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A friend of mine posts rides that occasionally have titles such as Humble Island and Leady lead McLeadLegs. And when I open these rides and look at the stats, I see segment times at or beyond my PRs. This reminds me of the relativity of cycling sentiment.

I think this is like the food chain, but I call it the “Humble Pie Chain.” This is not my most scientific work, so I am open to push back. But it must be accompanied by compelling evidence. Here’s one Humble Pie Chain:

Greg LeMond ->
John Sindell ->
Bruce Burks ->
Tim Heuer ->
David Gilchrist ->
me ->
all of my siblings

Note to my siblings who end up reading this. I am only putting you below me in a cycling Humble Pie Chain. You outrank me in any chain of true significance, such as “home care” and “drinking PBR.”

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218: The Long Valley Road

“To MTB or not to MTB, that is the question.“

In retrospect, it was a pretty stupid question,
but one that I did actually ask myself.
And flying down Winesap, I knew I had made the right decision.

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202: Hours of Powers

Willpower, noun: On a prolonged climb, sitting in your lowest gear for so long you can’t remember when you last shifted, you push the downshifter with so much power that a new lower gear materializes on the inside of the cassette.

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191: My Tiling Other

… When the objective is reaching those fringe tiles.

Bryn and I muscled up a steep-ish climb in direct sunlight on a 90+ degree morning. And while the “is this a good idea?” and “how about we go for this another day?” questions repeated in our head, with each repeat we were a just a bit closer to touching the tile.

Here’s the view from said touched tile. This is Blue Mountain in the distance, seen from the vantage point of Green Mountain (thus named because of all the vomit emanating from my innards).

One more tile touched. 6,280 in all (nine new ones touched today).

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211: Lake Wallace, The Hard Way

I have three brothers that know cars. And a father that knew cars. I made it as far as learning how to change the oil. So opening a car hood is not an action that “sparks joy.”

Luke turned the key and there was a click, but nothing else. No crank in the engine, and no sound from the starter that would normally precede said crank. Just a single click and then nothing. I text the situation on the brothers thread while I start exploring the engine. I’m looking for any loose wires … any loose anything. Brother Jim responds: “The solenoid on the starter has likely gone bad. If you’re feeling ambitious, crawl under the car with a hammer or heavy wrench and rap the hell out of the starter motor case 3 or 4 times and see if you get any starter action.”

Hammer? Shit, I speak that language!

Now I just to locate the starter. Again, Jim to the rescue: “Follow the positive battery cable. It runs right to the starter.” Sure enough, there it was. A tight but makeable space for a hammer with just enough room to get a bit of a hit on it. Certainly not any contact that would be deemed “rapping the hell out of it.” Well, let’s assess my first attempt. “Luke, try it now.” Luke turns the key, the starter turns, and the engine cranks.

I text my appreciation to brother Jim.

Then I strut around the house for an hour with that hammer.

My 20-year-old son, Drew. ordered his breakfast.

Then I said to our server, “I’ll have exactly what he’s having.”

The server left and Drew said, “Copycat.”

“Indeed, Drew. You are a copycat.”

This is a line that my father-in-law uses that I love. It is only used in the past tense, and it’s used to explain the unintentional detaching for some inner reflection time. It’s probably the best excuse you can have for those moments in a conversation when the other conversers realize that you’re no longer participating. You’re not on your phone. You weren’t distracted by some other external stimulus. You had just “Gone Within.”

Today on my quick out-and-back to May Valley, I was a good 20 minutes into the valley before I realized it. The urban beginning to this route had me in commuter mode. The suburban phase that followed had me more relaxed, but my mind clearly went elsewhere.

When I snapped out of it, I couldn’t even tell you what I had been thinking about. It took a couple of hours later to remember. I was running through all the change in the last week. All good change. But tiring in aggregate, if that makes any sense.

Changes at home: Drew getting a summer research job; Luke nearly all caught up on his summer course after a couple of health setbacks. Changes at work: got a new employee; finalized some org decisions with leadership. Changes around us: all the high school graduates among our friends group.

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For the record, not this kind of “gone within”:

“And after that I just sorta space out for about an hour”

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169: “Gone Within”

“Not Safe For Strava?”

On my ride today, all the potential ride titles i was coming up ended up sounding too racy (though no raciness intended). So I stuck with a safe title, using the lyrics from “AM Radio”: 162: “With Big Bell Bottoms And Groovy Long Hair…”.

Now, a bit later, I realize that there Rated G versions of all of these titles. So here’s the racy & safe variations, side by side:

(I’ve taken the liberty of adding new rides to this table as OG/G titles have materialized)

OG Title	Rated G Title	Intent
The Dirty and Delicious Tip of the Lollipop	Sometimes, You Get The B’ar	The top piece of this particular lollipop route was a heavenly offroad experience.
Bruce Blow By, or Bruce Buzzed My Tower	High Speed Bruce Fly By, or Negative BruceBomber; The Pattern Is Full	CCBC Teammate Bruce flew by me during the ride
Boner Drier, or Boner Dry, or Bone Drier	More Bone Dry	Today was even more dry than last weekend
The Great Unzipping	The Great Shedding	I ended with fewer layers on than I started with

I have a son,
His name is Drew.
When my legs quit early,
Here’s what I do.

I text him with an offer
Of drinks and food for free,
If he drives out
To rescue me.

I love my son,
He’s quick with his texting!
And he loves me
For the Fatburger he’s now eating!

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150: Drüber

A friend of ours was telling me about their son’s summer internship plans. Their son had been debating several options, and one of them involved a line of work that others described to him as “selling your soul to the devil.” Obviously, this made him uneasy about even entertaining the idea. But I think there’s a more “growth mindset” way of looking at it. Internships are all about trying out new things to arrive at a more informed position when it comes time to make a decision on your full-time job.

So maybe as a full-time job after college it would be selling your soul. But since this is just three months one summer, all you’d really be doing is renting your soul out for the summer.

Happy job hunting!

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134: H😵p, Skip, and a Jump