Category Archives: Uncategorized
Back to the Grind
Today’s my last official day of summer vacation (yup, first world academic problems). I’ve already completed my first assignment for my exercise science class, so that puts me a hair ahead of the curve.
This semester, I’ll be taking precalc, Senior Seminar, and the aforementioned Intro to Exercise Science class, which is web-based.
Senior Sem is a research project-based class, and having already run an independent project, I’ve got a leg up on that. I think I’m going to put together a new project, though originally I planned to continue with my previous research.
I moved my schedule around a bit to avoid having to roll up to campus four days a week. This will make staying on top of school and ballet earlier (it reduces commute time immensely). Academic classes will be Monday/Wednesday; ballet will be M/W/S. That leaves Tuesday and Thursday open for homework, housework, and all that other stuff.
On the ballet front, I spent some time yesterday drilling the glissade – jeté combination to get it into my feet. It’s weird what gives you trouble as a returning student.
Grand jeté? No problem. Tour jeté? Heck to the yes. Anything involving sauté? Got it. Pique turns? All day long, brother.
Itty-bitty basic glissade combos? Ugh. Don’t ask.
But it’s coming along.
So that’s it for now. The semester looks doable. It’s really weird to think that it’s probably my last as an undergrad.
Life moves forward.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Saturday Class Notes – It Came From Studio 5
We went out last night, so I did this morning’s beginner class, and I did it on about 5 hours of sleep (not quite a record, but still enough to throw me off my game a wee bit).
I was not, however, the most sleep-deprived member of the class. The same guy by whom I was so immensely intimidated a few classes ago — who is, in fact, a professional dancer — came to do barre with us this morning, and he hadn’t left his other job* ’til 4 AM.
He joined me at the end of the barre nearest the door. It turns out he’s actually a rather nice person and not, in fact, at all intimidating. As such, I decided to try to learn from him, though since we were across a portable barre, this time I just listened to his breathing and tried to emulate it.
Class was a mixed bag today.
There were moments at the barre during which I was really feeling and using the music. There were other moments when I was all, “Frappé? Whaddaya think this is, a Starbucks?” or “Port de bro? Je ne comprends ce que vous dites. Je n’ai pas un frère.”
At one point, after totally leaving out a part of a combination, I mumbled after turning, “And maybe I can get the combination right this time.” Professional Dance Guy grinned and said something like, “Don’t worry about it. Just hold your head up and look like you know what you’re doing. That’s what I do.”
So I did, because, you know. When Professional Dance Guy says it works for him…
Oddly enough, it did work.
I did much better remembering the combo**. It was a tendu-degagé-degagé-pique, and I was sort of automagically doing degagé-degagé-degagé-pique.
I still hosed up all my frappés on the next combo, but my grand battement — seriously, I didn’t know I could get my leg that high yet (until a few years ago, I could still pretty much swing it up and whack myself in the face; I’m getting back there). Apparently I work well under pressure.
I think the highlight, though (besides grand battement) came in the form of 16 bars of free practice that Claire gave us to work on “whatever, as long as it’s ballet-related,” during which my entire barre decided through telepathy that we were going to swing the bejeebers out of our legs in sync. We looked like a trireme going to war or something (though, had we actually been a watercraft, we would simply have found ourselves sitting in place, since there were four of us on the barre with two facing each way).
The “everyone at my barre doing a kind of whippy attitude en cloche” moment was pretty fun, too. I think that may have evolved out of an effort to not kick the stuffing out of each-other while rowing our imaginary trireme, though. The class was packed, so even angling would’ve potentially meant kicking someone .. and nobody kicks like a dancer***.
There were moments at centre, working turns, during which I was look, “Oh, look, if I pull my core together and really focus on nailing my passé, suddenly I can do this nice, controlled pirouette en dedans.” There were other times that I was like, “Don’t look. Just … don’t. It’s better that way.” At any rate, my pique turns were good. Again, I focused on opening the knee at passé. I rediscovered my turnout a while ago; now I’m learning how to use it again. You know, to do other things than get my feet out of the way when I’m coming up the stairs or opening our pull-out freezer drawer and whatever.
