First ride in a while

It's been Electronic Filing time at work, and during the first few weeks you can never really tell what's going to happen; could be pretty dull, do random tasks while watching the system time, or could be OhShitOhShitMakeItStop!!! and work furiously until midnight. So I've been forgoing riding. Just as well, the weather has kinda stunk for riding anyway. I'm ready to dial back to 2 or 3 days a week, even in the summertime. Maybe even less; riding often takes time away from other things, and mostly last year from astronomy (and home maintenance, though I never did much of that anyway). If I have to choose, I'm taking some time from riding and giving it back to astronomy this year.

But I rode today, first time in 3 weeks. I would not have believed that a person can get that out of shape that fast. I still made it to work in 45 minutes, at a 13.7 MPH average, which is not good but not terrible. But man, my lungs and heart were saying WHAT the HELL are you doing out there, idiot?!?! And as I sit here at my desk, my quads are telling me that OH yes, I WILL Pay For This Indignity.

The gravel roads are really a trip right now too. You wouldn't think that you could have a road made entirely out of holes.

But after all that, I'm back to being awake again; I'd really dropped into a stupor for the last few days; almost where I was before I started riding. When I don't get the exercise, I find myself sleeping less and downing more and more caffeine. When I got to four 16 oz bottles of Mt Dew a day, I realized I'd better get on either the bike or the treadmill or something.

Jinxed!

After replying to minnehaha about how little home maintenance we generally had to do, yesterday I got home to the news that the clothes drier wasn't heating. Not a huge problem, when a gas drier is running but no heat, you gotta figure it's the ignitor plate. 2 minutes with a voltmeter confirms. $30, a trip to town, and 20 minutes to put it in. Still, I should just keep quiet.