December | 2013 | Steve Tilford

Okay, I’m in a time crunch, so this is going to reflect that. I have 3 days of work to do in a day. Plus I need to pack for Christmas, skiing and the next couple weeks. Anyway, I drove back and forth to Lawrence late last night just sand a layer of drywall compound and put on the final coat. I was driving my Honda Insight Hybred. That was an experience. I sure hope the roads are better today than last night. I had to shovel the driveway of the house I’m working at to get up the drive. That was at about 1 am. It was amazing how many people were driving around in Lawrence at that time.

I went by the bike clubs Christmas party over at Nan and Adam’s. It was good. I hadn’t eaten dinner, so I snacked my way through. I really didn’t eat a proper meal all day yesterday. That is how is seems to go in times like this. I’ve been feeling pretty iffy, so it really doesn’t matter. Trudi has been flat on her back the last 3 days with the flu. She actually passed out and woke up on the kitchen floor. That doesn’t happen to me, but when she was telling friends her ordeal at the holiday party last night, they all had have that happen. That would scare the shit out of me.It snowed about 8 inches last night. First real snow of the year. It has iced a bunch, but not that much snow. Last big shopping day before Christmas for the working people and slick roads. That’s not good. We do drive better, as a group, in snow here, than the people down in Dallas. I guess that experience pays off in that respect.

Okay, how about the World Cup in Namur? Belgium had a really off day as a country. Only 3 riders in the top ten, two on the podium. They didn’t win, Francis Mourey did. WIth Lars van der Haar in the miz with his early season success, they aren’t having a great World Cup season. I didn’t see the whole race, just a few clips from the action. That course looked pretty unbelievable treacherous.

Alight, I’m not really very creative today. I’m already thinking of the order of things I have to do working. I’d better get on that.

This was the majority of my dinner last night. Jeff Unruh brought it.

I have this pet pieve about bagging up leaves to send to the landfill. What a waste.

Half the drives in my neighborhood look like this in the fall. The weird thing is that they aren’t even going to pick them up for three weeks because of the holiday trash service schedule. They don’t do yard waste at this time.

Also, another pet pieve, not cleaning the gutters in front of your house. It’s the homeowners responsibility people. It’s the only way the whole drainage system works. Now with all this snow, this storm sewers will be valueless when it melts.

The oak trees in my front yard keep some of their leaves all winter.

This character wandered up to me yesterday before it snowed. He wanted to do some construction work with me.

His cane was trippy. Like magical or something.

Here is Ian opening up a can of Spotted Dick at the party last night. I didn’t try any.

And Ian after the Spotted Dick. Must of had some pixy dust in it.

Cycling has a ton of attracts for me. But, one perk that most riders don’t take into consideration is the endurance it gives us all in other areas of our lives. I guess I mean physical endurance, but I think the mental aspect transfers over too.

I just got done with 3, 15 hour days trying to finish up a project before the holidays. I worked until 2 or 3 am each day and woke up before 8 to start all over again. And I’m not destroyed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m tweaked some, but not like I would have thought. I did the same thing a few years ago when I roofed my building. I put in 16 hour days for nearly 2 months straight, with little sleep. I wasn’t great at 5 am, but after I got rolling, I was fine. It’s a nice thing to know you can do.

The same goes for other physical areas.. Back in the late 90’s, I was racing in Japan with Specialized at a Catus Cup. We were going to go back to Tokyo after the race to go to the bike show. I came up with the idea that we should hike up Mt. Fuju, even though it was October and it was pretty much shut down. The top was covered with snow and ice.

Anyway, we convinced the Specialized Japan guys to take us there to hike up it. They said yes, but they never said no, and they meant no. So, on the way to Mt. Fuju, Tech, the Specialized guy, took us to a super cool hotel that had an indoor water park. Plus, that night at dinner, he ordered tons of wine. We were all toast. This was in his grand plan to make it so we didn’t die “climbing” up Fuji.

Tech had to be back in Tokyo early afternoon, so he drove us up to the tourist area, a few thousand feet up the mountain, and left us. We were way late and Tech explained that there is no way we had enough time to get to the top. Plus, the weather. He’d asked around and no one went to the top at that time of the year. We grabbed some Powerbars, made a couple sandwiches and took off. It was Ned, Trudi, Kris Burchard (Marketing director of Specialized) and Ned’s brother. Kris and Ned’s brother were pretty fit for normal people. But, not fit enough to keep up with us on our schedule. Trudi, Ned and I had a little pow wow and decided we needed to jettison those guys. So, when they caught back up, we told them we couldn’t wait, gave them their share of our food, and took off.

It wasn’t easy. It was super cold, the wind was howling. Plus, it was icy and snowy the top 1/4. Normally, it is a walk up. I think in the summer, there are days when over 10,000 go to the top on a single day. We were the only ones that day, maybe that week, maybe the month.

We made it to the top. It was hard because the trail was up the shaded side, which was, like I said above, pretty treacherous. Once on the top, we got sunshine and warmth. Plus, there wasn’t much snow. We pulled out our Specialized banner and took a photo, then headed back down a different trail.

The downhill was our undoing. Well, not all of ours. Trudi was struggling up. I had her grab ahold of the waist of my jeans, while I short-roped her the last bit. I was worried about her slipping and sliding 1000 feet down the mountain. But once we started down, she was stellar. And Ned and I completely fell apart. Nearly at the bottom, both Ned and I couldn’t walk down anymore. We had to turn around and walk backwards. It was loose pumice and it wasn’t that easy.

We hooked back up with Ned’s brother and Kris and caught a bus back to Tokyo. The next week, walking around Tokyo, neither Ned or I could even step off a curb. Our thighs were prety destroyed. But, our cycling fitness got us up to the top when normally it wouldn’t be possible.

There aren’t too many sports that allow participates to exercise for as long as cycling does. Cross country skiing is one. Hiking I guess, if you count that as a sport (Nothing against hiking). It is one of the best fringe benefits of the sport. And it transfers to many other things, like marathon construction. It’s great.