It really wasn’t the most awesome weekend, sad to say.

Really, I honestly just started behind, unable to shake continuing bureaucratic nightmares that seem to be my lot in life these last few weeks (I’m taking all kinds of heat because my name is on a project that is being held up by two warring factions of the finance department who won’t accept each other’s reasoning over one measley letter on a spreadsheet somewhere, even though we all know the money is where it needs to be). Friday morning we got word that a dear friend slowly recovering from a significant health issue took a turn for the worse; resulting in us taking in an extra kid for a good chunk of the weekend so said friend’s partner could be there to offer support and wrangle medical professionals.

It was the proper thing we did, and I was happy to do it, though it completely threw off our weekend plans, and as my partner was obligated to spend a large part of the weekend teaching make-up dance classes because of a studio closure a couple of weeks back, I was largely homebound to address issues amongst Adult Children Who Should Know Better™, a teenager riding the wave of vaccine shot #1, and distracting another teenager who was very worried about the health of their parent.

As I said, I’m not sorry we did a favor for a friend; not at all – we love these people like they’re family; they’d do the same for us in a heartbeat, no question. I just started the weekend with a significant spoon deficit and never really got a chance to plug the charger in to make up the difference.

All the same, I got a bunch of stuff done that needed doing. I hit the farmer’s market and did the shopping, washed four or five loads of laundry, finally fixed the cable jack on the five-string bass, as it’s looking like I might have a need for it on a stage in a few weeks, and knocked out some household bookkeeping. I did a good job, too, it just wore me the heck out.

The only real time I got to clear my head was when I racked the bike and disappeared for a couple of hours to put 41 miles behind me on the Capital Trail early Sunday. It started out a little cold, but I soon got myself in a zone where my mind went mostly blank and it was nothing but pedals and gears; I didn’t owe anything to anybody, except myself and the occasional bell ring/”on your left” to the slower riders I was passing. It felt good, and afterwards, according to my tracking app, I averaged three and a half minute miles, which is crazy fast (approx 17mph), at least for me, a larger guy on a 29er cross bike surrounded by tiny little guys on tiny little road bikes.

The week ahead, alas, looks like more of the usual grind (in fact, the work emails from people decrying last-minute tasks at 11:00 on Sunday night when I submitted the documents for review COB Thursday, were waiting for me Monday morning, once I was able to get into my email at all). The weather looks beautiful, though so I look forward to some decent cycling, though that’s already been scuttled for Monday, as I have to drive one of those Adult Children Who Should Know Better™ out east for a short-term housesitting gig, which is going to eat up my entire afternoon.

So…yeah.

As you’re probably aware, the news dropped yesterday from the CDC that those of us among the vaccinated can ditch the mask in most situations. In the scheme of things, this is good news, though to be honest, this last year has done a lot to raise my level of caution in a lot of ways, particularly since the behavior of certain fellow humans in this reddish corner of a blue state hasn’t exactly inspired confidence, even if this county’s overall vaccination statistics aren’t the worst I’ve seen.

So yeah, I’ll likely keep wearing my mask in stores and other such crowded places for the time being; it feels like the socially responsible thing to do, I’m used to it, and it honestly provides a certain degree of comfort.

And yes, I feel it’s also a signal to others that I’m “not an asshole.” I’m fully comfortable admitting that over the course of this thing, the people ignoring mask-and-distance mandates convey, for me and for others I know, the exact opposite. The behavior and loud pronouncements of that (way too large) sector of the population is not something I wish to be associated with, and that sort of behavior seriously contributed to things becoming as bad as they did in this country.

Bills. Bike. Bureaucratic Bullshit.

Not much else to say, really…

Anyway, here’s some music:

1. “PDA” – Interpol
2. “Search and Destroy – Iggy Pop Mix” – The Stooges
3. “Trash Generator” – Tera Melos
4. “Mantra” – Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, Trent Reznor
5. “Rapid Fire Tollbooth” – Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
6. “The Other Shoe” – Fucked Up
7. “Hey You” – The Exies
8. “Cigarettes, Wedding Bands” – Band of Horses
9. “Junior Kickstart” – The Go! Team
10. “Fever Dog” – Still Water
11. “Marquee Moon” – Television
12. “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” – Buzzcocks
13. “Hey Man Nice Shot” – Filter

I took a few days off last week. I rather needed it. I slept in (for certain personal values of “slept in”), got some stuff done that needed doing (mowed the grass, detailed the car, etc), tried to relax a bit, and then on Friday, I got up in the morning and did the Cap2Cap, riding my bike fifty-three miles in about four hours.

That was a thing I did, and doing it felt good. Yes, I’m a middle-aged man who’s carrying a bit more quarantine weight than he’d prefer, but if I can do that (and that’s just one part of the 800 miles or so I’ve ridden in the last eight weeks or so) I can’t say that I’m in that terrible of shape.

I also celebrated the accomplishments of my children, saw the successful release of a new musical project I was a part of, and spent a pleasant evening with some also-vaccinated friends I haven’t seen in a year in a local biergarten, sharing a drink or three and eating fusion tacos.

