Got a really solid day's amount of shit accomplished, recconnected with a friend I haven't seen in a long time, not too far away but connected to a world that one of the kids of mine is kind of fully immersed in and some hugely grateful contacts and agreements were made and leads and the rest. Also plans to go ride MTBs sometime soon.

This whole complex thing is crazy, right down to the Safe Sport courses. 

Started listening to Kiara and the Sun. a rec and a hugely popular book right now. I'm at about 20% or almost there and haven't totally been drawn in.

Listened to Fugitive Telemetry, book 6 in the Murderbot series. And the first on I listened to instead of reading. Not sure which mode I like better for this, the narrator was fabulous tho and still yes, i listened to it at 1.5 speed even though it was so short and I wanted to draw it out, the pacing was such that it was unbearable at 1x speed or really anything slower than 1.5. 

Really good series, all of them, just so damn entertaining. Only thing is, they are so short. But so good.

This kiara thing isn't as good. Also is about robots tho, so there's that? These robots aren't as sarcastic and hysterical tho (well they aren't yet, in the book) .

In a few minutes here or there, when too tired to read, and the tv isn't occupied, I've watched a few episodes of Love Death and Robots on Netflix (yeah someone in the house signed us up). For the most part also really good. And short. And fuck has my attention span dissapeared into nothing? No. watching Under the Skin proves it isn't was able to watch that in 2 sittings or less. Also weirdly watched Ex Machina the same, also, hmm, i sense a theme here in my 'entertainment'

Had to head home early - had to bail on the one meeting i was really looking forward to but hoping to reschedule for Wed afternoon. 

Tomorrow is back to Ganset. Going to hopefully put everything on the new monster bike.

It is a weird combo of super high spec and low spec but also honestly pretty excited for it. There's some really cool shit on it and while it has only the NX drivetrain, at least till the cassette is toast, but hopefully I have a few chains of life left in it before then, assuming i can get chains. Shit. Should have looked at that. Oh well. can't get any other parts anyway.

maybe some of the supply chains will sort out sooner than others. Maybe the GX and the XD driver are in my future. 

The brakes? Some crazy Dominon T2 units. Some of the lightest, strongest and most powerful 2 piston brakes. 

Probably going to put some cush cores in, probably the Pro (bigger so i can go wider tires if I can fit them). Wheels? well they are inexpensive but warrantied so fingers cross they don't self destruct too quickly.

Was able to get the fork I wanted, the cool as hell Fox 34 with kashmira and 130mm travel. This bike is gonna be kind of fucking awesome. I am very, very, excited and have been advised by a  friend not to ever EVER total the cost of the build up. 

Also from observation, I should not sell it until I have the next bike actually in hand.

And yes, that't kind of the plan here - ride it for a while then sell it. But maybe this is the magic bike and maybe I'll just upgrade the wheels or drive train or just ride it forever as it is? Who knows at this point. But I am looking forward to having gears without the lengthy and not trivial process of switching one bike back and forth, and not just gears but a carbon frame and full suspension.

TSE is starting tomorrow. Serious amount of FOMO right now. And everyone else is headed to Unbound, also kind of that sounds like fun. The 50 miles we did on Saturday is kind of way harder than any 150 mile section of the Michigan C2C race I did.

So by the numbers last week on the bike was a big one, even taking Friday off. Still big week. 

Last cup of coffee today was at 3:30, hitting the mark okay, hoping to sleep (well after little sleep last night and that, should be good esp if I wrap this up and shut up).

Still to cover: Greasy Joe's Gravel attempt 3 and the bike prep for that (well more than I already did). The details of the absolute antithesis off productivity on Friday at the bike shop (hoping not to repeat this tomorrow). Shit there's something bigger I'm forgetting.

Whatever maybe i'll think of it.

Oh right.

Sunday's MTB ride. up early feeling tired, a little sore but just kind of out of it. Get there, start the ride (forgot the floor pump, oops) and feel just off, not like last week in that i was just barely not fucking up and had to stop a few times just to regather, no this was more just starting off tired. And the first 30 min were really tough, the next hour was progressively better and that last half hour+ just felt fucking fantastic. 

Kind of like my Mojo, Chee and Chakra all sort of lined up and worked all the crap out of the system. It felt pretty magical.

And then I went shopping and was a slow zombie but not dead and feeling horrible like the week before. Kind of the really good tired, but that also lead to the bad idea coffee and shitty night sleep last night. And yeah my eyes are tired, not even 10pm and I'm starting to shut down. 

And that's okay.

be well, thank you for your friendship, for the connection and all y'all for just being good people... what a long strange fucking trip this is...

heddwch
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 Pretty much every time I started to sit down to write (like right now) I got a monster critical distraction/obligation, or when I felt a great big old dose of inspiration, I wasn't anywhere near a computer and the thought of trying to get all these ideas out of my head with swipe on the phone or slowly in an analog way killed the urge.

It has been complicated.

Also I was tired. Obviously. 

