Sunshine

The sun is shining for the first time in days. We live a tough life here in Arizona.

A rare crappy ride for me yesterday. I headed home from class with just enough time for a quick 1.5 hour ride. I spent half of (100% rain) wednesday working on my bikes, so I was excited to get out and ride one. I had swapped cranks, measured a few things and ran new cables, housing and chain. I thought I had discovered the source of my knee problems–narrow Q factor, and had corrected for it on my full.

So I set out with hopes of viewing the fresh snow in the Catalinas. It looked reasonable enough–the rain had broken and the mountains were somewhat visible. As I rode towards them, the rain returned and stayed for the rest of the ride. I couldn’t see much of anything as I got closer–just more fog. The worst part, though, was that my knee problem was not solved. My right leg grew more and more uncomfortable and frustration grew. I just wasn’t happy to be out there.

Then, as I was climbing trophy hill everything around me went red. It didn’t really make any sense at first, but the sun was peeking out below the cloud lines as it set, turning a very small stretch of land bright red. I grabbed my camera and snapped a few impressive pics. A Javelina shot out of the bushes, then turned and stared, long enough for me to snap a pic too. I did feel bad for disturbing it from its nice little shelter from the rain.

The peak of red sunlight and Javelina encounter cheered me up for the rest of the ride, and certainly made it more worthwhile, but I still came back cold, wet and discouraged. It’s time for some more thought and more work on the bikes. With each failure comes some tiny bit of progress.

No race at La Jolla for me, instead an adventure a bit further north.