And, I’m back on my bike again. Third day in a row. And it feels good. Even if its getting cold. In fact, I kind of like riding in the cooler weather better, though I could really go for a great way to keep my feet a bit warmer. I’ll be putting on shoe covers tomorrow. Sadly, at 50 F, I find myself wanting shoe covers and long fingered gloves.
Time to revisit rule 5.
So many people who I follow on twitter seem to be constantly on message. What I mean by that is that they constantly post about a singular subject. It may be IP Networking. It may be cycling. It may be the environment. They are on message. They have a lot of followers. 
If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time (which only a very few have) you’ll know that I kind of wander from topic to topic. I’m almost never on message. I don’t have a lot to say about the industry that I work in. I don’t have a lot to say about the apocalyptic nature of our relationship to the climate. I don’t have a lot to say about cycling.
I’ve got a little to say about each of these topics, and many more.
Recently, I noticed a number of my “followers” on twitter abandoned me. I’m sure it’s because I wasn’t tweeting enough about what they originally followed me for. Perhaps I pissed someone off with a few to many tweets about politics, the climate, or occupy wall street.
I don’t know.
But I do know this, I’m way more than one-dimensional. And so are most of the people out there in the Internets. I wish more people would take the risk of being “off message” once in a while. They’d been more interesting.
Durability |ˌd(y)o͝orəˈbilitē| noun
the ability to withstand wear, pressure, or damage.
Two years ago, I read One Square Inch of Silence by George Hempton. I wrote a rather critical reaction to the book on this blog. One of Hempton’s arguments is that we no longer hear our footsteps when we walk, and he attributes this to the fact that there is too much ambient noise in our environment. When I read this book, there were many things that resonated, and not being able to hear our footsteps was one of them until recently.
I have dealt with painful shoes for over 20 years. The pain started after college. Over the years, I tried everything from store-bought inserts, to wearing Birkenstocks exclusively, to custom orthotics. Nothing eased the pain. My feet were only comfortable when I was barefoot.
Who Am I?
A few more words about each of these. Read the rest of this entry »
I woke around 5:30 yesterday morning with a bad feeling. It was in my gut and accompanied by some wicked heartburn. And I felt sore in my back. This happens on occasion, both the heartburn and the stiffness in the back, so I didn’t really think much of it, but tried to go back to sleep. Around 7:30 I got up and made some pancakes for Mr. Grey, Mrs. TKD and her mom who was visiting. Three pancakes for me and I knew that this was going to be a rough day. I was sick. Really sick. And I needed to lie down.
I am not one to spend a lot of time in bed when the sun is shining. We had beautiful weather, as far as I could tell from my bed, yesterday. I stayed in bed all day. All i could drink was seltzer water and a bit of ginger-ale. Forget about eating.
So, as you might expect, I didn’t get out on the bike yesterday. So much for 30 days of cycling. Here’s the thing though, as cool as it sounds to take on a challenge, there are limits. Life throws curve balls, and “the rules” of a challenge need to bend. So, while I won’t technically get 30 straight days in, I’m still looking forward to getting back on the bike, maybe not today as I’m still not near my peak, but perhaps tomorrow.
And when I am back on the bike, I’ll ride as often as I can, striving for a ride every day, and I’ll be better for it.