Going across the floor, I messed up the first combination, then nailed it (it was very, very simple: just, “Sauté arabesque! Sauté pique!” lather, rinse, repeat — but because it was simple we were supposed to be musical and expressive and pay attention to our arms and stuff). I messed up the second one, then kinda got it, too. After that, I somehow memorized the third one (pique arabesque, faillé, pas de chat, pas de chat, tombe pas de bourée, glissade, whatever big jump you like) in the wrong sequence.
In short, I put the tombé where the faillé should have been, resulting in … well, it was just bad, okay? You can get from tombé to pas de chat, of course, but it’s harder and doesn’t look as nice.
So I ran the last combo the wrong way like four times, struggling to get from Point A to Point B, before I finally realized I was doing something completely different around the second step than everyone else, and that I should probably ask Claire to go over the combo again. Problem solved … ish. By then I was sufficiently confused (and tired) that my final two runs were sloppy and kind of awful, but at least less awful than they had been. I guess that’s something? I’ll work on that combination at home this week (no tour jeté, so I can probably clear the floor downstairs and run it without whacking my arms on the ceiling).
If all else fails, I will disassemble the coffee table and mark it in the living room. Seriously. I have been thinking about removing the coffee table anyway (I hate it; it’s made of four huge effing pillars and a giant piece of beveled plate glass, weighs about four million tons, and is a giant pain in the neck to vacuum around — and it also encourages Denis to accumulate snow-drifts of papers in the middle of the living room, AHEM).
The real low point of today’s class, tough, was the little jumps. You know — the ones I’m good at, the ones I love doing, the ones I could do all day?
Yeah, I totally hosed those up as hard as I could. I didn’t actually know that I was capable of screwing them up that badly. We were doing a jump-jump-relevé combo, and mine turned into … something else. Something … horrible.
No one could say what it was or how it came to be. All they knew…
…was that it was bad.
The ultimate problem was simply coordination. I was feeling a bit cooked, and my feet and legs just didn’t want to hear about sauté-sauté-releve. So instead it was all, sauté-sauté-bounce on releve and scare the crap out of poor Clare. By the time I got them fixed, we had moved on.
Also my adagio was rather awful. I’m not sure I even want to talk about it. It stated out beautifully, and then … I don’t know what happened. It fell apart. I fell apart. And then there was the promenade. At least one promenade was passably okay, which is enormous progress from the “Holy crap, I have completely forgotten how to do this!” moment I had when I first did Claire’s class a few months ago. My promenade still sort of resembles the flailings of a wounded moose, but, you know. Before it was even wrose, so I guess that’s progress!
So not my best class ever today — but everyone has bad days (probably even Claire and Professional Dance Guy), and I did get a really nice compliment afterwards. One of my fellow students said, “You have really beautiful feet. I wish I had feet like yours.” (I thanked her profusely, of course.)
So that about made my week. The rest of this week’s classes could suck (WHICH THEY WON’T, ahem), and I would still be able to say, “Yeah, but at least I have beautiful feet.”
This week’s imaginary t-shirt slogan?
“RELAX, DAMMIT!”
Notes
*Louisville unfortunately doesn’t really have a large enough arts-funding base to keep its professional musicians and dancers fed and housed without second jobs.
**Didn’t we just talk about this last post? Not thinking so hard? Letting it happen? Etc? Sheesh.
***True story: I used to do Muay Thai for a while. I loved it; in some ways it was very much like ballet — you know, if you were actually allowed to kick your partner in the face in ballet. One time I had been having kind of a slow day warming up at the heavy bag, but finally woke up by the time we got to partner kicking drills. I threw a high kick that whizzed past my partner’s ear. He was taller than I was. Our trainer looked and me all bug-eyed and said, “Jeez, where was that high kick on the bag?” In the end, I had the best high kick in class, and there was one reason for that: grand battement. That was some consolation, because I largely sucked at all the boxing parts of kickboxing.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: At Last!
No class today, because it’s Thursday, but this arrived:
A former library copy — in great shape, really. I look forward to devouring it whole 😉
In other news, please note the strategically-placed due date stickers.
I think I’ll leave them on there, just for posterity’s sake.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: In Which Your Humble Ballet Squid Has No Class
So tonight I set out at 6 PM with the intention of catching the 6:26 Oak Street bus to get to class.
I hopped on my bike and hammered like a madman, made it to the requisite bus stop, and then waited … and waited … and waited.
Finally, the bus showed up about 13 minutes late. Then it transported me to not ballet school and the driver said, “Well, this is the last stop!”
