No wonder you guys are so fast

It's been almost nine years since we moved to Omaha. We couldn't have known it at the time, but we ended up living in a pretty awesome place to ride — both the city and where the house is located.

It's 10-15 minutes to open country if you're on skinny tires and less than five minutes to dirt if you're not. It works out nicely no matter the season. 

I got to show off a little bit on Sunday during a team ride from our house. Having had both the first and second Flatwater team meetings and rides canceled by snow, we never really got together to get to know everybody. So we decided to ride around here — in May. And no, it didn't know. 

But oh, did it rain. The first hour was a wet, sloppy, road-gritty affair. After that, though, it was great. And by the end, the sun was out in full force.

Halfway through a loop through the Loess Hills in Council Bluffs, Luke Sykora, one of my teammates, said, "No wonder you guys are so fast. You're out here riding this stuff and we have, like, nothing. We have two loops that are any good."

Luke was talking far less about me and much more about the strength of Omaha riders in general. And it's true — it's a fast bunch. It's a lot easier to go train when you have fun places to ride, like in Council Bluffs. Or Ponca Hills. Or Lake Zorinsky. It's easy to take that for granted, too, when you think about what people from other cities have to deal with. 

In all, it was a nice, long ride. I felt old compared to everybody else on the ride — I think I had 11 years on the next oldest rider — but it was good to get out with teammates and talk about upcoming races and things like that. 

Three weeks until the next race weekend, and then Summer is really on. 

Good intentions, I guess

The birds are noisy before dawn. Really noisy. It seems like any breeze pushing through the neighborhood just amplifies that.

Early morning is a good time to get stuff done. I'm typically up a little after 5 with a cup of coffee and a slow opening to the day. Also, my back hurts sometimes. Getting out of bed is a good thing in that case.

And sometimes I schedule a bike workout and try to get outside to hang out with the birds. Today was a day like that, but here I am at the table with my coffee. My back hurts. And not the good kind of back hurt. Wait, is there a good kind?

Well, yeah. One is just a little bit of stiffness — it loosens up once I'm up and moving. The kind that's hanging out now isn't so great. Just a dull, lingering ache. It requires a bit more than just moving around.

Hopefully with some stretching it'll calm down. I still need to get out and ride today, though it'll come after the kids are in bed now. Or maybe it won't — hard to tell right now. And if it has to be tomorrow, the birds will still be out there. And I might be, too.

Let's call Mexico!

I spend a good portion of my days on the phone. For each claim that comes in, I need to talk to the employer, the employee and someone at the medical provider's facility. We're basically just collecting information, building the narrative of the claim and setting up billing and treatment.

Along the way, we get to talk to some fairly interesting people. We have the crusty old dudes who don't miss work for anything, even broken bones, and we have those who think a twinge in their leg means they'll need to be off for a week and go through a dozen physical therapy sessions. There are cooperative and helpful employers and there are those who are not.

Most of my calls are to California, with New York/New Jersey coming in second. The California calls are interesting, because many times one or more of the parties for each claim speak English as a second language. We have a translating service that helps out for those who really don't speak English at all.

Yesterday, I was setting up a claim with the service when I read the number to her: 601-175-5555 (not the real number). "That's Mexico. Does this guy live in Mexico?"

I have no idea. Though I thought that number looked strange. No US numbers have a 1 after the area code, by the way. After some sleuthing, we figured out the guy does not live in Mexico, but he's awfully close — just a few miles from the border in Chula Vista, Calif. And that number was legit, too. It's a cell phone registered in Mexico so his relatives can call him in the US without paying for long distance.

Once that was figured out, we were set. "Let's call Mexico!"

I got an email from a friend the other day asking me how things were going at Applied. Things are going quite well, actually. It's challenging. It's extremely busy sometimes. There's a bit of stress. But the feedback we get on a weekly basis is fantastic. I like that a lot.

I also like talking to the dozens of different people every day. I thought that would be kind of a pain, but I actually enjoy it. Really, the only part that isn't all that great is the paperwork. I have a pile of it waiting for me this morning. I think I'd rather call Mexico.

Soon

Chris is done with school in a couple of weeks (right after Memorial Day, I believe). After that, we're wide-open on summer vacation.

I still have to report to work every day at 8, of course, but since everybody will be home in the morning, that means my ride time will open up accordingly. Ride to work every day? Yep. Longer early morning rides? Sure.

I'm looking forward to both.

The race schedule for the summer months is starting to solidify a bit, too. It's looking like the Omaha weekend on June 8-9, Tour of Lawrence at the end of June, Clear Lake in early July and then probably another race (somewhere) at the end of July. August will probably be Des Moines and Papillion.

And then it'll be cyclocross season, which I'm not entirely sure about right now. I'll need a wheelset (or two) before then, and it doesn't quite look like that's in the cards right now. We'll see. I still have Fred's spare-spare wheelset (thanks, Fred!), so that could be a backup if need be.

I've reached the point where I wish I wouldn't have sold ALL of my spare stuff over the winter. I knew those sales had the potential to end this way, but that's what needed to be done. The solvent rider I am now wishes I had that stuff back. Ah, well. I'll figure it out.

