May 6, 2020

CBD and Me!

Almost exactly one year ago today, on May 5, 2019 (my, how times have changed!), I rode in the Belgian Waffle Wafer Ride, in San Marcos, California, just northeast of San Diego. Belgian Waffle (BWR) is a mixed terrain race with two editions: the full length Waffle Ride of approximately 140 miles, and the shorter, Ripper friendlier, Wafer edition, of approximately 75 miles. In BWR’s own words, “IS THE WAFER REALLY ONLY HALF AS FILLING? The Wafer is much harder than doing half of the Waffle. Its dirt-to-road ratio is much higher, and the course is slightly longer. 75(ish) miles with plenty of climbing and sand incorporate to form this…

April 20, 2020

Ride When You Can!

This bike riding season was supposed to be my year of gravel. I was trying to spend less time on pavement, and more time on dirt, partly to avoid cars, but also because one can get to places off-road that you just can’t get to in traffic! I’m not a big fan of technical mountain biking. My skills just aren’t honed enough to feel confident, and I fall far too often for my liking, mostly because I can’t ride fast enough on technical uphill sections to keep my balance, and I don’t get my feet out of the clips quick enough to put my foot down on the ground before…

April 5, 2020

Still Riding

I was going to do a short non-Covid-19 post today, as I needed a break. But then I saw a post on the Facebook page of Stay Park City Riding, a riding group I belong to, about riding in these strangest of times, and thought it was worth sharing with our many Senior Ripper cycling enthusiasts. The post recommended an article called Riding in the time of Covid-19. In short, it says, by all means, ride, but ride alone. When riding, we leave a “Respiratory Signature”, that is a sphere of all we expel when we breathe, laugh, cough, sneeze that spreads out behind us in a spherical trail that…

March 31, 2020

Busy?

How is it possible that we’re so busy? We aren’t going to work. We’re not socializing in person. The ski mountains are closed. Many of the parks are closed. It’s too snowy to ride outside, even in isolation. Somehow, Gail and I get to the end of each day, and more often than not, we haven’t finished what we intended (including getting this post out on time)! I guess that’s not much different than BC (Before Covid)! And yet, we’ve accomplished a lot. It’s a different measure of accomplishment. We’re not seeing our students (Gail), and fewer deals are getting done (Larry), but we’re still teaching and working and trying…