Turns out I’d misread the bus schedule, so it was my mistake, obviously, but a very frustrating one.
So, there you have it. This is why your humble Ballet Squid has no class this evening.
The Most Interesting Ballet Squid in the World* says, “Keep It Classy.”
On the other hand (or tentacle, if we wish to belabor my favorite analogy), your humble Ballet Squid did burn something like 1200 extra calories riding around on the bike today, so your humble Ballet Squid might enjoy a humble dessert even though he didn’t make it to class!
:::SHOCK:::
:::AWE:::
So, um. That’s it for tonight. I’m still mad at myself, but at least now I’m mad at myself and eating dessert ^-^
Notes
*Since as far as I know I’m the only ballet squid at the moment, I feel it’s fair to say that I’m the most interesting ballet squid.
Ballet Squid Quickie: U of L Dance at Iroquois Amphitheater!
Boy, I sure am loquacious today.
Anyway, University of Louisville Dance Theater will be performing at Iroquois Amphitheater (just around the corner from my house!) on Friday, August 30th, at 8:00 PM. Suggested donation at the door is only $5.
Denis will be at Burning Man by then, and that will be the weekend following my first week back at school, so I think I just might treat myself to an evening out. I might even see about organizing some kind of ridiculous bikes-and-ballet event around the performance (because why not?).
If you’re on Google Plus and you’d be interested in that kind of thing, look me up here. I plan to post a feeler for interest shortly.
So, there we have it! Come watch UofL Dance Theater on the 30th! Be there or be square, etc!
Resolved*
*Ha! At 3 AM, nothing is ever really resolved.
Point the first:
I am going to talk to the honors program folks. I’ve been nominated like four times. Might as well have a crack at it.
This will probably mean staying an undergrad til May. I am pretty okay with that.
Point the second:
I need to figure out how to pay for corrective surgery for my gynecomastia. I have waited long enough.
As ballet continues to grow into a more and more significant part of my life, I find that I would really like to be comfortable in the studio.
Believe it or not, tights and a t-shirt add up to a more revealing ensemble than bibs and a jersey. Also, nobody touches you in cycling unless you either crash and need help or grab the last Chimay.
In ballet class, people be handsy, yo.
So that’s one more huge reason in my list of reasons to just get it done, for goodness’ sake.
Point the third:
This might mean taking a year off before grad school (to rebuild financial stores that the surgery – which is rarely covered by insurance, which justly considers it cosmetic – will most assuredly deplete) .
I might end up doing that anyway, while I try to get my bipolar really stabilized and myself mostly functional before I traipse off to spend two or three years living alone in a strange city with only occasional visits from my husband.
Obviously, I am still somewhat manic. I didn’t take a sleep aid tonight, and so here I am, not sleeping.
Oh, one last resolution. I am finally going to get a driver’s license. Not that I expect to use it much, but health things have happened in my family that make Denis want me to be able to Get There Fast.
I’m hoping to go to grad school in Chicago, which is a long bike ride from here; he wants me to be able to come home on zero notice of necessary. The MegaBus and Southwest Air make that fairly possible without driving, but he’ll feel better if I can drive legally, so that seals it.
He is making a huge, huge sacrifice by potentially letting me go away for what could be the better part of three years – so I can make a much smaller one and get my Legal Driver card.
So that’s it for now. I will chat with the honors program folks this week, I guess, and see what I need to do.
Holy Calories, Pizza Man!
So I have not been having the best time eating.
Specifically, my appetite has evaporated, and nothing sounds terribly edible, so I am not eating much (I am trying).
Today, around lunch time, I made it all the way to the supermarket (feeling weak and whinge-ful the entire way) before realizing I hadn’t eaten since yesterday, and that yesterday I’d undereaten by something like six or seven hundred calories, minimum — so I stopped at Little Caesar’s to snag one of their Lunch Special deals.
Little Caesar’s lunch special, in case you’re wondering, comprises about half a pan pizza (along with a 20-oz bottled drink; I got diet Pepsi). Maybe it’s not quite that big. I’m not sure, because I’m not really into pan pizza so I’ve never ordered one of LC’s pan pizzas.
I seriously hope that I’m overestimating, because if I’m not, the “lunch” portion runs something like 1,590 Calories.
1,590 Calories, people!