So what do you do when you're tired? Well, you take a half day, stay in bed and work on emails and scheduling and all that until the 'hey you wanna ride in an hour?' comes in and it takes 20-30 min to ride to the start of the ride? Overdrive. Then just get totally smashed for 60 miles on the road, head home, hands getting numb (that's weird) and then wake up with a sore back (left side, not the short crank pain that happens on the right side). Saddle angle wrong, seat post had slipped. 

It was a full on no singlespeed week until Sunday on the MTB. 

Toss in a whole day at the shop on Friday, not building, just getting the new dual squish bike started, well that's a whole complicated day to go through (I did a bunch of shit in the morning then headed down and forgot the crank and bottom bracket ending any chance of actually completing the bike that day). 

Greasy Joe's Gravel Ride (3rd time on the route for me) first time with gears. Short version? we went harder and faster and I ran out of food. Didn't eat enough, didn't bring enough. Plenty of water tho this time.

Sigh.

And doing pretty good with the cutting back on coffee. Except for Friday and Sunday. Finished the last of the travel mug on Friday at about 5-5:30. Couldn't fall asleep. Sunday? Finished coffee at 1:30 and needed a bit more of a boost to get through the day. Made some more, drank a cup, then a little more and I guess old alcoholic habits die hard because I had a little more later because there was some left in the pot. And Just like Friday, spent last night not falling asleep.

These are good things, but also helpful reminders that I need to be more diligent with the coffee timing as I get more rest. Instead of being so fucking tired that I pass out no matter how much coffee, if i get close to the edge of being functional any extra or late coffee consumption now impacts sleep and well that's one fucking brutal viscous cycle.

more later, hopefully

heddwch
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 or grinding or something

i'm fucking wrecked

still

but maybe finally to the point where I am able to do something about it - like take time off...  nothing like a catastrophic event to initiate change. or something.

not catastrophic but the realization that i'm so far deep in the hole it will take a long time and a concerted and concentrated effort to climb back out

more than just taking enough days off to not lose vacation days, traveling would be the best but not practical right now 

i want to ride my bike and feel like I'm not fighting myself, like i have the last couple weekends. 

to do that I need to recover. working, even slowly and building only a few bikes on saturday then shopping on sunday after a long mtb ride, then cooking and everything else isn't restful... 

more later, maybe, now I gotta go run the gauntlet of EP the scariest place to ride... it isn't really THAT bad but it is pretty damn bad, or at least the worst place to ride that I have to or occasionally ride - usually i ride around this place.

also making an effort to cut back on the coffee, for real this time...

i think...

heddwch
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 Kind of a weird day.

Trying to plan and organize and at a sort of a can't quite get any further at the moment w/o input that isn't coming.

It is also ridiculously nice outside. I may just leave early. Watched some UCI short track over lunch.

Took a walk after that. 

clicked through the tabs.

Read some stuff.

need to work on the other Topeak content. But man that Prepstand X is fabulous. So nice. So excited about it. 

weekend coming up is going to be weird. But hopefully I can recharge a bit.

planning for next week, putting blocks in the calendar so that at the very least I won't lose days.

All the shit that was supposed to arrive between now and June is now all in June. Fucking fantastic, I guess I should have gone to WA. But they were working from 4:30am until 10:30 or later every day Fri-Sun. It would have totally destroyed me to try and keep up with them after the weeks I had leading up to it.

Been a week this week, not bad - kind of able to claw my way out of the hole I dug... 

hoping to build a little bit of a buffer this weekend.

And next week just solidified and I think maybe that's a sign I should get the f'out of here early. 

Afterall, there's that new expectation that I can work from anywhere when it doesn't require being at the scope.

Yay pandemic work expectations. but also yay to leaving early and riding in late after doing work that you can do remotely and all that.

And I've got a big pack of shitake mushrooms I need to cook up...  excited just to go home and make dinner for myself.

Crazy.

okay...

y'all have a great weekend, ride bikes or do whatever you do that makes you feel awesome and alive

if you can

heddwch
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 I think either I hit the wall HARD on Sunday or am having 7 day lingering effects from the 2nd dose.

Like low grade headache, tired, couldn't get heart rate up on the ride - felt slow and and dangerous until about 2 hours into the ride. Dangerous as in it felt like I had a compromised ability to react to save my butt like usual. So I rode a bit more conservatively. 

But flying down Lords of the Thighs theres a really tough up hill rooty kicker that I have never managed to ride on the Singlespeed. With gears I have made it, but yesterday I hit it with the right speed, hit the line just right and made it feel easy. We ride that trail a lot, it is fun, downhill and a blast and flowy. Burke was following and thought I almost low sided it and dropped off the trail, I didn't notice, maybe it was close but it felt SO good to clean that section.

I wasn't riding badly but I wasn't feeling fast. And then I stumbled around WF to do the weekly shopping trip and totally forgot i needed to pick up dogfood. Although between the bike and the groceries I dunno where it would have gone in the car. There was a LOT more room in that damn shitbox of a van. 

There's that comic or something about being unable to tell if the reaction to the vaccine is just being old or actually a reaction. Sunday and this morning very much felt like that. 

I can lay it out - it has been pretty exhausting. The trip to Boston wasn't bad, kid's summer apartment has an amazing view but it wasn't stress-free.

