Let a some air out of my tire for my man the Cyclist on Fire who is recovering from an insane bike injury.

Rode the Sempre in to work this morning (Tuesday). I wanted to work on my cadence using the road bike instead of the Cortina. This was a bad idea. I was still sore from jumping around and getting slammed into at the OFF!/ Dinosaur Jr. show the previous night in Atlanta. I was also messed up from driving 10 hours in about a day. This was exacerbated by the more aggressive frame geometry of the Sempre. I was having hair problems and it was all in my face, mucking up my glasses as well.

Finally when I pedaled fast the backpack I wear when commuting on the Sempre was rocking all over the place. Need to rethink this.

Did my 1 minute intervals on the Sempre in to work (Thursday). Walgreens was playing this really insipid Michael Bolton/Richard Marx old stuff mix on the muzak when I walked in. Usually the music is more tolerable early in the morning but this garbage was completely unacceptable.

I didn't really go bat shit on the intervals. There were safety issues like cars pulling off of cross streets etc. I just tried to stay relaxed and not die.

After work Virginia wanted to explore some alternative bike routes so we saddled up and confirmed another way to get to 16th Ave by 34th St by cutting through some ritzy neighborhoods.

Our dream of an alternative to get to the road behind Gainesville High School remains unrealized. All those dumb apartment complexes along Glen Springs Rd like Tiffany and Cobblestone put up barriers and fences. I wish there was a bike lane on east Glen Springs Rd. Instead there is just a sidewalk on one side of the street. It is narrow and usually has other bikes and pedestrians. Plus cars trying to turn pull into the cross walk from side streets. Finally there is a bridge at the bottom of a hill that is a classic Springsteenian "death trap/ suicide rap".

Rode my bike over to this customer's house Tuesday to do a medication review. It's something that Walgreens does through Medicare. Anyway this guy is a chain smoker and the nicotine stench in his apartment was killing me. He was burning incense to cover up the smell which kind of made it worse. It was 100 degrees on the way over and sitting in that apartment I was getting a headache and nauseous feeling.

He showed me his cat who seemed cool and his ferret who he said was dying. The ferret smelled like it was dying. He had tons of swords, knives and shields on the walls. It was a little insane. He would say something like "And this here is my naked lady sword." Sure enough there was a naked woman carved into the handle. He insisted I pick up every last one of them.

He also can't read so while I was there he had me read some legal documents from his attorney. He showed me his bike. It was a mountain bike made by Giant. He wasn't riding it of late due to leg numbness and poor vision from diabetes. He said it was stolen once by a homeless guy but he recovered it when another homeless guy recognized it when the thief rolled up on it at St Francis house. The second homeless dude called the cops on the homeless thief and collected a cool $50 reward from my medication review guy.

So I was there for over an hour and a half. I had to get out of there before I puked. The guy was obviously lonely. He said I could drop by anytime and we could rock his play station together. He's a pretty all right guy. I hope his ferret makes it.

Rode the Millhopper loop this morning (Monday). I've had some pretty consistently good rides on the Millhopper and Racetrack loops of late. Getting dropped by some of the Gliders last week was still fresh in my mind. Worked on riding for longer out of the saddle today. Pounded the I75 hill and instead of backing off kept cranking up the second incline to the cross walk by the nature trail.

Forgot to mention last week I did what is known in bike fitting parlance as the "Reverse Panama" and eased the seat forward so my legs are more on top of the pedals. Seems better that way.

Rode the Hawthorne trail solo Saturday. There were a lot of foreign joggers. Also witnessed the debut of the jingling lady. She jogs with a walkman and some kind of pack strapped to her that makes tons of noise. It must have a massive set of keys and wads of change in there. In sounded like 10,000 knights in plate mail marching. Of course she was oblivious due to the headphones.

Didn't stop at the halfway point. I just eyed the empty bench, looped around and headed back. Insanely it took me exactly the same time to get to the halfway point as it did to get back (57:56). Also I used exactly the same amount of effort (129 watts). Weird and I'll have to rethink my theory about it being easier riding on the way back.

Saw the crazy backpack lady riding her bike on Glen Springs road. She covered a lot of ground when she was walking everywhere. Now she must be unstoppable. She needs a Lost-like back story.

Well today (Thursday) stunk. I had the Sempre all primed on the porch for the sick ass 1 minute intervals commute to and from work. But like Bob Seger I woke last night to the sound of thunder. The rain slowed to a drizzle and I made the call to just drive to work. There wasn't time to saddle up the Cortina and riding the Sempre in the rain didn't thrill me. I was also afraid of skidding out if I had to brake hard doing the intervals on the Sempre.

Anyway I should have just gone for it. The rain stopped. The roads didn't look that wet.

My staffing hours were cut again so Thursday was a tough day in the pharmacy. Someone called me up looking for oxycodone. She said "I'm the white girl that picks up prescriptions for the black girl." I actually realized who she was based on that ridiculous description. It set me to making up all sorts of similarly absurd juxtapositions. "I'm the bearded lady that picks up for the bald guy", etc. It seemed amusing in my head anyway. Note we actually have two bearded lady customers, no lie.

Glider ride this morning (Wednesday). We did the loop with a couple of steep ass (for Gainesville anyway) hills. Despite an insane dinner last night- spicy tofu burrito, plantain chips with dip from the Top polished off with an entire pint of Peach Cobbler ice cream from Karma Cream, I felt a little sluggish this morning. Maybe those Tuesday high cadence drills are catching up with me.

Anyway it was a big group today. There was confusion over whether we were riding single or double paceline initially. In the homestretch I punked out big time on the hill over I-75 on Millhopper road. I was leading a group of 3 other remaining riders over this hill. When I reached the crest I signaled that I was dropping back. Those dudes whizzed by but I was too gassed to reattach to the back. It was like when Nic Cage pulled the grenade pin off the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse and he blew up. So I was in no man's land, pedaling the last 14 minutes solo.