Yeah, I'm just gonna go ride a bike

Headstone at a local cemetery.

The weather apps seemed a bit bleak this week, but so far it has been reasonably warm and pleasant. Each day this week it has been a quick and easy decision. Guilt about not getting enough done around the house has been building, however, and the weather may not end up being the determining factor for the rest of the week.

Don't be jealous of my sweatshirt "kit." 

For today, however, the riding was splendid, and I took a rare spin down Granite Street to add a few miles. The hills are nicely spaced so momentum just pushes you up the next hill. Before and after the junkyards, it's a nicely wooded, quiet ride, and a right on Cliff Street spits you out across from the bike path parking lot.

The Pug is bullet proof, always a trusty ride.

Earlier in the week a brief cross-border raid into Millbury took me over or under three major highways for the day: I-290, I-90, and Route 146. It's nice to be able to make route adjustments on the fly. I wanted to go up Upland Street to get home with slightly less hassle than having to back under 290, but Upland is a mini-beast of a few long, kinda steep hills.

Rarely do I venture over the bridge.

A quick left onto Spofford Road cuts those hills in half. It's such a neat area over there; my iPhone ride-bys don't do the neighborhood justice. There are these huge vegetative areas that still haven't been developed, and they're just beautiful. It's surrounded by these big hills, so it reminds me if Central America or some mountainous land. Really cool.

Upland.

The true revelation, however, was after the ride when I whipped up some zucchini fritters. I envisioned a sort of burger, and it worked in that sense, but they would be just as good with some sauce on the side or maybe some caramelized onions. 

Fresh chives from the unkillable chive plant in the backyard.

Only looking at the picture do I now realize how huge that piece of salmon was.

And here's a gratuitous grilled salmon shot from the weekend. I would eat a salmon jumping out of the river, grizzly bear-style, if I could. It is my most beloved fish. It needs little to be spectacular, which is probably my biggest folly. I simply don't do too much to it. 

The way of nature

Obadiah Hadwen loved trees, and I love him for that. He donated the land for which Hadwen Park is named, and it's a wonderful place to ride through. 

My eyes-on-the-prize goal is a road bike, and I'm told by the Power That Is that the day is coming soon, perhaps in the next month or so. But what I haven't told the Power That Is is that I've developed a hankering for mountain biking. 

Now it's not as big a problem as it might seem; my vaguely imagined plan is that if I came across a halfway decently put-together mountain bike of any vintage for dirt cheap, I'll scoop it up. 

But it's riding through places like Hadwen that really gives me the hankering. It's just nice being out in the dirt, away from traffic and glass and sewer grates and potholes. It's always nice to be near water. And cemeteries. 

It's times like these when it dawns on me that I am more fully submersed in modern bike culture than I thought I was. Padded shorts. Dreams of a road bike and clip less pedals. And now the storied "N+1" affliction. How many bikes will wander into my basement? 

 I submit myself as a full-fledged, triple-butted bike dork.

Riding all over the place

At the gym, what can you do when you get tired of the same old routine on the elliptical? Maybe change the channel on the tv display, maybe go with a different mix on the headphones?

That's the problem I developed with the gym--it's way too easy to get in a rut, and at that point the obstacles loom larger--getting to the car. Carving out the time. The drive there. Et cetera et cetera.

One of the many aspects of cycling that I have grown to love is that the gym dilemmas, which in essence is just convincing yourself that you aren't going to the gym, simply don't apply. 

When I shove the Pug through the basement doorway to head out for a ride, I usually pick one of about three or four more-or-less fixed routes. There's no real hierarchy; there's a quicker one,  hillier one, a few longer ones, and an easy one. 

If I ever get even a hint of feeling the monotony of going out on the bike, I know it's time to switch up the route. Today I took advantage of the almost instantaneously nice spring weather and blasted through the cemeteries, across Park Avenue, down Mill Street, down June Street, on to May, and eventually back home. 

I spent a lot of time riding bikes with a very good childhood friend in this neighborhood. It represented an amazing amount of freedom for a fourth grader. Just bombing around, exploring, with an occasional foray into the woods. In fact, I may or may not have fallen waist-deep into this brook at one point. 

It's still a little chilly in the morning, but I look forward to continually adding mileage. The different route today provided just the amount of newness, just the amount of fresh scenery to chew on, that in just 8 miles any hint of boredom with cycling was wiped away.

Repairs

I've been very lucky since I returned to bicycles in 2012. Having read all the horror stories, I was prepared for battle, but the breakdowns, crashes, accidents, and other headaches just never came.

That lucky streak ended recently, but I suppose it was as gentle as possible.

