Well…this is too weird…didn’t get out of bed til almost 6:30 this morning and that is going to make me late for getting on the bike…and rain is coming in so it looks like only one ride outdoors today and one ride indoors and that gives me no time to eat anything before I go out…will pour down at least one cup of coffee that I’m working on right now but I really need 2 but there is no time for that…I really am not sure what the hell happened to keep me in bed 8 hours but I’ll take it…have some energy this morning but I don’t like that I’m expending it racing around here to get on the bike…will probably still get wet but it’s 70 here so that will be okay…maybe I’ll take coffee with me on the bike for the first ride and then think about making more after I get back…but I do need water so probably not…going to keep the car clean by not driving it in the rain today but I think I need to get over it…but isn’t that what being retired is all about? Doing things when I want to without a schedule? Think so but I do need to get off my butt and get going….more later…

Well…today was the first day of the new detour around the road construction and it does add more miles to my daily ride…checked the computer and the new mileage per ride is now 15.2 with finding a shortcut through a rich person’s development that cuts 1/2 mile off each ride…and the development is another one of those “affordable” ones that starts at 850K and goes up to 1.3 million…now sure where they got affordable out of that but I think they need a new dictionary…payments of 4,000 a month is not “affordable” to anyone I know…and the new route has two climbs in it that are brutal…the first one is 100 yards of 23% to get up on the plateau and then there is another long one of a half mile at the same difficulty…needless to say, my legs are pretty sore from the climbs and almost 31 miles today…I’m not really sure if this is going to be the standard ride every day or if I may do 8 miles indoors and then 15 outdoors…I guess we’ll see…didn’t get anything else done today but write checks and read…oh, I did cook too and that means I don’t have to tomorrow…I may push the grocery run back to Thursday since I need to pick up my cholesterol prescription that won’t be ready til after 3 pm Wed…oh, I did service the outdoor bike since the chain needed lube and it needed air in the tires but I need to really clean it up but not until after the rain tomorrow and tomorrow night…it will just get gunked up again so I’ll wait til Thursday when it’s dry…and I don’t want to get my nice clean car dirty in the rain…okay, just finished another book and want to get another one started…

Well…damn, what a crappy night of sleep…up and down all night and finally woke up for good at 4:25…laid in bed for almost another hour, though, and none of it was sleeping…ick…had a skin tag that I removed with clippers and it bled for over 3 hours but that is normal since it does that every time I clip the damn thing off…might have to get something to remove it permanently…this old body is getting weirder by the day…didn’t get a lot done yesterday but I need to get cleaning and packing today and that will continue until I leave…don’t think I ate enough again yesterday with just a bagel, bowl of soup, and a chicken wrap for the day and I really don’t know how I can do better than that….so I will start today with a bagel again just to keep my legs from going flat but they don’t hurt so no ibuprofen…but I may have some more electrolytes at the ride break when I get my coffee for the 2nd ride…need to get going on drinking coffee since I’m still only on my first cup and I do need the jolt from the caffeine…it’s still in the 50’s right now and I hope the humidity is still down like yesterday…that makes it much more comfortable…so, coffee, coffee, coffee and a bagel before I get on the weight work…more later…

Well….after the dead legs and huge amounts of pain I had in them yesterday, I was expecting that to continue today so I took an ibuprofen before I got on the bike this morning and the rides weren’t bad…I also made up a quart of electrolyte water to drink after the first ride and I think that may have helped since I had energy through the 2nd ride and could still go pretty hard right to the end….and my legs weren’t stiff or puffy so I think I may be past that…I did get a little work done today with sweeping out the garage and vacuuming, washing and waxing the car…and I even read half a book as I was watching the drag races that were on all day…so while I didn’t get a lot done, I did get more done than yesterday and that’s not bad…I have been reading a lot about the new trend where people are getting tired of always having to accomplish something more that just living and I laughed that it describes me perfectly…I do not ever remember allowing myself to just live and do what I want with no guilt for it…that’s going to take a lot of work on my part and I’m not sure I’ll ever get there…I did see a couple of huge puffballs along the trail this morning and they were almost 18 inches across…the biggest ones I have ever seen…pretty cool…okay, back to reading…

Well…damn, running really late this morning with not getting out of bed til 5:45 but it wasn’t from good sleep but from being in pain and just trying to find a way to get comfortable all night…now my frickin ribs hurt and I have no clue what the hell is going on…so I took an ibuprofen a few minutes ago to see if that helps…don’t feel bad about that since I haven’t taken one in over a month and sometimes you just need it…it’s only 57 here right now and that’s okay after the low being around 70 for the past week…the humidity went away yesterday and it was so clear here I could easily see all the day down to GH 12 miles away…things just looked sharp and after all the humidity haze, it just didn’t look real…didn’t get anything done yesterday but today I’ll start cleaning this place up and start getting ready for Italy…have to make a list of everything I need to take and start getting it packed…it is kind of cool that I have a roller suitcase that can fit two weeks of clothes but I hope my daughter has found a hotel with a laundry like the UK trip…so today is going to be winging it a bit and watching the US Nationals drag racing that is on all day starting at noon…good background noise for reading….more later…

