Glutton for Punishment

I met Craig, Shawn, Jon, Kyle, Cyrus and Manni for coffee at Phil and Sebastien's a little later in the morning to allow the ambient temperature to warm up a tad. Once fueled up we were off through the Weaselhead and heading south for a day in the foothills and along Coal Mine Road. The first 90 minutes or so were a blast, until the pace of the speedsters listed above got the best of my ill prep'd week of absurd travel. Shawn, Cyrus and Craig were the machines of the day, I sort of sputtered along. The beautiful views of the rockies kept us going till Priddis.

Priddis had some smiley teenager serve us mass quantities of coffee, bacon and chocolate chip pancakes, with fries on the side. Somehow this smorgasborg for the 6 remaining of us came to just a hair over $50. With that level of famished taking place, that equates to pure value.

We trundled south to warm up, then west onto the always beautiful Coal Mine Road. If I could only go up as third as fast as I go down... hmm. Still felt empty, even after doing some riding Thursday night and Friday morning, it's hard to get the body into the long ride groove after airplanes, time zone changes and fish and chips with Guinness with the boss.

Finally towards the end the engine clicked back on, just in time for the cold headwind home (winds changed during the day to offer us up more thorough and consistent training opportunities). Better late than never I guess. The only real test were some farm dogs that chased me near the city limits.

All in, it was pretty close to 6 hours of tucker us out recipe. The elite rider friends either have sympathy or some mild entertainment value in my accompaniment sufficient to wait for me. I'm like the fat kid that everyone waits for these days.

Continuing the exercise motif of the day, I exercised my minimal domestic (note: not domestique) skills by adding dehydrated minestrone soup packages to boiling water and only let the soup boil over once while the all important chain cleaning and lubing was going on in the living room. Thinking the minestrone seemed too runny, I added another pack. The end result was 3L of extra hardy "spoon stays standing where you place it" salty Italian goodness. In the spirit of high class dining, I ate as much as I could while sitting in the bathtub while defrosting myself, accompanied by a can of flavoured tuna and a water bottle to complete the experience.

Although I may live like a bum, it's fun to at least sort of have an engine that can tour the Alberta foothills for half a day. I think I'll be in bed in 10 minutes.