Cycles

The annual rye that I planted last fall as a cover crop just recently reached my height, so it was time to cut it down and make way for the summer squash.


Seemed kind of fitting that I should take care of it on the summer solstice, as we begin the slow, and somewhat sad, tilt away from the sun. I try not to send too much material away from the garden, so I used the rye stalks as mulch for the squash hills and potatoes and composted the rest.

In the course of pulling up the roots, I disturbed a small praying mantis who got relocated to the parsley.


Today we finally broke 85 again, and tonight I've heard at least half a dozen warnings on the radio for severe thunderstorms north of town and there's been a non-stop light show over Lyons and Longmont. I think summer has finally arrived.

Trade

Just about every time I stepped out of a building today, I got rained on, but the third time I also got this.

A short race and a long weekend

The hill climb was Saturday morning and I decided at the last moment to take up Eszter's offer to stay at the condo, so started my weekend a little early after work Friday. When I have to choose between an early morning solo departure and some quick planning that will get me there the night before, I'll always go with the latter, plus the condo scene is always a good time.

There's not too much to say about the race itself: I blew up big time in the first couple hundred yards (just like I was told not to), hanging with two other women and pulling away from the others, only to hit a wall and then start counting as the rest caught up and passed (at least nine). Then it was just under an hour of suffering, with a little bit of energy left for the last grueling climb to the finish. I figured it was about 56 minutes, four minutes better than last year's embarrassing hour, but still not faster than my first year, or so I thought. Looking over the times online tonight, I see that this year was actually one minute faster than my first year, which makes me kind of happy.

Usually after a race I'm just ready to go home, but I talked myself into hanging out at the condo for another day and fitting in three more rides, including a near repeat of the hill climb itself. I'm still getting used to the new fork and bike set up and definitely should have called it quits before that third ride, but it was a lot of fun and, as always, I thank everyone who waited up for me at the trail intersections. I even enjoyed the new ramps and bridges on Free Speech and look forward to a repeat visit, maybe even with a rented full-squish bike.

While I still feel a little guilty about slipping away for the weekend, I think it was worth it. Household chores are nothing compared to excellent friends, food and rides. And we got to see a mountain lion on the way home - can't beat that!

Things found along the trail

The girls' Thursday ride was cancelled, much like yesterday's short track race, due to threat of impending doom (rain), so I opted to take the bike up Poorman just to make sure my legs remembered what a hill climb was like. Being able to lock out the front fork is totally cool and I'm sure it will save me some grunting on Saturday.

On the way back into town, I ran into Redcoat, who was hauling his big, bouncy bike up to Betasso for testing. Further down the creek path, I spotted some botanists and decided to ask them what tree provided the great-smelling flowers seen above. I've been seeing them all over the west side of town and they've been a mystery for me for a while. It's a Robinia pseudoacacia, for anyone who's curious. They also let me know it was the grape flowers that I had been inhaling on my ride up the canyon - kind of like a sweet, soapy smell and you'd never look twice at them since they hardly look like flowers. I love meeting people who can tell me more about the plants around here.

The best laid plans...

Now that I have my shiny, new Fox fork, I thought it would be nice to break it in on a trail I'd never been on before. I'd heard the wildflowers were out on the Bluesky trail and figured it wasn't that long a drive, so I headed north to Loveland/Fort Collins.

When I got to the trail head parking lot, I took it as a good sign that it was pretty empty. The bike was out of the car, the extra layers for the chilly day were on. Cue giant drops of rain. Aw, it's only a little rain, I told myself and the guys in the parking lot who were considering throwing their bikes back in their truck. It's refreshing, I told myself, as all the other hikers/bikers/runners headed back to their cars. Then I saw some white thing land in front of me. I seriously thought it was a bug. Till a whole herd of them started pinging off my helmet.

Hard to tell without knowing how big those rocks are, but I can tell you it was big enough to hurt, especially on wet, cold skin. I was glad to be wearing the helmet. Still, I thought I'd keep going. There were some breaks in the clouds and I was getting used to thunder as a background noise. The rain did pause, but just long enough to build up to another hail dump. Pretty soon the wet rocks were looking sketchy and there were mini red rivers flowing down the trails. Time to call it a day.

I was really a lot more damp than it looks here and anything below my knees was a pretty red shade of clay. The lips are an appropriately numb color. I don't think I even made it through the Hunter Loop, much less to Bluesky and I was only out for 90 minutes (much of which was spent standing and watching cloud movement). I pretty much wasted my front brake pads on the return trip (yeah, another reason to consider disc brakes - someday), but I'm pretty sure the fork did what it was supposed to do. Can't wait to ride it in more ideal conditions. The Devil's Backbone was intriguing and will also have to wait for another, drier day. The drive home was exciting, too, if you consider driving on little ice marbles exciting.

Still, could be worse. While I was listening to the pea-sized hail bouncing off the car hood, some other parts of the state had five tornadoes and hail the size of chicken eggs!

Just a few minor modifications

So the bike got tweaked thanks to the guys at BCSM and I took it out for a test run Sunday at Heil. This whole move forwards is pretty noticable in the climbs. Now I feel like I'm really on top of the bike and didn't slow on any of the ascent. I know they've been messing with the approach on Wapiti a bit, but the climb felt really good. The seat's like a rock in street clothes, but in the chamois, I hardly knew it was there. The split tail and cut out bode well for the hillclimb next weekend. The fork still scares the crap out of me on the descent, but there's a shiny, new replacement on the way this week.

Other positive notes for the week: the hide-n-seek flamingo has returned to 19th Street and the toad has moved to my side of the garden.