My Ever Present Past; thanks for the title Sir Paul McCartney

This last weekend, the past came rushing back to me and it was great.
So the story goes: hop in the car after work on Friday afternoon and do my best to blaze my way north. I had just enough time to pop out a couple new CD’s the day before since I don’t have an input for the Ipod, but if ya do the math, 80 minutes per CD * 2 does not equal 5hrs of driving. Thus, I got a bit of a broken record by the time I was dragging the final stretches into Kendrick. Yeah, Tom Petty just kept Free Fallin’ all afternoon.

Typically, the day before a race, some kind of an opener (a ride that gets the body ready to go for racing) is optimal, but I didn’t have time for that, so while on the road I pulled out the Compex (electrical muscle stimulation thingy) that I’m still borrowing from one of the fast newbies on the crew while he’s in Ireland (thanks Rose) and electrocuted my legs while zoning on the highway with cruise control on. It wasn’t a ride on the road, but it was the next best thing that I had available.
So I finally pull into town and get the usual rush of wishing I didn’t live in sage brush land. Kendrick rocks for training hard on a bike; everything around goes up, up and then up some more on roads with low traffic and friendly drivers. It’s always pretty sweet for all sorts of other outdoorsy stuff too.
Anyways, get to the race on Saturday morning and realize that the wind is going the way I’m always hoping for (tailwind) but never seem to get! At the line, the field appears to be missing a few strong riders that I’m used to helping force the pace to the bottom of the grade (namely Ben Rhodes). So I drill it myself and pay the price a bit as local strong mountain biker Jeremy Pinto is now having no problem staying with me on the grade. I was actually fairly glad to have him there as the wind going up the grade wasn’t much fun since we were now going against it instead of with it. With around half a mile to go, he jumps me and tries to get away, but I wasn’t coming off of any wheel too easily and am on it immediately. Coming into the last 500 meters (yards-ish), he jumps again and I followed. I waited for him to completely run out of gas and returned the favorJ, it worked perfectly and I pulled off the win. It was like old times only reverse of how I would lose it to Rusty Beall back in the day.
Then I headed back to Kendrick to meet up with Jami and the pooch Lucy, who I hadn’t seen in 9 days. That night, we were to meet up with some friends from high school, so I had just enough time to go hit up a couple grades on the bike and get ready to go. Out the door and ready to eat, drink and be merry for the rest of the night. Jami and I meet up with Kelly and Anna at the ol’ hang out (MJ Barley Hoppers). I hadn’t talked with Kelly since graduation! After a 9 year hiatus, you’d guess it might be slow going for a bit, but 5 minutes in and you’d think we did this on a weekly basis. Of course, the immediate addition of social lubrication (pronounced al-co-hol) helped some, good stuff J Add in a great meal (smoke salmon fettuccini) to good company and microbrews = good times. The goal was to get in a good ride and do a fathers day breakfast the next day so we didn’t stay out too late (11:30), but it was fun minus the hangover. The next morning, Jami and I took my dad and grandma out for breakfast at the small town café that I’ve ate at exactly 1 million times (my eyes just turned brown). Sundays on a two day trip up north are always a bit of a disappointment since I have to leave long before I want to. I hold out until the last possible minute of getting home at a somewhat decent time and brace myself for another rendition of the two CD’s, only this time I get to share it with our 1yr old beagle, Lucy. Since Jami’s going to be working for her step-dad in Nez Perce for a few more days and they don’t have a fenced yard, she thought it would be better for the pooch to go with me. I’m pretty sure that Lucy’s taste for music doesn’t discriminate between the aforementioned Tom Petty, a bit of Paul Simon, Amy Winehouse and even some Metallica.
So, here’s the weekends scorecard in the order that they took place:
Cool:
1 – listening to a fresh mix of tunes
2 – rockin’ out at the same race I’ve been doing forever
3 – getting to hang out with and catch up with ol’ friends
4 – good food and beer while doing number 3
5 – fathers day with some of the fam

Not:
1 – once the fresh mix gets reran too many times
2 – 10hrs of driving for 2 days of fun
3 – the rush to get back into the swing of things for the next week

Okay, 5 to 3 = good weekend. Still would be if it were 3 to 3.
Over N’ Out until the next edition.