The weather looks possibly OK for a ride tonight. That's exciting, since I've been out three times this year on Wednesday nights. One ended in rain, one was 15 minutes with a group and the rest by myself and the other was actually decent. Hopefully the rain heads out early today and things stay dry. I need a good ride.

Missing miles

It's been a while since I've been in a for-real office setting — a little more than four years now. That doesn't seem like a long time, but considering what's happened in between, it's a lifetime away.

Friday at the office was a potluck day of some sort, disguised as a Cinco de Mayo celebration. For those office dwellers out there, it essentially means you eat tasty, but bad-for-you food all day. It starts out with the best of intentions and ends in a sugar crash at 3:45.

Because of the weather — and because I had to carry a bunch of stuff with me to work — I didn't ride in. Rain and snow on Wednesday and Thursday meant I didn't ride then, either. Saturday was a bust, as by the time it was anywhere close to "not horrible" outside, I was mentally checked out.

In the meantime, Jack and I went to Little League photo day (though the game was rained out), hit the comic book store for Free Comic Book Day ... though we missed the free books ... and then headed home. The rest of the day, I did basically nothing. Then we followed it up by going out to eat.

By Sunday, I'd gone five days without riding and hadn't exercised much control on the diet front. My ride was exactly as I'd expected it would be. And I was wearing stupid winter kit — still — in May. I deserved any sort of suffering that came my way, of course. Garbage in, garbage out.

After a dietary course correction, I feel better today. There's about four weeks until the Omaha race weekend. Time to sharpen up.

No more, please

There was a span of time in November of last year where I thought there was a good chance we'd be considering a move to Salt Lake City. Yeah, Utah.

Competitive Cyclist, the massive online bike retailer headquarted just up the mountain in Park City, Utah, was looking for a copywriter. Hey, I can do that. So I applied and completed a writing test (which I absolutely nailed) and interviewed and all of that. Things were looking good. And then they weren't. Obviously, we did not go to Utah.

One of my concerns with the place, even before I interviewed, was winter. In Park City, something like 150 inches of snow falls every year. That's great, because it's a skiing mecca. In Salt Lake, the number is about half that. And that number is about two feet more than Omaha. Out there, snow can be in the forecast — in a non-freaky way — from October to May. And that's perfectly normal.

So think of the winter we just had and add six or seven more feet to it. Ugh. Think of the trainer work you'd have to do. Double ugh. Though we haven't had the snow, my workouts since starting at Applied are a lot like they would have been had we moved to Utah.

The hours of 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. are blocked out all week. With the exception of Wednesdays, I don't have ride time available after work. I could make it work, yes. I could press the issue, maybe. But I don't want to. That's when we hang out as a family and play or run around or go for a walk. So no — no bike riding there. Weekends? Same as always. No problem. Lunch rides, as much as I'd like them to be, just aren't possible. I haven't taken a lunch break in a couple of weeks.

So that leaves early morning or evening hours. On Tuesday, I was up early and out the door in the dark. I did hill sprints on the neighborhood mountain for an hour, cleaned up and faced a beautiful day with a cup of coffee and two happy, smiling kids. I, myself, smiled all morning. It was a fantastic day.

The weather since then has been absolute crap. Wednesday was out. Thursday was out. Here we are on Friday, and the only option since being outside on Tuesday was the trainer. I'm pretty much done with the trainer. Getting up early to go outside does not bother me. Working out early doesn't bother me.

Riding the stupid trainer in the stupid basement bothers me.

We have to be done with all of this, right? Actually, you know what? I don't care if we're done with it. I declare myself done with it. No more. No more trainer.

You're welcome to bleat on, of course, about how you haven't ridden the trainer all winter and how you can't the thing. By all means, go ahead. But I'd be willing to bet your schedule is pretty open and you don't have kids. Or, if you do have kids, they're older and in the "I don't like you, anyway" phase.

Or, if you're in Utah, you learned how to ski.

Cracked

In the depths of pre-winter despair, just before Thanksgiving, I spent the better part of a week building Lego sets and eating Pop Tarts at the kitchen table. Dark times, friends. Dark times. On top of that, I was having a can of soda along with the Pop Tart. I think my thought process fell somewhere along the lines of, "screw it."

As you could imagine, I felt little ... bulky ... after that, so I decided I should probably knock that stuff off. The soda and Pop Tarts, I mean. I kept playing with Legos for another week, at least. The soda I had the Sunday after Thanksgiving was the last one ... until Sunday.

I knew I'd crack eventually, but I made it almost five months without one. The tipping point was the heat. It's been damn cold since Thanksgiving, so there's been no reason to finish a ride — or yardwork — and want something cold and sugary. I spent that entire time brewing coffee for post-ride enjoyment.

Yesterday, though, was about four hours on the bike (hilly and breezy - yay spring!), followed by mowing the lawn. I was OK until the mowing. I still had more work to do, so I cracked open a can of Mountain Dew and broke the streak. It was worth it.