Ride The Rockies 2021 – Day 3 What!?! No Breakfast?!?
October 20, 2021 § 3 Comments
I am going to start this post with an out-of-timeline explanation, as the timeline in which I learned this is later than this story telling moment. It is in the best interest of the story to tell it now.
Morning, Cortez Co. It isn’t a morning unlike Monday morning. The sun rose at about the same time, and it was maybe a wee bit warmer. We were in Cortez, and as you may recall from my last post, there was a bit of a dinner issue the night before. In summary, 100+ degrees, people waiting hours to get dinner, lines slow, food delivered in short spurts with long waits in between.
I awoke like the last two mornings. About the same time, and learning my lesson from yesterday, I waited until the last minute to hydrate my breakfast granola. It turns out, that crunchier is better. I followed my procedures, and I was ready for tent breakdown the first time I stepped out of the tent. With that taken care of, I set off for coffee, and it was on this excursion that I heard the first rumblings of “an issue”. The issue was, that the caterer did not show up for breakfast, and since that was the only food source, there was no breakfast at the beginning of the longest ride of the tour. I, was okay, but really, you can complain all you want, but if you want to get to Norwood, hop on your bike and get going. Don’t sit around and think that breakfast will somehow materialize out of the ether.
« Read the rest of this entry »Ride The Rockies 2021 – Day 2, Hot as Fuck
October 7, 2021 § 2 Comments
This day began exactly like the previous day. After a fitful night of trying to sleep, but getting some rest in between at least two porta-john excursions, it was time to make haste and get this day rolling. Yesterday, I hadn’t soaked my granola long enough, so today, the first thing I did was to measure out the needed water, and get that started. I’d eat it when I was ready, but in the mean time, I had a kit to don, and a camp to break. The older I get the harder it is to get dressed lying down in a tent. My tent isn’t large enough for me to stand in, and there is very limited space to even sit up. Add to that, my aging muscles and some times I can only just get an operation completed before I begin to feel a cramp coming on. Fortunately I catch it before any damage is done.
« Read the rest of this entry »Ride The Rockies 2021 – Day 1 Loop
October 1, 2021 § 2 Comments
I slept about as well as any 62 year old male can expect to sleep when you have both your Mother’s bladder, and your Father’s prostate. A detail left out of my last post was the proximity to the port-a-johns. That can be viewed in a positive way, as in it doesn’t take long to get over to them, and perhaps a negative way as well. You might first think “odor”, but that wasn’t it. What you hear all night are the doors slamming shut usually followed by a “Fuck!”
Slept is also a word that is over used with me. Rested is more the proper word. I rest a lot, with periods (short) of sleep peppered in between. How do I know I sleep? If there are any dreams involved I usually know that something crazy was going on in my head that barely made sense while I was dreaming it. As always, they make even less sense when I try to remember them.
« Read the rest of this entry »Ride the Rockies 2021- Getting There
September 30, 2021 § 1 Comment
Ride the Rockies is an organized ride facilitated by the Denver Post in 1986. I am not sure when I first heard about it, but while I was house rich and cash poor, some of my cycling friends embarked on more than one RTR adventure, and I stayed behind and pined. Images were sent, and I wished I had the resources to attend. Of course, me being a cheap bastard, I would have camped, while my friends dined and slept in the luxury of the hotel option, but at that time, my vacation time that wasn’t family oriented was dedicated to backpacking, and the luxury of a week of bike riding just wasn’t in the cards.
« Read the rest of this entry »Hunterdown & Bucks Counties Take 1
December 19, 2020 § Leave a comment
The misperception of my home state, New Jersey, is rather vast and narrowly confined to the NJ Turnpike corridor. That perception begins, from the South, as you cross the Delaware Memorial Bridge and espy the Industrial properties that occupy both shores of the Delaware. There is a break for many miles, until you approach Port Reading and Carteret where the Tanker Farms begin, then transitioning into all out oil refineries, before phasing into the Meadowlands, peppered with the transportation industry. Considering that a majority of through traffic travels the 95 corridor, this is what those travelers see all the time, though to be fair, since the very last section of 95 was completed only a few years ago, some traffic has shifted away from the Southern 5 exits of the NJ Turnpike.
« Read the rest of this entry »A Bump in the Road
April 15, 2018 § Leave a comment
By this point in the vacation I am starting to sleep better. It isn’t what I would like, but I did manage solid hours before the alarm awakened me on time at 4:30. I had saved some bananas from yesterdays breakfast, so I was good to go on the food front. I believe I even laid everything out the night before so I was ready as Eddie to go. Dressed and out the door, I was well within the time window necessary to catch the ride at 6.
Recovery Day 3 – Alarm Mistake
April 8, 2018 § Leave a comment
When you are 12 hours East of your normal timezone, I suppose it can be easy to make a mistake. My intention was to arise at 430 in the am, and be on the road by 445 so that I could make the 6am ride in Cheong Thele. What I got however, was a realization that light was pouring through the windows, and I was still in bed. Bolting up right, and grabbing my phone, I could clearly discern it was well past the time I wanted to get up. Hell, the sun appeared to be up. I checked the alarm. 4:30 was still set with the indicator showing “I will wake you!”, however, further concentration revealed I was to awake by 4:30 PM. A major blow. Too late to leave, I resigned myself to another rest day.
The 6 AM Weekday Ride & Scooters
March 23, 2018 § Leave a comment
After the Sunday Club ride was over and I was back in my hotel room, long after the incident in the massage parlor, and long after the sun had gone down, I was cruising through Strava, and noticed that guy that I had reached out to a few weeks back concerning riding in Thailand and where to get a bike, had been on that ride. If you recall, I arrived just as the ride was pulling out, and so failed to introduce my yankee ass to anyone who gave an F. The whole ride I was pretty much front group, and I was constantly evaluating my ability to even do the damn ride, so I was surprised to find that I failed to find Mark, this guy, and introduce myself. So I did the next best thing and left a comment on his ride that I had reached out to him a few weeks back and see now that we were on the same ride and apologized for not seeking him out.
The Sunday Club Ride – A Wanker Rides in Thailand
March 12, 2018 § 1 Comment
The question I went to bed with was this “Do I want to try and make the Sunday ride?” The pro was I would get to ride with a group, and I could just sit in and let everyone else do the work and reap the rewards. The main con being that the ride was 100K and I had to ride 30K to get there and 30K back, AND that is 60K that contains some very obvious in your face climbing. I had already ridden back over those climbs in the heat once. I wasn’t to eager to repeat that performance. So I made a plan. I would ride there and meet them and explain my plan which was to ride as far as the mainland, and then turn around and do my own ride back. Seemed simple enough. There was one wee little problem with this plan, and being almost 59, I should be well informed regarding what my real personality traits are.
Operation Get The Bike! Day One
March 10, 2018 § 2 Comments
To say that “When we awoke the next morning” is a little misleading about traveling to the other side of the world where the local timezone is exactly 12 hours ahead of the timezone you left. If I said I went to bed and awoke early would be a lie, because I never really fell asleep that first night. The same went for Susan, and when 6am finally rolled around, and the breakfast buffet opened up, we were eager, and hungry to get started. Our girls had a week of Vietnam in them, so they weren’t about to stir for some time.
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