Catching up

Most of my daily allocation of word power has been going into the dissertation as of late. It’s about time!

Time to catch up a bit.

I keep finding myself at sunset, on the river path. Part coincidence, part orchestrated.

With the volley of storms we’ve been getting, our little river (Rillito) has been flowing most of the winter. We don’t often get to cycle to the sound of rushing water, so it’s a nice treat.

Sometimes I’m amazed at the simple pleasures of a bike ride. It seems like the focus of my little web log here is often about things like exploration, riding challenging stuff, pushing limits, beautiful landscapes, or riding ridiculous distances.

At times all of that seems so irrelevant, and it is more than enough to simply be outside, enjoying the wind on my face.

I take short rides from the house all the time, and lately I have been surprised how much I enjoy them. I take neighborhood roads, back alleys, little dirt trails and river walkways. There’s never anything new. Never any challenging rocks or big mountains to climb. Never more than a few hours ‘ride time.’ My legs are usually fried enough that I can’t pedal hard, and I don’t have the gearing (no big ring!) to do so anyway.

So there’s not much for the diary, except maybe a sunset pic or two. Yet several of these rides lately have been some of the best riding of the year. Enjoying prime Tucson weather might be part of it, or maybe it’s a reflection of my mental state of late.

My friends Todd and Krista Park are done training in and enjoying Tucson, for now, and have moved on to California. It has been fun to ride with them, and find a little inspiration to take my so-called training a little more seriously. I even did some intervals!

I think I have enough (strong) riders whispering in my ear that life is too short for ‘training.’ I appreciate that, and have perpetuated that idea myself. But life’s also too short not to train, to some extent. I can’t tell you how invigorating it was to blast my way up Agua Caliente last weekend with power to spare. Being “strong“ (emphasis on the quotes) is fun and opens new possibilities. I think I have somewhat neglected the pure fitness aspect of mountain biking in recent years.

Krista is one of the top racers in the country, and besides being super speedy, she trains very seriously (and she is coached by none other than my 24 hour partner and super coach Lynda W). Look out for her this year!

Todd and Krista had a bit of mishap while trying to ride and get out of town, but we still managed a nice 4 hour tour of Robles and Tucson Mountain Park.

Mike Curiak is up to his usual amazing and inspirational antics, traveling the expanse of Alaska, 100% self supported. Yes, that means that he is carrying over 20 days of food and by his own ethic, cannot even enter a building or take a frozen gummy bear from a passing snowmobiler.

Like the two previous years, Mike is carrying a SPOT unit, and I get the pleasure of tracking him. He can’t go inside to use a phone, so it’s the only way to know how things are going. His tracking page is:

http://trackleaders.com/iditarodi.php?name=Mike_Curiak

with written (often speculative!) updates, posted by myself and Jill Homer here:

http://lacemine29.blogspot.com/

Mike’s bike, fully loaded (photo from Mike Curiak)

I’ve got my fingers crossed that this is his year and he will make it all 1000+ miles to Nome. He wrote a very nice post outlining the trip and his approach here. It’s hard not to dream big when you read about a trip like his.

photo by Greg Luck

Finally, Mr. Greg Luck joined the 90’s and got himself a blog:

http://gregandtrina.blogspot.com/

With his photo skills it should be a good one to keep up with on the feed reader. I’m looking forward to his 50 year pics to come. (Above pic is a cool combo shot from the AZT in Colossal Cave).