My Cup Runneth Over

a couple of glorious fall rides later, on a finely tuned steed built of quicksilver and dreams, i'm feeling like a slayer. every gravel road climb begs a sprint and every rooty berm cries out for shreddage. everything in my life makes me smile and sometimes the days are too full to even pause and appreciate it. we all make our own happiness and by god, if that were my job i'd deserve a promotion.

Hard to be down when you look up

Wonderful rides with wonderful people

Miss you already

Merrymakers on a wild night

In Which I Run Looking Glass...

And eat my words. Yesterday, the most beautiful day of the year? Piffle. Balderdash.

Happiest Days

after work i went on the hunt for my favorite miracle drug. i've developed a worrisome dependency on it, but who wouldn't? it's over-the-counter, obscenely cheap, and causes weight loss, lowered blood pressure and cholesterol, improved sleep, increased lifespan, and shiny hair. it's packed with vitamin d, it's anti-anxiety, anti-depression, anti-cancer, and the side effects aren't even serious: bulky thighs, questionable tan lines, obsessive behavior, and the tendency to gravitate towards weird friends.

Oh, flowers for the baby dino!

oddly enough the pharmacy doesn't stock it so i had to get my fix in the woods. today, which was obviously the most beautiful day of the year, i harnessed my doubts about the swank and used them as fuel for quite the ride. from home, climbed clawhammer, up black, down buckwheat, down 477, over to 475b, down cove creek, davidson river, back in on 276 and tacked on north slope just so i could cram the whole seasonal triumvirate into opening weekend. 4+ hours and it felt great. i had no music (never do) so spent the whole time humming a mantra of "pretty pretty pretty! pedal pedal pedal," and making happy (and occasionally frightened) little animal noises. ate chomps. picked flowers. climbed quickly, descended slowly. took pictures. loved my bicycle. i feel a lot better knowing that while i almost never do longer rides, that doesn't mean i can't.

Clawhammer

Black Mountain

FS 477

FS 475B

Hello beautiful

The light fading on North Slope

Third Post in Thirty Minutes

Please note: the last seven posts I wrote are each filed under the label "awesome". Totally unintentional and probably way too much excitement for one blog, but I like it.

Could This Month Handle Any More Awesome?

Forgive the silence. There's been so much awesomely awesome stuff going on that it's a real tragedy I haven't kept up with it.

Downhill nationals at Beech? Crazy good time. East coast racers done us proud.

Lydia's 10k+50k? Great success. She is a fantastic race promoter AND athlete.

Pisgah MTB Stage Race? Absolutely amazing. This place we live earned some HUGE props from everyone involved.

Zombie Squirrel Alley Cat? Total unmitigated shenanigans. This much fun should be illegal.

Bike Mag coming to town? Really killer. I'm pretty sure they get it.

Cyclocross at the Pisgah Brewery? Super fab. Never mind the lame course; there was music, beer, friends, and an unbelievably big turnout.

I would post links and photos but you've probably already seen them all. Just believe it: this area is blowing up.

Where I Find My Heaven

if i were a genius i would somehow bottle the sensation of running pilot mountain on a clear fall day and give it to friends for christmas. the sweat, the burn, the hubbub of late cicadas, the beech trees trying to outshine the sun, the musk of wet leaf carpet (which is the most evocative seasonal smell i can think of, besides, well, ferns, smoke, frost, mown grass, bradford pear trees...). the trail climbs up endless switchbacks, so high that all the leaves have been stripped away by wind and weather, leaving only dog hobble and mountain laurel. the summit is so beautiful it hurts. mountain ranges stretch unobstructed in all directions and the leaves have turned only in the higher elevations, like a dusting of cayenne on each peak. i'd run many times farther just to earn that view. and afterwards comes the the sense of gratification, the well-deserved brownie. i'd bottle all of that.

because i am the opposite of a genius i failed to bring a camera and so could not even ineffectually capture one-tenth of what i was experiencing.

come with me next time.

Some B-Day Gloating

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been crashed into by a double-decker bus.

Yesterday was my birthday, and while it seems a bit fatuous to go into breathless details about that sort of thing, this is in the end my public internet diary and I will on occasion get silly like that.

Because, really? It was effing amazing.

9/15 came bright and early with a (non-obligatory) 7am ab workout with the BC kids, who shouted a chorus of "Happy birthday!" to me as I entered. Joh greeted me with a mason jar of flowers and a home-baked tray of brownies...yeah, she's over-the-top wonderful like that. After crunching my core for a while I went to (obligatory) work, where my lovely bosses gave me some vino rosso. My roomie convinced me to join her for a quick birthday fat tire ride, which is never a bad idea.

During a drive through town I was tickled to see Miz Dickson, huge grin spreading over her face, mouth "HBD" to me through car windows while turning left, talking on the phone. Multi-tasker. Although the current state of affairs makes one question the quality of human nature, every time a birthday rolls around I am astounded by the pure unselfish joy people express to each other for such a mundane occurrence. And this is self-aggrandizement at its finest, but if so many people are so incredibly nice on this arbitrary day of me-celebration, surely I must be doing something right (right?).

The awesome train kept rolling. After my ride I headed to A-ville for the first game of the season. Soccer was my first love and it's nice to know that a: I haven't forgotten everything, and b: that shit is glorious. I've fallen off the wagon; intense, jubilant addiction. My teammates, none of whom I knew, surprised me by singing to me after the game. And then we went to the bar. A good crew. I had to duck out early to attend an 80s dance party, where I joined up with some finely bedecked friends, forgot about my innumerable bruises and sweaty grossness, and danced my ass off until two.

Hence my extreme soreness and malaise today. Yesterday I worked easy and played hard, all day, and have the scrapes and aches to show for it. And there is no better way to celebrate a birthday.

Mole Hill...to Mountain...to Mole Hill

Yesterday sort of out of the blue Wes offered me a shot at the Pisgah Stage Race, the insanity of which I had scoffed at for years.

Appalled, frightened, titillated, I retreated to the internet, studying maps, elevation profiles, and race reports. I realized what all stage racers surely know: life would take a backseat. I'd have to play soccer with kid gloves, ease up on the beer consumption, carefully tend to my bike, lose days of work.

In the end my decision was clinched by my job--the boss-lady will be out of town that week, leaving me "in charge", and that, combined with my utter lack of prep and questionable mental fortitude, makes it one helluva long shot.

It's crazy how even the suggestion of such great heights has galvanized me. All right, I won't do it this year, but instead of surviving the Swank I want to race it and own it, I want to kick ass at every cyclocross race I enter, and I want to entertain the notion of the stage race, not in the distant imaginary future, but in the next couple of years.

Now that (finally, wonderfully) Asheville has its own cx series, I can enjoy that stupid, awesome discipline without the usual caveats--no long drives, no missed work shifts, no uninspiring grass courses in the Piedmont. Along with an unusually large Brevard contingent I attended an evening practice race and the Bent Creek throwdown last Saturday and surprised myself with a: a threshold intensity I could've sworn had evaporated, and b: an uncharacteristic bloodthirstiness. My favorite part was clawing my way through the ranks of women in front of me, piloting the deutschbike around their sketchy singletrack maneuverings and "sprinting" away in slow motion.

Da posse

It's not just cx that's got me wickedly stoked on riding right now. Joh and I rode Farlow on Sunday and while I embarrassed myself with my timidity, it was still a grand time. Best of all, four of us ladies partook of a Dupont night ride, which was beyond fun. Clattering down Rocky Ridge at dusk, skirting huge toads and piles of manure, listening to the coyotes, we could not stop exclaiming, "This...is...awesome!"

Da gurls