Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

(A chill little tune to play while you read, or fall into a coma. It’s called Bumpin’ On Sunset by Brian Auger. A little “smooth-jazzy”, but there’s some nice piano work in the middle:)

[audio:Bumpin On Sunset.mp3]

I pried myself away from CBS’ clutches this afternoon to take a bike ride. Saturday was so miserably rainy that I forsook all intentions of working in the garden - or, rather, that heathen patch of dirt in the back that is quickly filling up with the weedy bounty of irrepressible spring. Instead, I lazed around watching basketball and untangling personal affairs that, after a week on the road, were every bit as impenetrable as the tundra in the back yard. I did manage to amble down to the gym for a Nautilus session, then scurried back for a dinner date with Mrs. Perils at a neighborhood sushi restaurant, aptly named
Click any photo to enlarge

A margarita had me pondering whether there was such a thing as a sous sushi chef, and how many margaritas it would take to impair my pronunciation of it. (Wasn’t that a Phil Collins song?)
So, the bike ride. I’ve throttled back on my running the last couple of months because my ankles have been giving me some grief. They might feel ok when I’m running, but then when I get home and climb the stairs, I get shots of pain. I guess I should haul my disintegrating ass up to the doctor’s and confirm that I’m old and broken, so that I can quit wondering.

Casus Belly - The result has been moderate inflation in certain sectors, which in turn probably exacerbates the ankle damage, etc. I’m needing some more vigorous and thoroughgoing exercise, and I’ve turned to the bike for a bit. It’s more immediate than kayaking, because I don’t have to load up the car and drive someplace.

There’s a nifty rail-trail just down the hill from us, the Burke-Gilman Trail, and that’s where I headed today.

Except for sporadic errands, today was my first ride in at least 6 months, so I was content to spin along easily and see what I could do. I used to ride all the time - it was sort of a religion. The late 70s, for instance, might have found me commuting to work wearing one of the leisure suits my mom made for me. We lost the habit of bicycling when our kid was growing up and made clear that he didn’t like the confinement of long rides in a child seat on the back of our tandem. (early on, he got some entertainment value out of pulling his mom’s shorts down as we struggled up a hill, eliciting the occasional appreciative honk from passing drivers, but this soon lost its allure).

We have a nice stable of bikes, although the newest one, the one I’m riding, was built for a friend of mine by local framebuilder Glenn Erickson. I got it at a pretty good price when he upgraded:

As you can see if you know bikes, it’s pretty old school, albeit with some of the best components available at the time - Campagnolo Record hubs, cranks and pedals, for instance. I’d need a permit from the historical preservation board to change anything, I think. Would that they were as finicky about my body.
The trail is part of a growing network of trails in the area, and you can ride 30 or 40 miles in one direction. And, because it’s built on an old railroad bed, any elevation changes are so gradual that you barely notice them. Especially when you first start out, and the vividness of your muscle memory is masking important whistleblower communications from your leg and butt muscles, and you’re riding into what you think is a headwind, and looking forward to the tailwind on the way home.

I rode about 10 miles and stopped at this park on Lake Washington:

As you can see, the day was having a tough time deciding just how far to go with this “spring” stuff. But I was confident that it wasn’t going to rain, and I decided to ride along a little further rather than turn around at that point, as I’d planned to. When I did turn around about 5 miles up the trail, the tailwind I had been waiting to savor had become a headwind. I hunkered down on the drop portion of my handlebars and ground my way back up the trail, now feeling every little nuanced incline.

The prize for finishing a bike ride from the house is a climb home of about a mile. I got down on that last gear I’d been saving stood up and hauled myself up, wondering if it had ever been this hard before, and harboring a dark suspicion that it hadn’t. It really is pretty shabby to be as waxed as I was by a mere 25 miles of riding, but I’m still glad I got out. It’ll be that much easier now to coax myself out for the next ride, and I’ll just lay off the running and see what happens.