Well…damn, I can’t figure out what the heck it was with my legs this morning but they were completely dead on the bike and have since hurt all day…and they just didn’t feel right…like they were really stiff and looked like I just sprinted 20 miles with how pumped they looked…just the weirdest damn thing…so, of course I didn’t get much done today but make guac and read a lot…all of the races today were boring and the one that’s on right now is boring, too…maybe I’m just bored with life right now…that could be it…so I’ll keep this one short since nothing happened today so I really don’t have anything to say…

Well…running a bit late this morning with not getting up til 5:25 but I can’t get out on the bike til 6:30 or so and that gives me 45 minutes to do this and anything else I need to…no bagel this morning with making a batch of popcorn last night and I still feel full from it…much cooler this morning at 58 when it was over 70 yesterday and that’s okay with me…I’m ready for fall to come and go out for some color touring with the top down on the car…didn’t get a lot done yesterday and today looks the same but I do need to make some guac with the avocados I got Wed finally ripening enough…haven’t made that in a long tome and I may replace a meal with it later today but we’ll see…don’t really have to cook today with leftover soup and chicken I made yesterday and the breasts were so big I can make meals for 4 days from them…and I have 2 more in the fridge to be cooked…I’m glad I got the lawn mowed yesterday so today will be nothing but races and soccer and reading and that’s what Sundays should be…but I need to get moving soon…need to get the weight work done before I get out on the bike so I don’t have to think about it later….more later…

Well…for the past week or so I’ve been fighting a frickin mouse who had found his way into my house…and overnight he got on my last nerve by getting into the moldy bread I put out for the squirrels…so, this morning, I started to think and came up with a trap I thought would work and it did…a slice of bread wadded up and placed in the center of 4 sticky traps…and a few hours later he came out and tried to get to the bread…not successfully and was stuck fast to the sticky traps…so I mercifully put him out of his misery with my billy club and now his corpse resides in the outdoor trash bin…then I turned the bread trap into a 3 sided one and put it back into place just in case there is another one in here…what a pain in the butt to have to think about this crap…but I think it’s over now so I don’t have to think about that before I go to Italy…still going to make sure that all of the food is in plastic totes that mice can’t get into and I’ll leave the traps in place when I go…one mouse doesn’t smell when it’s dead so I can get away with catching a few more while I’m gone…if there are any…okay, back to reading…

Well…that was sure a weird as hell day with getting almost 5 hours of steady rain in the morning…I even had to clean and service the indoor bike so I could get a ride in somewhere and did one on it…as soon as I finished that one, the rain stopped so I jumped on the outdoor bike to get the miles in…and I found the detour that I’ll be riding or the next couple of months…not too hard but it adds about 4 miles to the distance since I have to ride all the way around the country club to get to the beach…and it has this huge half mile uphill climb in it that is going to be a chore…and all the extra is road riding but they do have bike lanes painted on the road I need to use but it is the roughest new pavement I’ve ever felt…way too big of stones in the asphalt…and this bike lane looks like it has never been used with all of the branches and leaves on it…oh, well…slept okay last night and I hope that will help with the exhaustion I felt yesterday afternoon…again, from not eating enough…I need to remember when I have soup for a meal that I’ll be under on calories for the day and have something to compensate for that…so that means I can’t skip the bagel this morning since I need that fuel before I get on the bike…weight work first…more later…

Well…it’s still raining here and it looks like it will be for a while…so it looks like I won’t get out on the bike until 10 or so…check that, the storm has lined up so it will be hitting here for a few hours yet and it is really weird to still be sitting here at 8am doing this….I just had to put letter stickers on the laptop keyboard since I had a bunch of letters that had worn off and, even though I type every day, not having letters on the keys was getting pretty frickin annoying…so now I have 9 stickers there and it looks like I’m good for a while…I was going to go in and get my flu and covid vaccines before Italy but they didn’t have the updated covid one yet so I guess I’ll wait til I get back…sure hope I don’t get sick on the trip…this has been a nice storm and it is forcing me to relax a bit this morning and I really don’t know how to act without having the bike rides to burn the caffeine off…and I really want another cup of coffee so I think I will and that will set me vibrating…it is 2 of my sons birthdays today and I’m going to text them here in a minute to say happy birthday…still want to go to the library and I may go right at 9am if it’s still raining…then I’ll get to try out the new wipers I put on the car a while back…more later…