It’s probably been two years since I had my road bike in rideable shape. I’ve been riding a lot of mountain bikes in the pandemic so far, but there is nothing quite like long, country miles on a road bike to really get into the zen of it.
I’m out of town and away for the next couple of weekends, but my future will definitely have some local coffee shop rides and more than a few miles along the Virginia Capital Trail.
They clinched it weeks ago and Anfield is empty (thanks, ‘Rona) but today Liverpool finally got to hoist the Premier League Champions Trophy.
It was awesome.
Bandcamp runs a deal on the first Friday of every month where they give their cut of the sale back to the artist. In turn, lots of artists have been donating that extra cut to worthy causes. It’s been fun to go music shopping with a cocktail once a month. Sometimes I spring for the physical copy to go along with the download, which is what happened here.
Moon Duo’s Occult Architecture, Vols. 1 & 2, from 2017, are in the classic Moon Duo guitar-and-synth wheelhouse. It would be a decent starting point if you’re new to the band.
I still had some fun outdoor time but it was too hot to go hard.
Saturday morning tennis was just an hour but the humidity was over 70% so it was super-sweaty and gross. I got some new tennis shoes, too, so the hour-long session was a good break-in session.
I didn’t have team tennis yesterday afternoon, so we went a little further on the bike ride. Stella and I met some folks for Blueberry and we threw in a Bell Lap for good measure.
We ran across some folks managing a big copperhead that had gotten on the trail. It was kind of sketchy. It was also brutally hot and humid again. It’s great to get out and see friends on bikes but the weather definitely took a few points off of the experience.
I continued my headlong adventure back into tennis last night. At my pool there is a Thursday night men’s pickup tennis game. They call it “TNT”, which is maybe “Thursday Night Tennis”? It’s supposed to be casual and everyone brings beers to share at the end. There were only four of us there last night so we set up to play a couple of doubles sets. I actually made some shots and I had some first-serve success, which was nice.
After a while a 5th guy showed up so we started rotating a person out after every game. It was hot and I was sweating hard (as I’m still pretty fat and way out of shape), and I mean sweating such that I left some puddles under then bench after my turn to rotate out.
And then one of the guys left so the four of us remaining decided to play a set. At this point I’ve been playing for over two hours and I’m just soaked with sweat. It’s really gross. I’m leaving trails of sweat drops on the court. And then I see that I’ve left a wet footprint on the court which could be dangerous if one of us were to slip on it. I looked around to what I stepped in but, to my dismay, discovered that the footprints were coming from sweat leaking out of the tops of my shoes.
When I said gross, I meant gross.
I’m still having a great time playing. It’s fun and I’m getting a little better the more I go.
We had a week delay to make room for a vacation. It was great to get back to hanging out with Adam.
It was also great to get into this Greyhound. Vodka and grapefruit delivers a low hangover risk as well as an ally in the fight against scurvy. We call that a win-win.
Here’s Jeb Stuart coming off of the pedestal.
The last one is the biggest and it will be the most controversial.
I’m excited to see it happen.
We were all excited to watch Hamilton over the holiday weekend. Like so many families, ours had a strong bout of Hamilton-Mania back when it was a national sensation. The soundtrack was on all the time and the kids sang the songs themselves when it wasn’t. There was a minor flareup when the show started to tour the US, but it died down pretty quickly. This week leading up to the Disney+ debut of the filmed stage production saw a return to the full-blown Mania but this time I was also excited about it.
I was the last person in the family to see it and it somehow exceeded my expectations. The show is great. The way it’s filmed is great. It looks and sounds so good that I never felt like I was watching a filmed stage production. I can’t recommend it enough if it something you’re remotely interested in.
Sunday started with a very chill mountain bike ride out at Pocahontas State Park with my youngest and some friends. It’s really nice to see people out in the world, and riding bikes is a reasonable way to do it. An ice-cold beer in the shade afterward was a perfect capper.
And then I embraced the hubris and played in my first competitive tennis match. This tennis situation has progressed aggressively. I went from hitting balls on Saturday mornings with a buddy a month ago to joining the USTA and playing a doubles match on a team. It was *so hot* out. I don’t know that the morning bike ride ruined my tennis debut, but it certainly took a little out of the tank. We lost 6-1, 6-4.
This is the part where I express mindful gratitude for being physically capable of doing this stuff. I ask a lot of this old bag of bones and it continues to be there for me. I promise to keep icing these knees for as long as they’ll carry me.