First, just as I was starting a brief ride, I tried to shift into my lowest gear, so I pushed as far as I could on my thumb shifter. I'm not sure what happened next, but I think the pressure pulled the cable out of the cable clamp. I think I didn't realize this, so I just kept pushing the shifter forward. I ended up pulling the cable housing through the shifter.

Oops

Oops.

I was desperate enough for a ride that day that I kept on going, single-speed style. But just as I was returning, I hopped off my bike and realized I had a flat rear tire. A large chunk of beer bottle glass was firmly entrenched in the rubber.

Old shifter from an 80s Fuji. Perfect replacement.

Facing several days of single-digit temperatures, I decided to do a little maintenance. I figured I would fix the shifter and tire, and finally take apart my derailleur, with the hopes of giving it a good cleaning. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy everything came apart and went back together. I see much joking about old French build quality, but I have nothing but good things to say about 80s-vintage Sachs-Huret friction derailleurs.

Bits and pieces. 

I don't really like riding in bad weather, but riding in the winter means your bike picks up a lot of road gunk. No big deal; my bike isn't precious enough to keep indoors whenever it's slightly wet out. But it does mean that frequent scrubdowns are necessary; you can feel all that grit when you pedal. And I think I was probably the first person to ever get that deep into that derailleur.

All cleaned and ready to get dirty again. 

The only casualty was the small plastic cover that goes over the dropout bolt. It's just aesthetic, but I was a little irritated. Perhaps I'll come across another one of these days.

Enjoying the winter rides

Don't worry, I don't ride on the sidewalk! 

I can't quite take a break from my bike. The weather has been quite lousy lately; rain and snow have lingered, and we're gearing up for another cold snap after enjoying about a week-long respite from the last one.

My limit is 20 degrees. Anything below 20 degrees and I'm not taking the bike out. It just gets painful, no matter how properly attired I am for the ride.

It's not just the cold, either. It's always wet, and the sand and salt spread on the road just seems to torture my bike. I'm not a neat freak about the Peugeot, but I have my limits.

Hanging from my basement ceiling awaiting a wipedown. 

The downtime is probably a good time to just do something else for a while. Relax. Do some maintenance. Work on some stuff around the house.

But I just can't resist getting out there. It has been in the high 30s-low 40s this week. Relatively speaking for this time of year, it's balmy. The recent melting has widened roads.

This wonderful wall my Peugeot is sitting against is Hope Cemetery, Worcester's municipal cemetery. I love living near cemeteries; they are beautiful, peaceful places. They are full of history and character.

Surveying all that is before her.

This is one of my favorite monuments. I've never checked out what the story is behind her -- one of these days -- but she always looks to me like she has this perfect view of the gently landscaped grounds. The hair, the pose, the garb, the patina. It's just all right.

Puffy snowboarding gloves fit the bill.

One new addition this year has been the puffy Burton snowboarding gloves you see perched above the Pug. It was the most money I have ever spent on gloves, and it seems to have been money well spent. They do have their limits -- I was at a scene for work last week in about -5 degrees and it was pretty chilly. But for bike riding in 20 degree-plus weather, they perform flawlessly.

I truly enjoy riding my bike in the cold. I end up warming up pretty good, and I am always in a better mood after a ride, no matter the climate. When it's 70 degrees in May, I will look back on the dead of winter and maybe shiver a bit while wondering what possessed me to drag my bike out of the basement at the first sign of the low sun. But I'll also look back with a smile that even in those conditions, I still made it outside, in the fresh air, zooming along, clearing my head.

Routes

There were periods of time -- sometimes months, sometimes years, sometimes only weeks -- over the past 15 to 20 years during which I went to the gym.

 I largely enjoyed it, but it never seemed to stick. Typically, what started as pretty developed workouts would end up reduced to simply half an hour on the elliptical, maybe some pointless situps, and that was it.

Chalk that failure up to many things, but I always suspected boredom played a major role in my vanishing act. Having music or television to watch always helped, but it all just became dreadfully repetitive after a while. With that in mind, I decided that riding a bike might go a long way toward addressing the boredom issue as I was putting together a sort of path out of this malaise about a year-and-a-half ago.

Turns out I was spot on. The scenery, the concentration required not to get killed or injured, and the ability to stop and snap a picture of something cool have allowed me to create a routine for doing something that's good for me and enjoyable. One of the biggest advantages over watching a half-hour of closed-captioned Food Network is that I am not captive to any particular route.

