Ploafmaster General

Lemme tell you, I will take persistent, strong headwinds outside over riding the trainer in my dining room any day of the week.

Don’t worry, I won’t make you tap the sign.

There’s already so much sign-tapping around here that it’s beginning to sound like hail on a tin roof.

I’m unreasonably excited for the arrival of my best friend, Robert, this evening. He’s driving down from PA for some family stuff but staying with us through the weekend. There will be long walks, adult beverages, hanging out with my family, and a boat load of laughter and shenanigans.

Should be here some time late this evening…

Finally caved in and snagged this trick narrow-wide chainring from what seems to be the Polish Garbaruk (who, themselves, appear to be operating in Poland for likely obvious reasons). It’s technically an “aero” chainring, which, who cares? But it’s silver, 42T, fits my crank arm, and works well in a 1x setup. I had to remove my gigantic pedal for my gigantic foot in order to swap rings, but I’m happy with the result and can’t wait to give it a whirl tomorrow!

I’m coming up on 16 years since my dad passed away and I still find great difficulty escaping some of his worst qualities in my own parenting.

Okay, so…my website hasn’t had a lot of attention for many years. I post occasionally. It’s nothing special. But it’s time to move it off Wordpress. I don’t care if it looks ugly for a while, I just wanted something where I could pay a modest amount to good people to keep my website somewhere that I didn’t have to manage it all that much.

And here we are, on micro.blog. We’ll see how it goes!

Yeah, importing my old Wordpress site…things might be messy and old for a little bit.

AND, hopefully I can catch any of my regrettable, regressive old posts before they’re public for too long (the ones I haven’t already scrubbed in the past).

Stuck with an overnight trip from Richmond, VA to Wilmington, NC for the weekend so my wife can continue parenting her mom. The kids didn't get to see their grandma over Christmas for *reasons*, so at least they get a little bit of that today and tomorrow. But a 5 hour drive each way (with the minimum stops) in such a short time really takes a dump on the weekend.

I took my bike down with me and got in close to 27 miles around the supremely boring exurban sprawl that continues in Brunswick County, but at least the weather was mild and I had the time at all. I recognize how whiney this all sounds while my wife has it much worse, but all suffering is relative, and I just want some normal weekends in the near future. Weekends without worrying about work on Monday. Weekends without 80% of daylight hours already accounted for in the calendar by a variety of Girl Scouts or swimming or errands or...

Anyway, here's some old-web-style postscript: it’s 8:16 on a Saturday night. I'm wearing a comfy flannel. I'm listening to "Fantasies" by Rogue Wave on my headphones. Goodnight.

Earlier this week, in the final days of our winter break, I took my family on a hiking trip around parts of the James River Park trail system (primarily the North Bank and Buttermilk trails). It was chilly but sunny, only lightly windy, and fairly dry. My kids were really into it for the first few miles, and in my head we really only had about 4 miles tops ahead of us on our loop. But then it turned out that my lack of planning meant that we were really staring down about 6 miles of hiking from start to finish. Not only was this a bit more than the kids (and Valerie) had bargained for, but it also backed us up against a time constraint. We needed to be back at the house in time for my oldest kid to get picked up by a friend for a trip to the movie theater.

Somewhere between 3.5 and 4 miles, my wife and I agreed that I would leave the backpack with her and the kids and I would travel much faster by myself ahead to the car so I could drive back and pick them up before the end of the loop. We all made it back in time with about 25 minutes to spare, but now I'm sworn to plan out our route ahead of time before dragging everybody on an extended hike again!

I never seem to get a chance at photographing foggy scenes. Usually the timing is wrong for me when we get the right weather conditions, but this morning I woke up early already planning for my Saturday ride when I saw a dense fog advisory in my weather app. I loaded the camera and my travel tripod onto the bike and headed out...only to have the freehub fail on my rear wheel (this means I could spin the pedals freely without actually making the bike move 🤦‍♂️).

