The title pretty much says what I‘ve been doing the last week.  I think I’ve only ridden my road bike once in the past 10 days.  I’m not exactly sure why I’ve been doing this.  Probably a few reasons.

One is that I’m trying to get in some miles and it is a minimum of 60 miles back and forth, so I’ve had a couple 400 + mile weeks, even though I’m not feeling that good riding.  Two is that it is “they” are doing a ton of burning west of town and south of Topeka, like the whole state, so I have a much higher chance of breathing better air if I’m riding east toward Lawrence and Kansas City.

That wasn’t the case on Saturday.  Brian rode the 30+ miles over to Topeka and Bill and I met up with him.  Then we headed back east and eventually south.  We could see plumes of smoke just about everywhere we looked.  We did a serpentine route, trying to avoid riding directly into any smoke.

It worked out pretty good most of the way, until we got back to Lawrence for some coffee, but riding back to Topeka, it was pretty bad.  We were just slowly riding back into a deep haze of shit.

I’m driving Bromont over to Manhattan this morning, for a three week check-up, and I’m interested to see how much of the actually grasslands they have burned.  It is pretty much Flint Hills most of the way from Topeka to Manhattan, so it will be a good gauge of what percentage of grass has been burned.

I have been a little better this year than some of the past.  Well, that’s not really right, because recently, I’ve just left the state for the majority of the burning season.  I don’t think it is very good for my health to be exercising 4 plus hours in these conditions.  But, this year, I have to stay around for Bromont, so it is what it is.

Dennis is having his one week check-up tomorrow and he’s hoping to get a good report and head back north up to Wisconsin.  He’s actually supposed to be flying over to Siberia for a World Loppet meeting, but I don’t think he is up to that.   I think/know he’s a little bored just waiting around, kind of lame, with not much to do.  He might be driving back into Siberia, sort of, because it snowed overnight up in Cable.   At least the National Championship NCAA game is tonight.

I woke up early yesterday for Tour of Flanders.  That was a pretty good last hour and a half.  I don’t really understand some of the tatics used by some teams, but it is way easier to criticize bad tactics after the fact.  For the first hour I watched the race, it was Team Sky, with Wiggins, sitting at the front pulling the remaining of the field along.  Then at the end, they didn’t have anyone in contention, or anyone left to help even.

I don’t see how anyone could have beaten Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) yesterday.  He seemed like he could have shelled just about everyone, which he did, and if that didn’t work out, he has it in his arsenal to outsprint them.

Trudi made Easter dinner and we had Catherine’s mom over, plus a couple other people,  Eventually, Keith, who flew back from Seattle and had dinner in Kansas City with his family, came by with some other friends.  It was nice.

Anyway, I have to get going.  I need to be at K-State by 9:30.  Dennis has never been to Manhattan, so he’s taggin‘ along.

They were smoke plumes nearly everywhere we looked on Saturday.

The riding did have a few real primitive sections.

This is a burn map and Topeka was the epicenter of burning, of the whole US, on Saturday.

Eating dinner last night before everyone else showed up.

Dennis has been taking a mid-day nap ever since he shattered his elbow. Doesn’t seem extreme.

I used to climb trees all the time.  Like, all the time.  Most of the summer when I was in elementary school, I’d be up in some tree a large part of the day.

All my friends climbed trees.  Sometimes at night, we’d all just climb up in a tree and talk.  There would be 5-10 kids sitting on different levels, just messing around and talking.

I knew all the trees in my neighborhood.  I could get from the ground to the top in a flash.

I fell out of a few trees too.  I started early, falling out of a huge Cottonwood tree in my front yard, when I was 6.  I ruptured my spleen and had to have emergency surgery to have it removed.  When I was 12, I fell out of the top of another tree in my yard.  At old rope that we had a pulley on broke and I fell.  I shattered my heel then and had to wear a cast for 3 months.

The biggest fall I had was one day when I was staying home from school when I was sick.  I was probably 10.  I went outside, when my mom was doing something else and climbed to the very top of a big Maple tree in our yard.  I was above the top pitch of the roof of our house, which was two stories, then an attic.

The branches at the top of the tree are all small, mostly new.  That means they aren’t very strong.  A small branch broke under my foot and I didn’t have a good hold, so I fell.  I knew I was jacked.  I fell the whole height of the tree and, luckily for me, landed on my back on a big branch 10 feet from the ground.  This pretty much stopped all my speed before I hit the ground.

I remember jumping up, scared my mom had seen me fall.  I was amazed I didn’t break anything or get hurt.  It was my biggest fall, but by pure luck, I was fine.  It was probably a 40 foot fall.

I don’t see kids every climbing trees anymore.  The last time I saw a kid in a tree was in Lake GeneavaGeneva, Wisconsin, probably 6 years ago.  He was outside a Starbucks and looked just like I did when I was a kid.  Sinewy, with ribs protruding everywhere.  (Bromont would be a good tree climber if he was a human.)  I don’t see many of those kids around much.

I don’t climb trees much either.  I haven’t climbed a tree since I had shoulder surgery two years ago.  It is amazing how different the planet looks from a tree.  And how many different sounds you hear while sitting high upon a limb.  You can hear the wind, not just feel it.  Climbing trees is good for your mind.  It is freeing, uplifting, plus connects you to nature.

As adults, most think that climbing trees is for kids.  I think too many adults restrict their experiences because of imaginary lines they draw for themselves.

I think I need to rectify my absence of tree climbing.  It will be good for my soul.

I happen to have a couple good climbing trees in my front yard. My grandmother planted these Oaks back in 1964. They grew up pretty good.