Selfie Fence

Warning.  Long post ahead.  I dare you to try to read the whole thing.

So yesterday... I seem to get this sort of comment every so often (scroll down to the tiny orange octopus wearing a top hat if you've already read the comment and my response):

Anonymous Steven J said...

"So, again, you spent the entire weekend not being a part of your family? I dig reading about your adventures, but I cannot think of a more self centered person on earth. I think you live in a hilarious bubble world of Rich. There has got to be a part of you that actually wants to spend time with the people who care about you. I presume the Pie probably wouldn't mind hanging out with you sometime. Maybe show that little girl you are "helping" raise that you are a good dude too? There has to be some sort of Rich that wants to maybe go do something with his family once and a while, rather than the Rich that we all see, that spends all his time plotting his next beer, his bed bike ride, his next race, more bike parts, etc. Why didn't you go to the zoo? Sounds like a great way to spend a Sunday, especially after spending all day getting drunk with your bike friends."

To which I responded:

"Wow! A Fan!

Thanks for the kind words Steven J.

Anonymous is correct. I spend plenty of time with my family, being all husbandy and parenty.

This is a bike blog. I write about bikes. Why didn't I go to the zoo on Sunday? Sometimes our family does things together. Sometimes apart. Two full time working parents with some separate interests and occasionally competing schedules (they were supposed to go to the zoo on Friday but rescheduled because of weather). You won't see The Pie going to a bike race (or going out for a bike ride), and you won't see me running a marathon any time soon. I certainly don't bemoan her when she needs to do a four hour training run. If anything, now that she's running, she has a better understanding of what my "training" has been all about these past... I dunno how many years.

So yeah, they're at the zoo... I squeeze in a one hour bike ride, work on my bike and straighten up some things around the house on a beautiful day so I don't have to waste an after-work evening that I'd rather spend with them, and I do our taxes... something The Pie and I had agreed to do together but I decided I didn't want to waste our time together crunching digits.

The Pie and I are a team. Sometimes, I get home and there's a hot dinner waiting for me. Other days, The Pie has to work over, and I go straight to the kitchen and get on with it. And every once in awhile, we get to work together on dinner... something we both enjoy, but don't always get to do.

I'm responding to you, Steve J, because just deleting your comment would be wrong. I don't feel like I have to defend this bike blog, but I'm also not going to dismiss someone so easily.

Thanks for your concern.

Dick

And fair warning: The family will be headed out of town this spring on a family vacation. I will be riding my bike while I'm there. When I come back, I'll probably blog about riding my bike and not the family stuff... because that's family stuff. And this is a bike blog."

Maybe I'm reading my audience wrong.  I guess perhaps they wanna hear about a "birthday date night" with The Pie the other night.  We were planning on walking to the Pizza Peel, eating, and walking home, but then the radar showed imminent and unscheduled rain.  She grabbed the keys to the car, I said, "I've got plenty of Gore Tex," she hung the keys back on the hook, we walked there in the rain, ate salad, drank beer, and walked home in the rain.  During the meal, we had plenty to talk about.  We always do.  Be it at dinner time, on long walks in the evening (pretty much my favorite thing to do after dinner), whenever we're together...

I might be wrong, but perhaps we have something to talk about because we go out and pursue different things.  She's going to an adoptive moms conference next weekend.  Obviously, I'm not.  As per the usual, this means Nia and I are going out for chicken wings (The Pie is a vegetarian, so she does not share our love of eating fried bird limbs).  We'll probably rent/go see a movie with as much  "pew-pew" as a person can stomach.  If the weather is nice, there very well could be a forced march or some trail work.  Who knows?  As things are with The Pie, I'm pretty much happy to be around my kid... unless homework, chores, or other such non-fun parenting activities are involved.  I really don't like those things, but if you want a kid who goes out into the world prepared to do adult stuff on their own, you gotta do the grunt work.

I'll admit, I probably took the comments from someone I don't know a little too personally.  Hard not to.  It's just that The Pie and I have been together since '92, we've been through two separations, we've worked hard to make our marriage work, we've raised a baby person into a pretty decent adult, we've got a second one who's doing quite well, and we've dealt with plenty of bumps and rough patches along the way.  The Pie and I make a great team when it comes to all the things in life.  We both agree that it would be very difficult to find someone who fits into our lives the way we do.

I guess I coulda just said, "Why the fuck are you reading this mindless, bike-related drivel written by a dickless, narcissistic has-been when you could be spending every waking moment with your loved ones so as to assure that you will never be harshly judged by a stranger on the internet?"

I think that's enough of that.   Now stupid bike things.

Here's something dumb and bike related.  The other day, I spent at least thirty minutes trying to figure out how much my new wheels/tires would weigh (at work, so as to not cut into family time).   I felt like I had to know... even though the wheels will be here any day, and I'd have actual weights instead of guesses.

I'm going from 29" 24 hole NOX Farlow rims on Industry Nine Torch hubs/spokes with an Ardent 2.4/Ardent Race 2.2 tire combo to 27.5" 32 spoke NOX Kitsuma rim on Industry Nine Torch hubs/spokes with a Rekon 2.8/Ikon 2.8 tire combo.

I have all the tires in hand and one wheelset.  So many other variables tho.  Spoke count and length.  Unknown rim weights on Industry Nine's website... and then a couple days later, I figured it out.

I don't know why I bothered, but I did.

And it ended up being right about where I thought it would.   I'm only gaining about 1/4 pound over my NOX Farlow wheels while still being lighter than my old aluminum rim setup from 2014 and earlier.  Such a waste of time to figure that out, but time is something I have in February.

Steve Tilford'esque segue

I ran over a squirrel on the way home from work the other day.  I can't believe that's the first time it's happened.   Ever since my commute started leaning more towards neighborhoods and got away from bumpy sidewalks, bike lanes on busy shit roads, and just plain ass scary roads, I've been rolling the dice with these guys.  So many close calls and "oh shit" moments.  I never saw this one coming.  There was no left-right indecisive juking for this guy.  He took the brunt of my front wheel, almost taking the bars out of my hands, and was spit out right under the back wheel.

Then he was gone.  All I ever saw was the flurry of motion beneath me.

I hope he's okay... and learned a lesson.  I've passed by the scene of the incident a few times, and I didn't see a body.  I guess he walked it off.