Oh, yeah, the days are getting shorter. Just a couple of weeks ago, when I left the house at 5:45 am to do the morning ride on the parkway, you could see the streaks of blue beginning to crawl across the sky. By the time I joined up with the group downtown, the sky was beginning to light up. But this morning, it was still dark as I passed under Interstate 20 to meet the group on Marshall Street. In a couple of months before the time change, my entire ride will be in the dark. Fall is coming with Winter behind it.
You wouldn't think that with the way I soaked my bike uniform with sweat today!
The morning ride was a fast one with only six of us, including Louise who I'd never seen on this ride. I think she was surprised at how fast we went up the Stoner Street overpass, dropping her in the process but Mike went back for her and pulled her back up to the group. She was fine after that. I took one long pull and kept the speed around 25-26 mph. My legs were a little tired from riding the last couple of days but they did fine. Mike was riding after pulling a 14-hour drive from Pennsylvania the day before...I think I would have slept in this morning!
Work is still on the slow side but I've made some progress with a few jobs for the local Goodwill Industries and Blackwell Research - www.blackwellresearch.com - for whom I'm designing a new 2008 catalog and I picked up a few new products that I need to have photographed for it. However, all this means I can't bill for the jobs yet although I might do a work-in-progress billing to both places to keep some income flowing in. Good thing the wife has her job! There's also a couple of other jobs that are hanging in the air, waiting to hear from the clients on what to do next. I'm not that fond of that because I start to forget what the job was about and lose some enthusiasm for it. I am going to do an invoice to a local helicopter company on some renderings I did for a job proposal that didn't go through. My policy is that I don't do spec work, so I have to bill them for what the paint scheme renderings I did for them. I don't do formal work for free in hopes of getting more work...that's too much time invested if it doesn't work out and I'm not the one doing the proposal. I was hired to make the proposal a little more appealing!
Did a little road race in Tyler, Texas a week ago and it truly kicked my rear end. I ended up 13th in the Masters 50-54 age group and that wasn't bad at all but I was so totally wiped out from the effort! Despite having to climb some East Texas hills that have no equal around the Northwest Louisiana area, I still averaged over 21 mph for the race. I remember spending time in a chase group where one other guy and myself did most of the work, going around 28-30 mph for nearly six miles. We caught people and spit them out the back but could never catch back up to the main field (the 45-49 and 50-54 groups were combined and that made for over 75 riders in my race) who had dropped us on the "Beast", the steepest climb on the course. I was doing fine on that climb until about halfway up when reality hit and it felt like I was going backwards. When I finally reached the crest of the climb, I really wanted to throw up...no kidding. Fun race for sure.
Right after that, the Wife and I went on to Dallas for the rest of the weekend. We ate at a nice Italian restaurant Saturday night and, on Sunday, spent a couple of hours at Richardson's Bike Mart in north Dallas. We spent some major dollars (there was a summer sale going on) and I got a new pair of bike shoes for my birthday. She got a new pair of triathlon bike shoes plus some clothes and I found a great pair of long-fingered gloves from Pearl Izumi. I ride in long-fingers thanks to the influence of a good friend, Shannon, who races at the elite level of women's cycling in the USA. We both don't like the idea of getting road rash on our fingers if we crash (we're both artists and we like our hands) and long-fingered gloves help to minimize the surface damage. We could still break a finger or two but that's okay...nothing will stop that if it happens but at least the skin's in one piece! And they're really not that uncomfortable in the summer heat.
The Wife is doing a triathlon this weekend and I'll be the support personnel for her. I'll cheer her on, take pictures, and have fluids and dry clothes for her when she finishes. It should be fun, more for me than her!
Oh! I got a new Kestrel 44mm CARBON handlebar a couple of days ago. A friend was selling his barely used set of bars for a nice affordable price and I went after it! It's on my K2 now and I like it. However, I need to put a second wrap of handlebar tape on the top since I used my old tape again and the padding is a bit flattened out. No big deal. I'm slowly bringing my bike into the 21st Century.
No comments:
Post a Comment