Monday, April 18, 2005

Spring Weekends

I'm dwelling on spring. Changes in temperature, lengthening days, dry trails, and everything blooming have me all swept up in the change of seasons. Every year since moving back northward from TX I spend a lot of time thinking and talking and writing about how much I missed a true change of seasons over the decade I spent in Austin, and here I am doing it again.

I love spring!

Took a long, crazy, stupid mountain bike ride with Will on Saturday, up and over Lucky Peak from the Council Springs access. It was a huge ride, clearing about a 3000+ foot gain over the course of about 6.5 miles. That's more drastic than the climb to Columbine Mine on the Leadville course. It hurt, badly, and I had to stop once because the dirt road tilted up a bit too roughly for me. Even rockin the new 24T granny I just ran out of push to get the pedal over the top.

It took a couple hours of steady trudging (counting a 4-mile slog on the greenbelt against a STIFF headwind just to get to the trailhead), but after some big pain and some mild cursing, we topped out. I tagged the antenna on top of the peak (TAG motherfucker!) before we headed back down the other side.

From there we descended trails 9 and E, connecting to the West Highland Summit trail, which I hadn't been on since riding it my first summer here with Bob and Leslie. Great, hard ride that knackered both of us. Good to be killing myself on the IF again.

The rest of the weekend was split between lounging and yard work. In those ratios I actually enjoy the labor (with a good fuel-base of my own Texas Two Step to keep me going all day, of course). The yard's looking good, the bikes are running smooth, the house is in order (except for that goddam bathroom fan).

So. Nothing to report, but sometimes just acknowledging that things are fine just fine is enough. Yes?

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