getting some support

 

Well, wouldn't you lead off with that pic if you had it? Especially considering what's about to come next.

My mother died earlier this week.

Now, we didn't have a relationship of the type depicted in Hallmark movies, and, while I'm not going to rub anybody's nose in that, I'm not going to do anything to deny it, either. So it's been a difficult few days, and the upcoming few weeks are also going to be uncomfortable.

The Excellent Wife (TEW) has noticed my condition, and suggested strongly (as a spouse can do) that I go to the Friday "Team Social Security" Princeton Free Wheeler club ride. I don't go often, because of inertia and laziness, because I don't like creating the car exhaust for the comparatively long ride to get there, because of who knows what. But I went today, knowing that the ride, and the company, would be good for me.

At the start:

Leader (and PFW President) Mike V had chosen a route of about 33 miles with 1300' of climb, and a stop at the Wawa in Clarksburg on 537.

And while there was a certain amount of faster riders going off the front and the others falling behind, we stayed together better than I thought we would have.

And riding with people I knew and liked (and some I don't know well) had the expected and desired effect: by the time we got to the stop, my mood had brightened, and my focus was improved.

As we'd started, Mike V told me that his mother was in poor condition, too, and after the stop, he asked me to keep the ride together if he had to go off; he'd apparently got a call from a family member, but didn't know details. He wasn't at the start when the last of us rolled in. My thoughts and good wishes are with him. 

I'm grateful to have this club.

Ride page.

mother has died

 I got the call that my mother has died. More news as I get it.

Our relationship was complicated. I hope for your indulgence.

Some of my feelings are similar to those Dickens described below:

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

I was not the sole anything... but I am not so dreadfully cut up.

the cool weather brings 'em out

 

Well, it's not just the cool weather that brings 'em out; it's also the fact that, as the weather cools, there are fewer and fewer other options. Most of yesterday's rides got rained out, and my C+ was the fastest ride on offer for today. I've given up on trying to keep the group together; I usually have Joe E to take the fast folks (he took four or five of the faster ones at the start, today), and Dave H and I keep an eye on the slow ones (especially on days when I'm having trouble keeping up myself), and there's a group in the middle that does whatever they do.

Some leaders want to try to keep the group together, and that's OK. But I let the riders come out who come out, and ride the way they can. I get cranky sometimes when they leave me in the dust... but as long as I have some company, I'm usually happy with the way the ride goes.

But I did see a number of riders today, whom I haven't seen since the last time the weather was cool, and there weren't other rides to do. They're generally polite, and let me know about their intentions... 

And I had a good day. As I've mentioned in these posts recently, my performance recently has been unreliable. Theories from sleep to nutrition to clip-in-vs-flat-pedals have been suggested. I think the most likely is when The Excellent Wife (TEW) pointed out that I haven't been riding as frequently as I had been. But today I did well. (I got out for a benighted hour yesterday in ferocious wind. Perhaps that helped.)

At the start:

We did one of my usual routes. When I got to the start, I found I didn't have it loaded onto the GPS, but I knew it well enough, that I only had to check a few times which alternatives I'd put in. That surprises me; I'm usually navigationally hopeless... but I've ridden these roads enough to know my routes. I even know the name of a lot of the roads. (It may not sound like much of an accomplishment to you... but if so, you don't ride with me frequently.)

We stopped at that Sweet Gourmet in Montgomery, where Karen, the proprietrix, gave me a pleasantly hard time.

I've got 33 leads for the year; I doubt I'm gonna make my goal of 40. Alas.

Ride page. Go see how I did.

If you're not in the club, you might wanna join so you can come out. I'll run these as long as the temperature is above about 28F and there's not gonna be ice under my tires.

good ol' mom

 Of course it's too small; go see the original.

Reminds me of my mom. Good ol' mom. (Edit Oct 22: It turns out this is a story arc. I may have to avoid the next few comics.)

my spotty performance, and a new rider among the usual suspects

 

This one was a little sus from the beginning.

I was convinced I was going to be rained out of a ride today, so I didn't even look to post something on the club calendar until Friday, two days before I was planning to lead the ride...

... and then we were having a new furnace put in that day, so I was all disorganized and out of sorts...

... and then I got an email from someone asking if I wanted to ride with him. I presumed he meant on my usual Sunday ride, so I checked the weather, saw it was going to be decent, and posted the ride listing, and emailed to tell him it was up, but no; he wanted to know if I wanted to do a charity ride with him. But I'd already made the posting, and felt I was committed. 

