. Star Trek ripped it off. Das Boot did it 1,000 times better. Still entertaining though.

Barbie – An absolutely fantastic opening sequence but otherwise meh. I am a big Greta Gerwig fan but let’s just say I wasn’t the target audience for this one.

Two NFL “Championship” games – I watched the Super Bowl semifinals so that I may look somewhat knowledgeable at our friends’ annual Super Bowl get together on the 12th. I need to bone up on my Taylor Swift songs though.

Reading

Why We Love Baseball by Joe Posnanski. What better way to spend the time before spring training than reading 350 pages of stories about baseball. IYKYK. There all all kinds of oddball anecdotes in this book but sadly it leaves out my two favorites from the Washington Nationals. Juan Soto hit his first home run five days before he was called up officially to the majors. Weirder still was how Michael Morse hit a grand slam without a bat in his hands. As Joe Garagiola said, “Baseball is a funny game.”

Prequel by Rachel Maddow. Americans, acting as agents of Hitler’s regime, carried out a long campaign to keep the US out of WWII and, even, to try to violently overthrow the US government. Sound familiar? If you listened to Maddow’s podcast Ultra you pretty much know this story. This book fleshes out many of the details that could not fit into Ultra. Among other things, the plotters used the free mailing privileges of a number of sitting Congress people to distribute Nazi propaganda. Suffice it to say, the connections to recent events is obvious.

Blood Memory by David Duncan and Ken Burns. The companion book to Burns’s American Buffalo documentary on PBS. Both the book and the film are excellent. The book and film describe the slaughter of tens of millions of buffaloes and the efforts to bring the buffalo back from the edge of extinction. Just seeing one of these creatures up close is an intense experience. I can barely imagine seeing them as far as the eye can see.

Eat, Poop, Die – How Animals Make Our World by Joe Roman. Birds do it. Bees do it. Whales do it. It turns out poop (and pee) is a wonderful thing.

Medical

Lumbar Spinal Stenosis – My lower back woes continue. They are getting worse incrementally in spite of me doing a physical therapy session nearly every day. I decided to take up walking for a couple of weeks. It’s uncomfortable and slow. Using a cane is a must. I managed to top out at 3 1/2 miles one day last week. I read today that Merrick Garland, the U. S. Attorney General, is having spinal decompression surgery to address his similar problem. It will be interesting to see which doctor he uses and how he makes out. Personally, I don’t know how much longer and I put up with this.

Neck woes – Somewhere back in December or November I screwed up my neck. It feels like I have whiplash. I think I brought this on with a combination of fiddling with the handlebar height on The Tank and doing side planks as part of my stenosis routine.

I get sharp pains that shoot up into my head when I turn my head. I can feel the tightness in my lateral neck muscles with my fingers. It even affects my bite. I was seriously considering going to my doctor for some advice or maybe an x-ray (to ROC – rule out cancer) just to be safe. On a whim I pulled Yoga for Cyclists off the shelf and looked up neck stretches.

Basically the stretches involve moving your head to the each side as well as the 45-degree forward position. My neck is so screwed up that I actually had to gently guide my head back into a neutral position between stretches. I am happy to report that after just one session of stretches my neck felt much better.

I learned a couple of things. Neck stretching should only be done to the sides and front. (This is contrary to the stretches in Richard Hittleman’s classic yoga book.) Rotating your head back makes things worse. I augmented the book’s stretches with corresponding head twists (assisted by a gentle guiding hand). I can now comfortably turn my head while riding which is kind of important when you’re trying to avoid big metal things.

And Finally…

	Jim on There’s the rub and othe…
	ibike2havefun on There’s the rub and othe…
	Rootchopper on Down a pint
	Brittany on Down a pint
	Brittany on April flowers bring…