That’s like, the vast majority of a day’s share for most people (unless you’re riding a century, in which case it’s just elevenses).
Fortunately, I put in about an hour on the bike, so if I have any desire to eat anything else at any point I can at least swing a reasonable meal without automagically gaining 15 pounds.
I’m not saying that’s, like, wrong and should be banned. Personally, I’m rather glad that I can cram 1,600 down my gullet in a sitting somehow, — there are times in every serious cyclist’s life when maximizing calories ingested per effort expended ingesting them is essential.
However, if I was someone who didn’t know much about how to keep track of my caloric intake, and worked near a Little Caesar’s, the Lunch Special could prove to be a huge stumbling block (of note, the nutrition facts for the Lunch Special are not yet posted on the LC website).
Just something to think about in America’s ongoing battle of the bulge. It would be awesome if LC made the nutritional information for the Lunch Special more readily available. I think people would still choose to buy it, but they might also choose to eat half the pizza (which is what I ate earlier today; I ate the second half for dinner) instead of the whole thing.
In other news, I’ve been kitting myself out for the upcoming wedding of two of our dearest friends, so here’s me looking … well, frankly, ready for the first day of 10th grade or something:
In case you’re wondering, I own maybe two of the shirts in our closet. The belts, on the other hand? Almost all mine.
But, anyway, I’m posting this because I really love this shirt, which is super-sharp, and which actually fits me (well, it’s a little roomy, but that’s fine).
I am short-coupled and I have short arms, and that makes finding dress shirts a huge pain. Recently, I discovered that clothes made for the Asian market tend to fit me (evidently I’m Korean on the inside?); that said, this shirt isn’t marketed as such.
So anyway, if you are a short-coupled, short-armed Velociraptor of a dude, and you find yourself in need of a dress shirt, you could do far worse than Stacy Adams’ “Rome“. It even comes with a set of basic cuff links, though I ordered a pair in purple because Fashion! (They match the tie I’m wearing in the terrible selfie above).
I’ve got some reviews pending for Levi’s 511 commuter-line trousers and shorts. Bottom line: BUY THEM, especially if you can find them on sale. I didn’t expect them to be all that, but found some on TheClymb.com for a ridiculous price, so I bought some anyway.
I have been pleasantly surprised with their fit and functionality, so consider me schooled.
Anyway, that’s it for now.
Aggregated Thoughts
First, it’s Digital Book Day, peoples, so go get your free digital books! Who knows — you might discover a new favorite author.
If you get an “Error establishing a database connection” message, be patient. Some of the categories (mystery and thrillers in particular) seem to be pretty overwhelmed, but once you get a given category to load, you can ctrl-click or right-click > open in new tab/window (or however Mac users do it) and the individual pages for books load fine (they’re on different sites — so far, I’ve downloaded maybe four or five promising titles from Smashwords and two from Amazon).
~
Second, it seems that everybody but me considers the word “twink” to be an insult. Who knew?
Last year, Thomas Rogers contributed a thoughtful article to The Awl about twinks, what the world thinks of them, and what happens after they outgrow their category.
As someone who both self-identifies as a sort of permatwink (or am I a “party ferret?”) and tends to be perceived as such by the world at large, I found Mr. Rogers’ article to be both informative and thought-provoking. I honestly had no idea that basically the entire gay universe assumes that “twink = walking disaster area” is a natural law, but there you have it.
I should say that I self-identify as a kind of permatwink in a way that perhaps doesn’t align neatly with all assumptions about what “twink” means: I am not a slave to fashion. I am not … okay, well, not always … a disaster area. I would say I’m not a party boy, but in fact I do like going to parties and clubs and dancing — but that’s where I draw the line. I am a sort of chaste, mostly-sober party boy, I guess. Yawn?
The thing is, I suspect the same can be said for a lot of us who get sorted into the “twink” slot — perhaps especially those, like me, who wind up there by default, because they are slim and hairless and young or young-looking and playful and like to dance and don’t particularly feel any need to change any of those things. Seriously. I embrace my twinkhood, but it’s not because I’m trying to be a twink. I just am what I am. If the label fits, wear it.
Re-reading bits of Mr. Rogers’ article on twinkhood (yeah, you’re right, it does feel weird to say that) and how maybe we should evolve our assumptions about it (check out Rogers’ list of Important Historical Twinks!), it occurred to me that a lot of the behavior that we attribute to some kind of defect endemic to the twink population is, in fact, simply young-people-trying-stuff-out-and-sometimes-getting-it-wrong behavior.