There are shorter routes I take and longer ones, but among those, I tend to keep returning to a few favorites. Living in a pretty centrally-located section of the city, I enjoy ready access to a lot of different routes on my bike. One of them is the Blackstone River Bikeway.

Completed several years ago, the bikeway runs about four or five miles. It starts in Worcester and ends in Millbury. There is  a grand plan to run it from Union Station all the way to Rhode Island, but that's eons away. For now, it's a nice little spot, that's super kid-friendly.

Cookson

Cookson Park is one of my favorite places. It's a dinky little spot long ago relegated to the bottom tier of the Worcester city parks hierarchy. It's named after Walter Cookson, a longtime school board member and Republican mayor who died while attending the 1936 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. The hilly 18-acre spot once afforded spectacular views of the city from atop Mount St. James. It's all overgrown now, save for some decently maintained trails. Still, there's something to be said for an unassuming, scruffy spot. You're usually the only one in there, which is nice. It's quiet and pleasant and just a bunch of trees and brush. What else do you really need?
The park serves as a jumping off point to some nice bike-riding roads. I received clearance to depart after dropping the kids off at school on a recent morning, and took off. I just ride through the main trail that runs the length of the park. It's actually a road, and I'm told it once carried trolleys through the neighborhood.

It was a beautiful, warm, morning, and it was a nice, refreshing ride. Riding in the winter -- all the gear, the numb extremities, the windchill -- seems like a lifetime ago. Since installing the drop bars on the Pug, I feel like my speed has really picked up, which probably has less to do with aerodynamics than a more thigh and butt-friendly seating position. I have also been trying to get in the habit of riding on the big chainring most of the time (big chainring=harder to pedal, but more speed).

There's always a lot of second-guessing about any big purchase, and God knows what I would have went with if I knew back then what I know now about my riding style, bicycles in general, and the preferences I've developed. But by starting out with a heavy older bike with friction shifting and well-made but fussy mechanics, a new bike, when the time finally comes, will be a revelation. And by then, my fundamentals and my knowledge base will be such that I will truly choose the bike for me. I'm always thinking of what my next bike will be, but I enjoy every moment on the Pug.

The Pug

Just about a year ago I bought a bike. It's a 1980s Peugeot Paris Express. It's heavy and old and hopelessly out-of-date, but it's mine and it's special. It played an important role in my losing around 70 pounds over the course of a year; I'm forever in its debt. I may buy a new bike at some point, but I will never get rid of the Pug.

My first ride on the Pug was a short lap around the showroom floor at the bike shop. It seemed big enough for me--I'm tall, and I was still a bit beefy at the time. A road bike just seemed a little too spindly for me at the time.

My rides started out pretty brief. Compared to more serious riders, they still are. Four, five, six mile bursts are about all my schedule can accomodate at this juncture in my life. To say I'm not on the level of "serious riders"is perhaps a disservice to how far I've come; given the time, I would likely make quick work of long distances.

A big part of losing all the weight was really trying to understand this notion of our emotional connection to food. Certain smells and tastes trigger powerful memories and emotions that either leave you happy and satisfied or wanting more. Controlling that emotion, savoring it and enjoying it for what it is, rather than letting it consume me, was a pretty key element in my long-term success. With bikes, it's sort of the same neighborhood in my brain, but it's all positive. Nothing to be controlled or regarded with caution. I ride and ride and ride and I can't get enough, and there's no real negative. Perhaps I get a bit obsessive about it, feeling anxious on days when I don't make it out for at least a few miles. Perhaps I get caught up in the volumnous amounts of bike enthusiam on the Web more than I should. There are people out there who are way, way, way more into it than I am.

There was a time when I got myself into some expensive trouble tinkering with cars. I still enjoy automobiles and I do repairs when I'm confident enough, but the days of "oh I can fix that"when I really have no idea what I'm doing are long gone. Bikes, on the other hand, are pretty simple and relatively inexpensive machines, and parts are by and large easy to come by and generally standardized and interchangeable. So I indulge my gearhead urges on the Pug.

The most recent project I undertook was the conversion from upright mountain bike handlebars to drop handlebars. It was a bit tedious (my Pug's Frenchness often proves to be the exception to the "generally standardized and interchangeable"comment above) at times, but it was fun to do.




I learned a lot about different handlebar styles and sizes, and I really like the look and functionality of the road setup. And it cost me about $40 total. Now, as a percentage of what I paid for the bike last year, an insurnance agent would have long totaled my bike than do the repairs and upgrades I have performed, but life with the Pug is truly a labor of love.

When I started losing weight, I hoped I would stick with it, and I did. When I started riding a bike again, I hoped I would stick with it, and I did. May the same go for writing about it.