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Damn bugs want a peep show. April 25, 2006

Posted by Amber D. Evans in : Cycling, Chico CA, Training Stats , 2 comments

Beautiful day. We were supposed to have 30% chance of thunderstorms and there was a little bit of a headwind out today. But the thunderstorms burned off and the day was a beautiful 70 degrees. I rode the Keefer loop, but instead of heading back to town, I continued north to my parent’s house to stop by and have lunch with my mom.

My mom is so darn cute. She was outside. She’s always outside. My cute, little mother in her big black floppy hat and bright blue sunscreen shirt. She tries so hard not to tan, but with all the time she logs under the sun, she’s the color of caramel. (She’s mostly Irish in blood, so that’s pretty dark!) She quite possibly has the most beautiful garden anyone’s ever landscaped themselves. I’ll take some pictures next time and post them. Things are just starting to bloom so they should be gorgeous.

The ride was fantastic. I passed one other bicyclist on the way there. It was very much a middle-of-the-day-with-no-one-around kind of day. I’m also glad to see that I am stronger than I was last year. It’s interesting, though. I’m not as good at the hills this year, but I’m rocking the flats. I wonder why that is? On the flats today, I got up to 22.4 mph and averaged 17.6 overall. That’s even including a small hill (which was done at 9 mph, but let’s not talk about that). Oooooo, I almost forgot. In the last stretch before my parent’s home, it’s always made me slow down so much that I could only cruise in at 9 or 10 mph. Today, I blew in at very comfortable 16 mph. It’s curious … would my weight have anything to do with it? Did I lose some sheer strength for the hills when I lost weight, but gain advantage (lightness) on the flat roads? Or have I just trained differently? I haven’t been cycling long enough to really say, unfortunately. I’ll probably know a lot more by the end of November. Any ideas?

So lunch was good. (When isn’t food good?) I also talked w/my hubby. Oh, and my MS Project was completed and went through the formative evaluation testing yesterday.

It was a total fiasco and the project itself is undoubtedly a failure, but that’s actually good. I still graduate. I love projects (or studies) where the only thing that matters is if whether or not you learned and can verify and validate the learning and process. So, in short:

After lunch, I left Mom and her garden behind and headed home the way of Nord Flatlands. Got another 20 miles in and fared well on that. Saw many more cyclists out this time. Everyone do the head nod. Or the little hand-wave-salute-thingy. I’m not sure what it is, but there’s definitely a cyclist culture thing that I’m still adjusting to. I’m really a Lone Cyclist. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t, but at the same time sometimes I just really like the quiet “me” time. Me and the road. The hum. The bugs.

Oh, yeah, speaking of the bugs. Ick. I somehow lost my sunglasses between last week and this week (*damn*) and was without today. I never realized how my lashes are like a damn venus fly trap. Double-ick.

Oh, and what’s up with the damn bugs wanting a peep show? I unzip my jersey a little bit and when I’m home I’ve got some sort of freaky bug party admidst my cleavage! So, make that a Triple-ick.

And that was my day. And it was a good day. Yea, day!