John’s Ramblings

I was doing a little surfing through some other bike related blogs (easily accessible through yonder links, oh web-ish one) when I happened upon this curious logo. A little click in that direction led me to a page describing NaBloPoMo. The principle of this exercise is to post to my blog every day for the month of November.

Now, understand that the best friend I’ve almost never met, Jim Carson, is embarking upon NaNoWriMo on this very day. Way, way more ambitious, he and many other souls will attempt to write a complete novel during November. He’s checked out books on writing books, and made a regular science project out of this (who would’a thought it?). No doubt he’ll be magnificent.

I, on the other hand, can walk past the computer for days on end, and only cast the keyboard a furtive glance. I can sit here for 3 hours a day, surfing for cycling googaws and anatomy lessons, and never feel inspired to be creative. Writing an entire novel in a month would be a bit of a stretch for your hero, dear reader (both of you). In the immortal words of Dr. Leo Marvin, what we need here are “Baby Steps”.

After a couple of Cabernet’s (purely for health reasons, mind you. French paradox and all that.) it sounded like it was quite do-able, so I signed my sorry ass up. All through the day today I’ve been mulling this little venture. It was close to that kind of feeling when you have an optional hill to climb on the bike, you are alone, no time constraints, and you stand at the bottom and look at the hill as you consider your options. Will it be “You know, I really need to get home and run the dishwasher”, or “What the hell, climb the damn hill”.

At 3:30 I quit walking past the computer, loaded the bike, and went for a ride. I needed to get out of the house, and I felt like I needed to get in the 15-20 miles that I didn’t get last night because no one showed up for the night ride. So I rode a variant of the valley route, from Kent to the north toward Tukwila. I went up Frager Road instead of my usual Russell, found a short steep little hill that ended at a little turn-of-the-century cemetery on Orillia Road, then doubled back down to Russell Road and the Green River Trail (I know, boring, TMI, but I’m going somewhere with this). I reached the construction site at 228th and Russell Road, and the work crews were finishing up their concrete pours for the day. The road is not open yet, but with a few sidewalks and some landscaping this project to put a truck route from the valley up to I-5 will almost be complete. One of the workers waved me through and said “Go ahead, try it out”. The sun is setting, I’ve got my mileage in that I needed, and I’m 2 miles away from the car… almost done. “Go on, see where it takes you, man”, and he gives me another gesture that I should proceed.

So I did. Once I weaved my way through the barricades and cars at the bottom, I had the whole hill to myself. It must be about .7 or .8 of a mile long, and the usual for around here of about 350′ feet of climbing. Nice new concrete road with no potholes and no traffic. So I got my hill work, got my mileage, and I got something of an inspiration to start typing entry one for NaBloPoMo.

It ain’t War and Peace, but tomorrow is another day.

15.4 miles today, 3,798 ytd.

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