Day Whatever

It has certainly been a while-- I am about to round out week 4ish of my Bike and Build experience, and I apologize for my stark lack of communication. To give at least an excuse, I will give you an idea of my typical day out of the last 28 of them...

5~630 am-- wake up, pack all of my material possessions into a heavy duty tupperware container and avoid doing something stupid like forgetting one of the many important duties: pumping up the tires, filling up water enough for the day, grabbing directions, buttering up my crotch with chamois butter, administering sunscreen. Any variation of forgetting these things, which I find myself doing fairly regularly results in some undue discomfort for later on.

730 am-- take off for the day's travels. Stop for interesting sites when they occasionally occur, but mostly the mantra is 'ever onward'. This may be up mountains, down steep descents, dodging traffic, avoiding potholes, struggling to stay up with the paceline, battling the wind at the front of a paceline, looking for shade to rest under during the many hot days that have been given.

10-12 am-- shove as much sustenance into my body as possible while balancing the possible after-effects of the food coma.

1-4 pm-- arrive beaten and battered to the host site. Stretch, shower, nap. Wake up in time for dinner where we mingle with the residents and give our spiel on affordable housing (but more importantly, repeat process of shoving calories into body to replace the 4000 calorie deficit from earlier in the day). This time the after-effects of the food coma are not on the radar. Think of Thanksgiving every day and the passing out after watching football. Now imagine you cycled 70 miles before eating your Thanksgiving meal. Now imagine you went back and piled a second Thanksgiving meal onto your plate just for good measure. This is close to what happens most days.

6-9-- succumb to the dreaded food coma. If you have presence of mind, you do any maintenance that needs to be done on your bike, pamper your wounds from the saddle or otherwise from earlier, or just eat another round of dinner just to be safe. The thought of preserving your experience for the ages usually passes through your head during this time at some point, but it's usually fleeting and trumped by the thought of getting a bowl of frosted flakes. All of your memories from the day or previous days seem to blend together anyway. Logging them would be like picking out gems from a pile of gravel.

9-10 pm-- Pass out on your thermarest and spend the night dreaming of cycling. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

Thus my predicament. When it comes to the choice between finding good internet access (a big luxury) for blogging and pampering my rear, I choose the latter. I hope you can understand.

More later, perhaps on some of the locales I've been through but for now, sleep.