We sort of expect adolescents and young adults to try on different identities, experiment with different form of self-expression, and basically ride the failboat all the way to Failtopia. Mostly, we kind of roll our collective eyes and say, “Oy vey, I hope they grow out of that.” We assume that they’re doing stupid crap because they’re, you know, young. Basically, we sort of assume they’re inexperienced and still figuring it out.
Meanwhile, when twinks do stupid crap, we evidently assume it’s because they’re, you know, twinks. Basically, we sort of assume that they’re (should I, as a permatwink, say “we’re,” here?) somehow defective human beings who cannot hope to transcend their current mire.
In short, we expect young people to grow out of it. We don’t expect that of twinks … though I don’t know what we do expect of them. Do people expect us to grow into Sad Old Queens? Do Sad Old Queens even exist anymore? If so — beside the discomfort of being Sad — what’s so awful about being Old and a Queen? If there’s one thing the gay male community needs to learn, it’s to honor the elders. Sad Old Queens are, by definition, elders. At least, I think so. I guess it depends on what you mean when you say “Old.”
I’m not going to try to come off all smug and superior here, by the way, like I’m the One Person Who Never Judges The Twinks.
In my experience, while we are eternally the laughing stock of the queer universe, nobody is harder on twinks than twinks. I am as guilty of this as anyone, I guess. I recognize that when I point out that I’m the chaste and mostly sober twink at the party — the one who doesn’t use recreational drugs, keeps a tight grip on his alcohol use, etc. — and that I’m not some trend-worshiping fashion victim, I’m making value judgments.
Likewise, there are other denizens of the Twinkiverse who would decry me as an uptight, elitist, silver-spoon-fed bore.
Covertly, I am basically saying, “Yeah, I’m a twink, but I’m not like those twinks; those guys have problems.” In fact, they probably do, and so do I, and — here’s the rub — my problems make it much more likely that I will not be a terribly productive member of society (fortunately, I’m a twink, so I’m decorative … right?). Other twinks may seem defective, but they tend to go on to be productive human beings. Meanwhile, I’m struggling with a serious mental illness that will make it much harder for me to contribute my share to the world. So, yeah. There’s that.
At the end of the day, though, other guys are still going to sort us all into the “twink” box and make all kinds of assumptions about us that probably aren’t correct (or, well, that probably aren’t exhaustive, and that aren’t correct all the time even when they are exhaustive).
Here’s the thing: I don’t think you’d catch a member of the bear community throwing his fellow bears under the bus like I throw other twinks under the bus and so forth. The bears (and their leaner friends, the otters) possess a sense of community; of fellow-feeling that makes them more forgiving of each-others’ faults (though, being pretty much the opposite of a bear, I have only observed bears from the outside, and thus could be totally wrong here.) They certainly don’t seem to do the whole, “Other bears are like x, y, and z, and I’m totally not like that,” bit — which is, by the way, what I just did to my fellow twinks and meta-twinks and permatwinks and whatever the hell else we are these days.
I suspect that lack of community spirit, of coherence and brotherhood, is one of the reasons so many of us — so many twinks, that is — eventually adopt some other queer identity. It’s not just that “twink” appears to be an age-limited category, but because it’s one that includes no built-in community. Maybe that’s because it’s a category one we’ve basically accepted as pejorative, and one that we assign to others far more readily than we assign it to ourselves.
Seriously, I am the only guy I know personally who embraces the word “twink” as a descriptor relevant to his own identity.
In short, every twink is an island.
So, yeah: I grok that I am part of the problem; that I have on more than one occasion attributed someone else’s idiocy to his twinkhood.
And, like Thomas Rogers, I’m really not sure what twinks evolve into (though “party ferret” sounds pretty fun, I’m not sure that’s what I’d want to put on my CV, if I was forced — bizarrely, because why would this ever, ever happen? — to categorize myself according to my place in the spectrum of queerness).