Thankfully I was only about a mile from my house so I didn't have to walk far with my bike. My ride for the day is kinda ruined since we have stuff going on mid-day and more rain should arrive this evening (I generally try to plan my longer weekend rides around early morning and/or after bed time for the kids so I'm not sticking my wife with all the child care). But I wasn't abandoning the glorious fog, so I took my gear in the car and drive down by the river.

This year has been incredibly validating with respect to personal goal setting. I'm not a particularly goal-oriented person, but I have set and achieved a number of goals related to cycling in 2023. I rode 1-way on the Virginia Capital Trail back in May. I hit a metric century (100 kilometers) back in September. And this past Friday, less than 6 months after riding 1-way on the Capital Trail, I made it there and back. But that wasn't my goal! I wanted to ride 200 kilometers, about 124.27 miles, which is a significant distance in endurance cycling.

On this ride:

• I beat my previous longest ride (the 100k)
• I beat my previous total miles in a day (70.5 miles)
• I hit my first imperial century (100 miles)
• I crossed that 200km line with a final distance of 127.42 miles
• As this weekend draws to a close I find that I'm 500 miles away from hitting 6000 total for the year, having initially set a goal of 4800 miles.

I don't really like to brag and, for most of my life (including the present), I haven't had much to brag about anyway. Considering I was essentially sedentary 18 months ago, I'm pretty damned proud of how far I’ve come! I don't know when I'll have the time (or the luck of such good weather) to ride like this again, but I'm super grateful it worked out this weekend.

It’s a Monday, and that’s a pretty busy day in my household this school year. Everybody shuffles off the weekend, Valerie and I each had early meetings, and the kids will have swimming this evening. That means I'll be off in the Southside with them for a few hours while Valerie changes out their warm weather/cool weather clothing at home.

Oh yeah, and it’s our 19th wedding anniversary.

We had our anniversary dinner this past Saturday, so we got a date night, sure. But it’s still a slight bummer to me that we can't make more of our actual anniversary. So it goes at this stage of life with two kids in elementary school. We talked, in fact, during our date, about what we might do for 20 years in 2024. And you know what? We may not get to do much. Westerners love our significant round numbers, but we don't have easy access to reliable family babysitting for multiple nights. That means we’ll be lucky if we even get away for a short jaunt within a few hours of Wilmington, where my mother-in-law lives.

I sure am happy to continue my marriage with Valerie and I love my kids, but I sure do look forward to when they're old enough that my wife and I can go have some more husband and wife fun on our own from time to time.

You know what, though? That’s one of the fascinating things about my extended partnership with Valerie: it’s not that the importance of the anniversary date has diminished. It is, rather, that we get to keep sharing these regular days together, year after year. With the kids, without the kids, but always with each other.

Most of the time these posts are about ideas or words spontaneously floating through my head. This time, however, my wife was talking to me right before bed last night about how our son seems to have lots of random thoughts floating through his head, similar to me. That seems to have been enough to jar loose a word that kept my awake after getting up to use the bathroom at 5:17 this morning.

"Stultifying" is impairing or dulling, or making one seem kind of stupid. Sort of how I feel whenever a random word floats through my head and keeps me awake, costing me sleep, and I can't quite remember what it means.

Found a hidden boat ramp on Town Creek in Brunswick County on my ride this morning.

I mean, dang.

Ten years ago this kid was born. The day before, my wife mixed castor oil with peanut butter, spread it on toast and ate it, in order to induce her own labor. We settled down to watch Shaun of the Dead, and contractions started within a few hours. We headed to the hospital near midnight, and after a couple hours more, Maddie was born around quarter-to-three in the morning on September 3rd.

She’s entering her Very Tween phase where Valerie and I are constantly wondering how much more surly she'll be as a teen. But she’s also seriously creative, loves to draw, and continues to amaze me with her ability to pick up nearly any new physical activity. She’s developing her own taste in music, groans at a few more of my dumb jokes, and is navigating the challenges of social complexity with her friendships at school. I love this kid, and I'm so lucky to be her dad.

Happy birthday, Maddie!

(photos used with Maddie's permission)

For the past year I’d been wearing a silicone wedding band because I’d lost enough weight that my actual ring was starting to fall off my finger. Before that time, I pretty much never took it off, but after the third random slide-off, I was afraid of losing it. But I procrastinate with so many things and my gold ring sat inert in a filing cabinet drawer for many months.

