Monday... part 2

Woke up yesterday and totally thought it was Sunday.  Since last week my days have been off (I think I had about 3 Fridays...) but I'm lucky enough to be off this week, so it really doesn't matter at this point.

But, let's talk about luck for a minute here....

On Thursday I had a SWEET ride out at Noanet/Hale.  I found the most awesome of awesome trails I have ridden in a very long time.  Tight, flowy, and just kept on going!!  Eventually I ended up in some guys driveway in the middle of the woods - and as I took out my phone to figure out just where I was, he came home!  What luck!  Basically I had to do an about turn to get back, but it was worth it.  I'm starting to piece together a nice little ride out there!

On the way home I felt a little itch on my leg, I reached down to scratch and to my horror discovered a nasty little tick crawling around on me!!  ICK!!  Ticks skeeve me out, BIG TIME!!  I'd much rather have a dog come barreling out of the bushes and try to clamp onto my ankle than find a tick on me.  So... as I avoid having an accident I find this sucker and he latches onto my finger, so I roll down the window and flick him out.  Disaster averted... until I'm jumping into the shower and find another on my wrist!!  Was this the same guy, just hanging onto my sleeve for dear life?  Either way, got to him before he really bit in.  But still.  GROOOOOOSSSSSSS

If they were this big at least I could punch the bastard!!

This weekend I re-caulked the tub/shower.  I got all the old stuff up, cleaned.... and started caulking away.  (Side note... it's so much better writing about this than actually saying it... caulking away...)

I got one seam done and as I started the next the gun wasn't working so well... I had to pull REALLY hard and I couldn't get a constant flow... so I backed it off.  I pulled the arm back to find that I had busted through the back of the tube, NICE!!  In the process I got caulk all over my hands....  so I sat around in frustration, trying to wash it off and/or waiting for whatever I couldn't wash off to set so I could peel it off.  That's some bad luck.  "Simple" home projects are never simple.

Back to Home Depot to get another tube and gun.  Who knew there was clear caulk.. right next to the white??  Well, you should have freakin told me!!  I got home, started up on the second seam and it was clear!!  Mother F'er!!  Frustration level rising... I was done.  Annie was nice enough to not make me go back again, and instead she got me the correct tube while I "decompressed."  I finally got it done... but not before wasting good riding time.  

While NOT riding I did officially get hooked on Strava.  Seriously, don't check it out unless you want a new obsession...  Now I have a handful of sites I have to load my ride data too.  We have Garmin to start... then singletracks.com and Plus3 to keep track of my activity, and now Strava to analyze things, compare, and even find a little extra motivation to push up that next big climb.  The whole KOM thing is neat, and the suffer score - hells yes!!  So much to play with it's crazy!!

So Sunday (in reality, Monday) I got my ass out to Wompatuck.  I've decided I need to start getting some regular longer rides in, and figured Wompy was a great place to start that.  So, as I'm checking air pressure both the cores come completely out as I undo the valve cap... losing all air pressure in front and back... what's up with that???  Freaking annoying.  I air my tires back up, no problem... but seemed about on par for the "luck" I'd been having so far this "weekend."  Once on the trails I hit some of the race course, and got over to explore to big boy" side of the course a bit.  Boy those trails are great!  They really did a great job of hitting some sweet trails for the race course, and by only doing the 11 mils Cat 3 course this past season I missed a whole bunch from the 25 mile course.  So maybe I'll work the whole course (or some version of it as the parking lot is not at the start of the course) in as a regular weekend ride.  

I had a banana in the back pocket of my jacket throughout the ride and as I'm coming to the end there is a low lying tree over the trail.  Looked like I could squeeze under still riding so I went for it.  The water bottle in my back pocket got caught a little but I made it... or so I thought.  When I got back to the lot and reached for the banana I found a nice squishy mess... is it luck?

Well, happy Tuesday!