I’m not even sure why we’re so obsessed with categorizing ourselves. I grasp that a lot of our queer sub-categories operate as a kind of mate-finding shorthand, but what makes us extend those categories to the far edges of our identities? (I say this, mind you, as someone whose memberships in the broader categories of “cyclist” and “dancer” extend all the way to the borders of his selfhood and splash out all over the world around me — so maybe a lot of us just really like categories; I don’t know.) What makes us retain them after our mates are, you know, found? Yeah, “twink who likes older guys” was a convenient label when I was single. Now I’m a twink who’s married to an older guy, so……
Anyway, this is something I intend to think about. Who’s afraid of the big bad twink, and why?
Lastly, because this is now a bajillion times longer than I intended it to be, it’s Tour Time and I am once again basically failing to watch the race. I have decided that I am Cycling’s Leastest Fan (yeah, that’s grammatically incorrect, but it scans better, so there).
I peripherally sort of enjoy the thrills and spills of bike racing, but I am apparently not capable of being committed enough to actually watch races if it involves making effort (if Le Tour is on in, for example, a pub where I’m shoving pizza into my maw, then I’ll watch as if hypnotized; I won’t, however, go dig up a feed on the innertubes).
But, anyway: the Tour is happening, so if you’re into watching it, go watch, and let me know what happens, because I can’t be bothered to find out for myself.
That’s it for now.
Sunny side up, and all that.
Ride Report: Century 101
Saturday night, I went to bed at 10:30, thinking it would be nice to get almost 8 hours of sleep before a big ride for once.
Sunday morning, I finally heaved my carcass out of bed at 5:45 AM. I had slept a whopping one hour.
Yes, one.
I asked myself a single question: “Can I ride 101 miles on 1 hour of sleep?”
The answer, it turns out, is yes.
I suppose I should explain my logic. We are dealing with stuff and I am not getting to ballet class three times a week, or even two times a week, though I hope to get back to that this week at least. I am also not getting any other exercise because I have been grappling with an episode of very agitated, unpleasant hypomania, which has made sleeping and completing projects almost impossible for the past couple of weeks.
As such, I’ve spent basically all my time wrestling very basic household tasks (and, I am forced to admit, mostly losing), and haven’t even done my grocery run by bike since things started getting really tough.
Saturday night I decided that it was really important to try to get out and ride, even if I didn’t make it the whole way, because getting some real exercise in would help me get some real sleep (maybe). I figured it might also take the edge off my agitation.
Sunday morning I decided that it was important to try to go as far as I could: to complete at least the 50-mile ride, then to continue if at all possible. I felt sure I could do that much.
I’d organized my stuff and printed out a checklist on Saturday night. This made it easy to get up and running in the morning. I threw my clothes on, ate my oatmeal, gathered my stuff and headed out — .95 miles to the bus stop 😉 (I didn’t think I was quite up to the 200k I’d be rolling if I rode all the way to the ride start and all the way home.)
 |
| Riding (the bus) to the ride! |
I hopped off the bus a little less than five miles from my destination, grabbed some ride snacks and Gatorade (I’d managed to forget one water bottle, somehow, but remembered absolutely everything else) along the way, arrived at the wrong destination, and then backtracked until I reached the right place, which I’d somehow overshot.
Fortunately, I was still 15 minutes early — really 30 minutes early, since the ride left on “Wheelman Time,” 15 minutes late. I signed the release form (basically: “If you die on this ride, you won’t sue Louisville Bicycle Club”) and picked up both 50-mile and 100-mile cue sheets. Our Ride Captain, Richard, gave us the obligatory quick talk about things we might need to know on this ride (construction areas, detours, that it was possible to bail at the 50-mile mark even if you had the 100-mile cue sheet). Then we all turned on our Garmins* and rolled out.
Soon we were whipping along in a big chatty group, making good time on familiar roads. Most of us had ridden most of the route on other rides, so we were all feeling pretty comfortable. It helped that Timothy Stephen was along; later in the ride, having around who I felt really comfortable talking to would help pass the miles, not to mention a rider I completely trusted in a tight paceline and someone to trade pulls with**. It was also cool to finally be able to ride all the way across the Big Four Bridge, our new pedestrians-and-bikes-only bridge (which will feature in upcoming school commutes).
After twenty-five pleasant miles, I was feeling pretty great — especially since those miles included a climb that made me say, “Huh, this used to be a hill.” I guess my fitness really has improved (the remainder of the ride confirmed that fact!).
