Slappy when whet

I recreationally garveled for the first time ever (I think) last Tuesday with Bill Nye.  I have "raced" garvel before, but this was just a "hey, how about we ride garvel?" coming outta Bill Nye's mouth and me not having a better idea.

I don't have my "real" garvel bike yet.  My Vassago Meatplow V.8 is out of commission at the moment.  All I'm left with is my Vertigo Meatplow V.7, and to be honest, I'd still like to give my hand time to be 100% before riding rigid froks in the Pisgah.  Getting outta town still seemed to be like something I needed to do.

So garvel it is.

He didn't care what route we did, and being that Maple Sally Road has a t-shirt and everything, it seemed like the thing to do.

A really long road that wiggles and worms and climbs and descends and puts you somewhere else without seeing a whole lotta people.  My greenway rides have subjected me to so much human interaction, so this seemed ideal.

I'll admit it.  I rather enjoyed it. 

If you member my post from Monday, I mentioned being tired from all the riding I'd been doing without proper recovery.  I needed a break.  Garvel riding was a nice change of pace.  I was able to ride over three hours, get almost 3,500 feet of elevation, and for the most part, stay in what an athlete would call a "recovery zone."

The only stressful part was this guy:

We came upon him mebbe six miles into Maple Sally. There are houses back at the beginning of the road and some more mebbe nine miles ahead.  We rode up, he looked behind him, and then ran away.  It took awhile to get around him so he'd stop running from us... which was a good thing?  I was worried that Bill Nye and I were going to own a dog by the end of the day.

I hope it's not a(nother) sign of me getting old, but I had "fun."  I don't know when I'd necessarily decide to ride garvel over a mountain trail, being that I gotta drive to get to either.

But I guess it's good to have options.   Currently, my hobbies other than mountain biking (and building shitty jumps) are as follows:

*repeatedly riding greenways
*gutters
*grass
*mulch
*rain water management and erosion control
*organizing everything
*beer
*blerhging about bicycle tube acquisition

So garvel would be a welcome diversification of my portfolio of down time activities.

As promised, I took Wednesday off from the bike.  It will be interesting to see what a couple days of rest could do for me... "rest" that included two or three of my other hobbies tho.

If I'm losing my shit now, I...

Did I mention is just rains now? That's just all it does.  Charlotte is ten inches ahead of schedule so far this year, the fourth wettest spring recorded. 

But not everything has to be wet and sad.

Do me a solid.  The Boy (my son) has been involved with the Trinity Hope House, which assists women in their journey from incarceration to home. Many of these women would be homeless upon release without their help. The pandemic has forced THH to provide more long term services than originally planned, causing them to burn through a large amount of funding in a short amount of time.  They have a gofundme set up with a goal to raise $5,000... with all donations up to that amount being matched dollar for dollar by a generous donor.  Please head over, read more, and donate.

And thank and bless.