I finally took it to a local jeweler to be resized (from a 13 down to 11.5), and yesterday I got it back! I was kind of unexpectedly emotional when I put it back on since I don't even take it off to do the dishes, shower, or work on stuff with tools. It’s a small thing, but I'm happily married, and happy to have that symbol back on my hand.

7:00 AM: woke up to my alarm and rain. Had I known it would rain, I’d have delayed my alarm and grabbed another hour of sleep.

8:00 AM: finally got ready for my morning ride and headed out into the humidity of a late August morning in Richmond. Saw a family of deer near Maymont. Stopped for espresso.

10:30 AM: returned home, took a break and let some of the sweat dry.

11:00 AM: Took my daughter out to the sidewalk with a new-to-her bike so she could practice shifting gears for the first time.

11:15 AM: Headed out on a lovely ride with my daughter with a stop for treats at Up All Night baker in Bellevue.

NOON: Brief lunch interlude.

12:45 PM: foolishly drove to Carytown at a super busy time with my daughter to buy a water bottle cage and bottle for her bike. Traffic was terrible (as I should have expected), eventually parked, found out there were no more of the cute PDW animal bottle cages left. Grabbed a demi-baguette from Can Can for my son before heading home.

[ Brief loafing interlude ]

3:10 PM: Headed to Movieland with the kids to take advantage of $4 movie ticket day and saw the EXCELLENT new Ninja Turtles movie. We all loved it.

5:30 PM: Headed back to the house to pick up Valerie and go to The Cask for dinner with the family. Had two of my very favorite German beers.

7:00 PM: Home just in time to catch the US Gymnastics national championships and sneak in completion of my timesheet from the past week.

9:00 PM: Published this blog post, tucked in my daughter, and gave in to the reality that I need to take care of the dishes in the kitchen before *my* bedtime.

This is the first week of school for my kids and, for my nearly 10-year-old daughter, the start of her final year of elementary school. This is only really starting to sink in for me; next August she'll get on a different bus from her brother at a later time. She'll get off the bus by herself. We’ll start letting her stay home on her own as she feels ready for it. She'll be in *middle school* for crying out loud.

Okay, maybe not actually crying out loud. Yet.

Before my ride even got started this morning I saw this poor ol' crow chilling out in my front yard. It seemed unable to fly more than a few feet, but once it realized I wasn't going to touch/hurt it, it sort of just stayed put. My wife said it seemed to have gotten away without any sign of a stray cat intervening. I hope it’s alright!

And for the second day in a row I rode my bike out to Dabney Road (light industrial/commercial area that is decidedly *not* bike friendly) because I wanted to get a shot of these old railroad tracks that trailed off into the woods. I'm pretty sure they used to connect to CSX's Acca Yard back in the day since it’s just on the other side of the road. Anyway, I saw these while rolling by on Wednesday, was stymied by overcast skies when I tried to photograph them yesterday, and finally had the light I wanted today.

Look, I'm no bike YouTuber. I also don't have a lot of experience under my belt with the Insta360 X3, but I can tell you I probably don't care for the chest mount too much. I don't like how much sway is visible as I'm pedaling, despite shake reduction. No matter - it’s fun to have a record of what it was like rolling around the island!

Music by TimKulig from Pixabay

The final few photos from my last morning ride on Hilton Head Island today. I managed to get out on the beach a little!

Didn’t get any photos on my morning ride, but did manage a few snaps during our day trip to Savannah, Georgia. We didn’t see much (limited by my mother-in-law’s low mobility), but we did have a great tour of Juliette Gordon Low’s birthplace/family home (she founded Girl Scouts of America), and a short respite in Wright Square. Most of the visit was spent on a tourist trolly bus (my least preferred way to explore a place).

Looking out on Calibogue Sound from Hilton Head Island during my morning ride today.

A whole lotta boats at the Palmetto Bay Marina on Hilton Head Island, taken from the top of the Charles E. Fraser Bridge.