Everyday Normal Guy

This time of year, life is a lot like the night laps at a 24 hour solo mountain bike race.  Not the good-good rips around the course when you first strap a light on your head part and go into the grand adventure of darkness with almost fresh legs and a "go get 'em" attitude.  No, more like the 2:00AM "I've been at this for fourteen hours and I still have five hours before the sun comes up but I still have five more hours to go after that..."  You put your head down, tuck your sads into your jersey pocket amongst the so many empty but sticky gel packs, and keep moving forward with some but not much of a sense of purpose.

But...

The silver lining being that I can sorta focus on finally dialing in my Epic EVO and Vassago Meatplow V.9.  Yeth, the bikes I've had since July and August respectively.  Life has been messy and busy, and all those injuries stacked up on top of each other certainly took a toll... not to mention embracing apathy as a lifestyle as of late.   

Four most excellent and very different rides took place over the holiday, and some were much needed reminders that my bikes still needed attention.  Whoddathunk that raising my bars and reducing the reach on my Radimus put less of my weight distribution on the front end, thus making it necessary to lower the pressure in my fork (front fork for those that speak in such terms)?  Is my rear brake still rubbing even though I spent at least a couple inattentive minutes in a perfunctory manner trying to fix it on the trail the other day?  Did I really think my last ride on the Epic was a little too plush so I put in another volume spacer... and then did zero testing before taking it out on the trail... to find it was no buenos... and then forget to take the spacer out before I grabbed the bike at the very last minute for a ride in DuPont? 

I'm "focused" on getting through the next few weeks.  Enjoying whatever time I can snag outside in the sun, even if it's pushing stupid leaves from one stupid place to another, or riding my bike, or drinking beer, or staring at the crack in the front of my house. 

Chilly commutes, twenty hour a day darkness, rain (wait, does it rain in Charlotte anymore?), and general morosity be damned.

At least Watts contributed content to the internet again, further proof that anything can happen.