We hit up our first store stop at a gas station called Temco, where I threw back a Payday bar (the cyclist’s friend!) and a Cherry Coke Zero. I joked that my Payday bar (at 240 calories) had probably just about replaced the fuel I’d used on a long pull cranking away into headwind.
 |
| Timothy and Company at the Temco store stop |
I had decided to take in a bit of caffeine at each food stop to stave off the potential effects of sleep deprivation. This strategy proved highly effective; I left the Temco store stop feeling refreshed and ready for more. Timothy and I decided that finishing the full century route was much likelier than we thought.
By the time we were sweeping back through Utica, IN, we were absolutely certain we had the 50-mile route in the bag, and we were both still feeling pretty strong. We again encountered a stiff headwind along a stretch of road heading south-west; this would become something of a theme throughout the first seventy-five miles of the ride. Soon, though, we were at our lunch stop — a Subway in Jeffersonville, IN — where, evidently, my food must have looked a wee bit suspicious or something:
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| Did something just move? |
As we ate and dawdled, we came up with a plan to incorporate both an extra food stop and a couple extra miles into the ride by detouring to The Comfy Cow on Frankfort Ave at around mile 99. Then we found ourselves reminiscing about the lunch stop on last year’s July 4th Boston century, which we kept much shorter, since we were soaked to the bone and freezing our butts off in the air conditioning***.
Soon — refueled and refreshed — we were back on the road. We zipped back over the Big Four Bridge (the ramp, by the way, is steeper and a bit narrower on the IN side than on the KY side), rolled through downtown, and headed west-by-southwest on Main.
Immediately, we realized that the next several miles were going to be, well, interesting. We were feeling well-fueled and pretty spunky, but we were already chugging into a significant head wind — and once we got out on the Levee Trail, we would be very exposed.
Still, we were determined. Timothy and I rolled along, sometimes chatting side-by-side, sometimes swapping pulls to save energy. Much of this segment of the ride took place on the Louisville Loop Trail, so we didn’t have to deal with too much traffic. Likewise, for much of this segment, we didn’t spot a single other soul from the ride. We began to speculate about the fate of a pair of tri-girls, also on the ride, who’d been dining across from us at lunch. Had they undereaten and bonked? Had they blown away?
I suppose every long ride has low point. Mine came while riding the Levee Trail, which runs (perhaps unsurprisingly) along the top of a riverside levee. It’s scenic, but very exposed — and now we were heading straight into the wind, with occasional significant gusts.
Fortunately, we were too far out to bother turning around. It might’ve meant riding 91 miles instead of 101, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. I kept my mouth shut (except for the occasional non-verbal grumble after a particularly emphatic gust) and rolled, because that’s how we do it, right?
Then, after what seemed like forever, we passed the site of the next store stop, which meant we were only a mile or so from the turnaround.
…Which meant, in turn, that we were only a mile or so from the tailwind.
As we came about in a concrete circle on the grounds of local landmark Farnsley-Moremen Landing, I was filled with triumph, jubilation, and — yes — even a little bit of relief. As we headed back to the Five Star to hit the mile 75ish store stop, our pace — which had dropped to a grinding 12 MPH — picked back up, and we spun along at around 17 MPH once again.
At the stop, we caught up with a bunch of riders. I enjoyed another Payday bar, a half-and-half Diet and regular Pepsi from the fountain, and a Gatorade. For some reason, I really wanted a chicken salad sandwich, but that seemed like a bad idea, so I skipped it.
I also skipped taking any more pictures — but not on purpose. I just forgot. I was having too much fun chatting with other riders and enjoying the rare Payday treat (Paydays and Salted Nut Rolls are about the only candy bars that I’d say I enjoy enough to be dangerous — so, with exceptions of surpassing rarity, I only get to eat them on long rides).
Other riders began to head out. We finished up our snacks and headed back to the Levee Trail soon after — and there, we finally got to really enjoy the tailwind we’d earned ourselves.
That tailwind lasted most of the way back to downtown. With more than 75 miles and counting under our belts, I can’t say that all of the remainder of the ride felt entirely effortless — parts of me were starting to hurt, and I had long since decided that the Tricross needs a shorter stem if it’s going to fulfill its promise as a go-to century bike — but parts of it did.
I watched my Garmin’s Total Distance meter tick up and was filled with the sheer joy of knowing that, yes, I was going to finish this ride. I was going to do this thing I’d set out to do — and I was going to get to eat awesome ice cream in the process.
