Life is all Uphill

Nada has been down for the past week with a Flu. And now Faris has it. He threw up on me last Thursday - a small bucket full all over my shirt - and again Thursday night, and again this morning. Now he has a fever. I am the only person in my household who isn't sick (yet).

I'll have to stay home with Faris until he is well again (Nada missed work all last week), and we have a HUGE project due in 1 month at work. We probably need 6 weeks to do the work. That has always been the case for the last 9 years at my current job. So missing a few days of work (and I'm not even sick) will mean I'll need to be that much more on the gas when I return to work.

I rode the mountain bike at Walnut Creek park on Saturday AM with my neighbor, Jorge, who just purchased an Orbea Alma 29er. Now I want one.

Today I rode a couple of hours into the 20+ mph NNE winds. Religious holidays are nice b/c it keeps drivers off the roads. Lime Creek Rd, a sinuous, twisting road bordering Lake Travis behind my house, was almost totally devoid of automobile traffic. The guys on crotch rockets took advantage, though, and buzzed me around a couple of blind turns.

On the way home, after riding into the 20 mph headwind for the last 2 hours, I had to ride up Triple Bitch to get home. The top of the climb is about 2 miles from my front door, more or less at the intersection of Commelina Dr and Lime Creek Rd on the Google Map. My legs were already dead at the bottom of the climb. It hurt a little more than usual.

Here's the power file from the climb, 180 bpm and 525 watts at the top. Not really an ideal cool-down. But the alternative was to U-turn and ride 20 miles the other way to get home.



You can see from the power profile why the locals call it "Triple Bitch".