Also for today, there was a club ride to visit all the Seward Johnson sculptures that were in the area for a special show. My lateness to post was probably a factor, but many of my regular riders were going on that ride.

So I wound up with four of my Usual Suspects: Peter G, Jack H, Bob N, and Laura OLPH. As well, I got a new club member signing up, Xuan L, who was kind enough to put up with my undoubted mispronunciations of her name and associated cultural dullness.

We did one of my usual routes, down through Princeton, and up to Hopewell and back. Bob N rode in to the start, and we picked up Jack, Peter, and Laura along the way. (I think Xuan was a little suspicious when there were only half as many people at the start as were registered.)

Now, I've found over the past few months that my riding ability is spotty. Even with similar groups of riders, some days I'm pulling off the front, and other days I'm barely keeping up in the rear. Today was one of the latter. I've heard a number of hypotheses about the causes: sleep problems, eating junk, even using flat pedals instead of cleats (I was cleated today; that is surely not the problem). I don't know what it is, and I can't even always predict what kind of day it's going to be until I'm several miles into the ride.

But, with the exception of the new rider, they're all The Usual Suspects, and I can count on a certain amount of indulgence from them. I'm glad to have them to ride with.

We stopped at the Boro Bean.

From there, Laura, Peter, and Jack rolled off home; Bob, Xuan, and I proceeded along the route. A few miles later, Bob pulled off and went home, and I was left to chase Xuan (who had far more energy than I) and let her know about the upcoming turns until the end. Shortly before the last turn, I remarked that she probably had another forty miles in her legs. "Maybe twenty," was her reply. 

I barely had enough to get home. 

A windy day, and a hard one for me, but a good ride. I hope to see you on a day when I'm able to keep up.

Ride page.

backin' up the backups

 Folks in my bike club, and especially some in the Facebook Bicycle New Jersey forum, write me off as a hopeless bike retrogrouch, based on my re-adoption of friction shifters (and no, they don't have to be on the downtube; mine are on the bar ends), my maintenance of my road caliper brakes, and my avoidance of carbon fiber. But one of the things that's happened to me more than once in the bicycle world is that I've found a product I like, only to have it discontinued by the manufacturer.

I recently had to look for new wheels for The Excellent Wife (TEW)'s bike. Her brakes are road caliper as well... and, while it was not impossible to find replacement wheels, there were far more disk brake wheels than caliper brake wheels on offer. 

Now, wheel rims are parts that can wear out. I've seen wheels where the braking surface has worn so thin that it has actually split. I put thousands of miles per year on my bike, and I don't want to have to replace it, so I want to have wheels available if the current ones wear out.

I had a couple of rims left over from a wheel-building binge I went on a few years ago (as a result of that binge, I have two extra rear wheels for this bike). I had originally built those extra rims as rear wheels, so they require more spokes than I usually use for front wheels. So, just to have extra wheels, I decided to build them up as front wheels, and got hubs and spokes. And to save a little weight, I decided to use radial spoke pattern rather than crossing the spokes, in hopes that the shorter spokes might make up the weight difference. (They don't.)

One in the stand, and one on the floor.

I like building wheels. I'm not fast, and the process takes some attention, and it's always a compromise: the wheel is never perfectly true; it's true within certain tolerances. Like much of life, you do the best you can, and then you let it go. I like taking the time it takes to get it as right as possible, and I even like having to undo something I did earlier, when something I thought was going to work, didn't.

I'm nearly 70 years old. With three sets of wheels for this bike, I suspect it will take me on my last ride, whenever that will be. With Benjamin Pantier, my story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world.

forbidden love

 The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I were up in Boston for a few days (we just got back). Oe of the things we did was see a John Singer Sargent show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The show was ostensibly about Sargent's handling of fashion, but for me, the best part was another chance to go see Ena Westheimer, below in white:

I like a gal with a sense of fun and humor; here she is, playing a swashbuckling hero with a broom for a sword; the title, A Vele Gonfie, translates to "in full sail".

I first saw her at a show at the Tate Britain. I'm smitten. If things ever don't work out between TEW and me, I'm totally going to start a torrid affair with Ms Wertheimer... except she died thirty years before I was born, and was way out of my league, anyway.

Sometime, I'll wax all pedantic about how Sargent was a damn impressionist, no matter what the critics and historians say... but for today, I'm just going to sigh and languish for lost love.

octogenarian ride 2023

 Al P put together a series of rides celebrating Princeton Free Wheeler octogenarian members today, and, of course, I got a few pictures.

At the start:

At the stop, at the Olde Worlde Bakery, we had a bit of a ceremony.

It was cool. I was glad I was there.