On the way back downtown, we caught up with fellow riders Laura and Patsy (on her awesome ‘bent). We rode with them for several miles, from the end of the Levee Trail portion of the Loop all the way to just past Saint James Court, where we made all kinds of crazy loops around the scenic, tree-planted, fountain-bedecked medians just because we good (and also encountered a minor traffic jam).
By then, I was really starting to get tired. I wasn’t actually sure I could make it up the climb on Frankfort Ave — one I used to ride daily, and which once seemed pretty stiff. Once again, though, I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut … and when we got there, I found that the climb in question must have eroded considerably in the past few years 😉 (That, or else I’m just a lot stronger now than I was back then!)
We rolled up Frankfort Ave and deposited our bikes in the not-so-effective rack in front of Comfy Cow. As we parked, my Total Distance readout read 99.0. We were not just going to make it, but we were going to make it feeling strong.
Timothy got some kind of sundae concoction in a chocolate-dipped waffle bowl, and I got the Milkshake To End All Milkshakes: a pure, unadulterated coffee malted (just a few years ago, it was basically impossible to find one of these in Louisville, which didn’t know from coffee ice cream). There was no need to worry about sugar, calories, or caffeine content: I was already well over 100 miles for the day, I had eaten nowhere near enough to even begin to approach working off the burn of 8+ hours on the bike, and I knew I would have exactly no trouble sleeping when bedtime rolled around.
Once we’d thrown back our ice cream treats, we leapt back on our bikes and banged out a final four miles. I rolled up to the car (Timothy had offered to drop me at home) with 103 miles on the meter.
After factoring in the morning’s two transport rides, my total distance for the day amounted to 109.74 miles. A pretty nice day out, I think!
A few stray thoughts and some things I learned on this ride:
- Even tough I try not to overdo it with sugar most of the time, it works pretty well as fuel on really long rides as long as it’s accompanied by appropriate amounts of fat and protein.
- I can ride longer and harder than I thought.
- Even though I have way, way fewer miles under my belt this year than I did at the same time last year, I’m a stronger and fitter rider than I was then.
- If I can ride just shy of 110 miles, I can ride a 200k.
- If you feel like maybe you can do something, but you’re not sure because you’re a wee bit sleep deprived or whatever, give it a go. You might just surprise yourself!
Notes
*Garmin units seem to be nearly universal around here. The beginning of any club ride is now accompanied not only by the unmistakable sound of cyclists clipping in, but also by the signature Garmin beeps as everyone simultaneously begins to record.
**Sadly, swapping pulls with Timothy benefits me much more than it benefits him, since I’m both shorter and skinnier than he is.
***In case you’re wondering: given the choice, I think I’d take Dairy Queen as a lunch stop on a century, even though Subway offers better nutrition — but I think my Number 1 Fast-Food Ride Fuel choice would have to be Burger King. Unfortunately, Burger Kings are pretty scarce around here, and the only one that’s on one of my regular long-ride routes is currently closed for remodeling.
In Which I Am Even More Remiss
This week has been rough.
Even though I’m learning to manage my mood issues, once in a while things get out of hand. This week was one of those times.
I feel like I’m starting to get things back in order, so with any luck I should be back to my normal routine.
In the meanwhile, here’s a selection of pix from PlayThink:
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| Dragons and Faeries at PlayThink! From 2014-PlayThink |
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| I’m just including this one because I think my legs look pretty great 😉 |
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| Not the best front tuck somersault I’ve ever done, but it’s cool that I can still do one. |
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| Spider-Denis, Spider-Denis, does the things … well, you get the picture. |
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| We got to play on the trapeze!!!1oneone |
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| For some reason I think Denis looks really adorable here. |
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| I love Tessa’s little pinny-knots in this one. Also her composure. She looks like she’s not even trying. Not bad, for a first try, eh? |
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| Alice and Phyllis joined forces to make all our wings. I think Nick’s dragon wings are spectacular. |
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| Last one (you can click through if you want more, though). The makeup is mostly the $1 stuff from K-Mart, and I think it did beautifully under the conditions. I re-did it in the evening and did a better job (it’s hard to do your makeup in little tiny car mirrors, y’all), but didn’t think to get a picture. |
Okay. That’s it for today. I am making no grand pledges for this week, because the past week was kind of a disaster, but I’m hoping for something more like normal life.
danseur ignoble 