Heat Wave

Since I'm riding so often, I figured on posting a new entry once a week. If I posted an entry after every ride my entries would just become repetitive and boring, unlike the thrilling ones I post now. This entry, however, comes a little late.
I recently bought windows 7 - for $10 through CV school district, I love being a school employee - and on Sunday decided to upgrade from vista. Well, I followed Microsoft's "directions" on how to upgrade without wiping my whole computer clean and it didn't work! Over and over I tried to "upgrade" and it wouldn't work. I about threw my computer across the room, but I didn't. To make a long story short after 4 days and 2 complete uploads I finally got windows 7 installed on my computer. After all that frustration I learned two very important things - don't update an operating system until you've posted your new blog entry....... and Microsoft sucks! Anyway that's why this entry is a little late. I blame it all on the conglomerates behind Microsoft.
This past week of riding was really nice. We had some very beautiful sunny days that reached into the upper 40's and was near perfect weather for riding.The one day I had ridden to an animal shelter to look at some cats to adopt. We've been looking to adopt one for a little while and I thought it would be fun to ride to a shelter in Mechanicsburg to look at some. Well I was having such a fun time petting and playing with the cats that I lost track of time. Earlier that day Bec and Juan asked if I could pick up a few groceries so that we could start making dinner at 4:00. Well it was 3:30 and I was still at the shelter 8 miles away. I quickly hopped on my bike and peddled as fast as I could to get back to Juan's and then over to the store. As I walked in the door wouldn't you know it, Juan and Bec decided to pick up my slack and get the items and start on dinner. I will admit it was nice to come back from a ride and know that it wouldn't be long until I got to eat. We had amazing enchiladas prepared by Juan. He is the next Emeril Lagasse... but better.

This is an abandoned house that I really want to buy and fix up. It has a really cool view over this big corn field.


I also got to do a long ride with a friend of mine. His name is Jake (for identity theft purposes I won't reveal his last name, but it rhymes with Roman) and he is actually the one who helped advise me on what brand bike to buy. He's been riding for many many years and knows a lot about cycling and is nice enough to let me tag along with him on rides, even if I slow him down. But when Jake is not riding he's often found reading the dictionary, teaching himself computer programming language, implementing ecological uses for human waste, or running.
So I got an opportunity to go for a spin with him and see the western farmland of Perry County. We covered about 37 miles, some was due to a small detour, and ran into another biker out for a ride. It's not often another cyclist is seen in PC so we of course spoke with him for a few minutes. After that Jake had a close brush with death or an ambulance. As we were zipping down a back road hill we saw a large thick sheet of ice covering about half the road. I quickly move over so Jake could swerve around the slab. Jake, quickly thinking, figured it would be safer to ride right over the ice instead of chancing to swerve and miss and possibly hit the ice at an angle, then catching friction from the road and throwing him from his bike. As I watched him ride over the ice his bike rattled and front wheel jerked back and forth while the ice crunched beneath him. I thought for sure the 1" wide slick tires would lose grip sending Jake into a deathly tumble, but he held tight and didn't let it get the best of him. After he was safely off the ice I was relieved not only because he had made it without injury but also because I wasn't recording and if he had wrecked I would have missed it all! After that the rest of the ride went without incident, unless you call my jello legs an incident? Here's the amazing part though, Jake rode 15 miles to meet me, then rode 37 miles with me, followed by a 15 mile ride back to his house... 67miles without more than a 20 minute break in between rides. He's a monster!

I'm finally starting to feel my legs and riders "butt" getting into shape. It feels great to ride and actually enjoy it instead of thinking "Holy crap my quads feel like they should hire Bill Cosby to be their spokesman" and "I had no idea you could bruise a tailbone just from sitting!" Yeah that's a good feeling!

73 miles this week... 2870 to go.