Did a few laps around Columbus blocks there, after parking in a Cop spot (I moved after realizing it) and found a spot not to far and not a res sticker only spot.

But well, I think (i should check but too tired) that I did mention earlier that it is about time for me to be run down to the point of disfunction, well yeah BOOM. there it is.

Here were are.

Listening to this on repeat:

 i'll stop constantly bringing up the sober thing...  but i'm still getting used to it and still discovering lots of new shit about it and me. 

shit you may know but i'm just learning to accept or recognize.

so till then bear with me, please and thank you

 yesterday I got thinking, I should work a message into the titles of the blog entries, you know some secret meaning or truth I wanted to get off my chest, maybe that I need to get off my chest, but don't want to spell out here plainly and clearly.

there's really only one that kind of fits the bill...  ain't gonna do it right now, or for a while, maybe I'll get to it someday...

A friend just took delivery of the new ID.4 - have to say i'm jealous, really would love to ditch the ICE but seeing as we just acquired a second one, it will be a while before that happens. Got me thinking about the last couple acquisitions - in that I arrived at the same place my Dad was about cars, the base base model. It worked well for him. Shit rarely broke, it all worked. He went at it from a cheapskate penny pinching point of view. Out of both necessity first and then habit I think. I wound up from understanding cars and all the fancy stuff and having fancy stuff just not work or break or motors fail or circuits flake. I want them simple for other reasons. I don't want a sunroof because I don't fit in most cars with them and i've never had one that didn't leak, eventually. Few come w/o a sunroof, most of those are base models. I'm good with that.

Was digging around on the internets. Listening to random shit that Youtube suggested (music - that and mt bikes - that's all it suggests for me, and i'm okay with that, i just have to be careful, watch ONE puddles the clown video and it takes a week to purge the recommendations from the algorithm).

And there was first this one so good. But the next one in the cue got my attention. Kris Kristofferson? Hell yeah. 

 is done

and yeah it kicked my ass

and 

i just finished eating lunch after the first morning back in the lab since last week and I'm shredded.

still tired.

really brain foggy and just feeling way more run down than I do after working and riding and everything for two plus weeks w/o a break. But a different run down. Like there's capacity when in those other situations there was no capacity, but this is kind of almost worse, but maybe just different.

two minutes before I have to get 'on stage' and act and talk for 2 hours. I'm not sure how this will work.

But no choice.

Becca has a new V log up, it is entertaining. Don gave me a good reminder the other day, reminded me that if I hadn't brought her to Goucester, hadn't been eating lunch with her when the news of Amy D broke, and the rest...  she probably wouldn't have found the path she's on. Maybe he's right, I dunno, she's definitely following her potential along a path that seems pretty compatible with her.

Katie Courntey has a different vid series. She's a doppelganger of a someone i've worked with on the microscopes, enough that it is un-nerving and I have to remember that she's a different person. Similar level of passion and dedication. But there's some good stuff in KC's utoob series.

And then there's the Mighty Fack's comment by his neighbor. And yeah, basically I've heard the same thing year after year: “Is there any time you won’t ride a bike?”

yeah - nope. there isn't.

his response is far more clever than my brain could come up with on the spot tho.

Training worked. Well mostly. 

Dark and Foggy is my mood...  kind of like a Dark and Stormy, man those were good drinks...  Moscow Mule was better maybe, at least it had cooler cups and both were better with good ginger beer. 

But ginger beer is NA and doesn't need either vodka or rum added to be appreciated and enjoyed.

Yeah had a talk with someone post training, the only other regular in the lab took brain on that side-track.

Headache from yesterday is lingering. But today might actually be coffee related. Am a bit light on the consumption. Oops. time to chug to rally. 

Gotta make some enchiladas tonight, request and all, the fifth of May. That'll be fun. It is a pretty energy intensive activity. Well more than just making the stuff to fill burritos with. Whole extra couple layers of stuff. 

Oh well. 

Feeling a bit untethered right now.

Probably a bit of the fog from the second vax shot... those mRNA are fucked up little buggers but better than the real deal. I just wish there wasn't so much vax hesitancy. And yes it is a big cash windfall for those that are making them but look, well, shit - so what. They work. Get your shot. 

I'm close to devolving into a darker too introspective place at the moment... best to pull back throw a few links in here and duck out...

https://theradavist.com/2021/05/an-interview-with-brooklyn-bell-on-her-groundkeeper-frame-protection-and-fender-collaboration/

I would totally put her artwork on my bike: https://groundkeepercustom.com/collections/frame-protection/products/badgal-brooky-artist-series-frame-keeper?variant=38170328531135 blue or orange... hmmmm

the KC Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxKxdf0cpg8

the GoFahr one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b54lpa1KvGU

that's all i got... oh there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIwv7WZdIfs no - i haven't ridden that tough section on the 95 trail...  I can see the line but haven't tried it, the rest of it is fun, it is one of the better collection of fun trails down that way. 

Gonna try and punch out early - but, well, of course, it is pouring rain. 

This is not going to be a fun ride home. At least is it in the upper 40s and the wind isn't too bad.

Another cup of coffee, cut through the growing pile and then pedal.

oof

heddwch

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