It was nice.

Nice enough to take some of the sting out of returning to work Monday morning to an inbox full of self-involved blowhards in the financial department doing their level best to derail what should be a very simple contract option exercise by doing budget things that have no relation to the curriculum of the financial management courses I took in grad school, and arguing with the ledgers-of-record when it they don’t fit their particularly skewed viewpoint.

Even if my nice long weekend took some of the sting off of coming back to the grind, I still wrapped my workday feeling drained and out of spoons. The rainy weather, of course, didn’t help much, though I honestly didn’t have the energy for a ride anyway. Nor did the house being kind of weird, messy work in progress as the reorganization of the sewing room met the re-introduction of another person and their stuff.

About all I had the brainspace for was hiding in my corner of the bedroom with a book and petting a cat.

That, in it’s own way, was also kind of nice.

In an *interesting* development, ten days after getting my second dose of the Pfizer shot, Monday night I got hit with a repeat performance of those wonderful side effects. Not as intense as the initial round, but still a slightly elevated fever, muscle aches, and swollen lymph nodes.

Joy.

I know this means that it’s convincing my body to do the things it needs to do in order to build immunity, but damn, if it isn’t frustrating; I thought I was past this; I have things to do that require my aging body to perform at a pretty high level of fitness in the next couple of days, and right now, I don’t feel up to it.

Oh well, given that my schedule for the rest of the week has adjusted some, I have the opportunity for a little down time in the next day or two; hopefully that’ll help, assuming I can knock out that one last thing for work in order to meet an arbitrarily assigned deadline that has just one person (though for novelty’s sake, it’s an entirely different person than usual) holding up the process.

Also, it might give me some more time to conquer my current challenge with the soldering iron and the output jack on the Jazz Bass. This is a repair I’ve made numerous times before with great success, however, it isn’t working this time for some reason – I’ve even checked my connections against fancy German wiring diagrams on the internet, and they match, but there remains no joy or joyful noise. I suspect a faulty wire. The next step is to replace that, though after banging my head against the wall for an hour last night, I set the project aside before I started getting sloppy and burned myself.

Oh well; I was hoping to have a new tune recorded and posted for Bandcamp Friday this month, and this is threatening to derail that plan because I really need this instrument for the planned track. I might hold off anyway; I don’t want to steal any glory from (or, honestly, have my little solo project completely overshadowed by) the new Humdingers record, which, as I may have mentioned, is really good, and I’m proud to be a part of.

All that broken stuff on Thursday in the last post? The train, as they say, keeps rollin’, though thankfully, it’s nothing that can’t be recovered from, though some things are rougher than others.

To start with, I’ve been watching my lovely spouse deal with the stressful realization that something that’s been a significant part of her life for a while just isn’t delivering the joy it used to. I won’t elaborate further (it’s not my place), but it’s tough to watch, and there’s not a lot I can do to help apart from being there if she needs me.

Saturday, the “check engine” light came on in my car (which, for this particular manufacturer, includes a bonus “traction control turned off” status!), which had me scrambling for a few hours, increasingly frustrated because I couldn’t find my OBDII reader to diagnose and clear the codes. I don’t know what happened to it; it’s small and easliy dropped, and as my kindly neighbor to the west suggested, it might have gotten lifted by an unscrupulous mechanic and I didn’t notice (I haven’t needed it in a while). Still, I got exasperatedly invested trying to find it, and raised all sorts of other latent frustrations, though I eventually ended up riding off on the trail Saturday afternoon, positively sprinting 17 miles at less than four minutes per.

Oh, it turns out the warning light was a loose gas cap (ugh). Cleared it the old fashioned way by disconnecting the battery for a minute.

Sunday, I went ahead and did one last long ride before the Cap2Cap on Friday; 45 miles. It was a beautiful day (I can only hope it’ll be that nice this coming Friday), and a really nice ride, though I’d be dishonest if I said that I wasn’t a little sore in the glutes and quads (and other places) this morning. At least the bike didn’t break this time.

I also got to hear the almost final version of the new Humdingers record – you guys, it’s going to be something special; very different than past stuff, and my bandmate/producer has made my parts (that I struggled with confidence on) sounds really damned good. That’s nice. Keep an eye out on Friday.

The week ahead is going to be short – I’m taking the back half off, in part for the Cap2Cap on Friday, but also because (ever-shifting-schedule willing…alas), there’s a run out west to grab the kid; I just hope I have enough room in the car for all her crap.

Here’s hoping the breakages get filled with gold going forward, and that my two-day work week doesn’t feel longer than the usual five.

Apart from my spending the whole week thinking it was a day later than it was, I got a heck of a lot done, at least up until Thursday. Never got the hang, etc.

Earlier in the week, they started migrating the email system at work to a different platform (the whats and whos aren’t really important), and it’s been playing havoc with getting work done as messages don’t get where they need to be. At least it didn’t hit me until Thursday, after I finished the big project for my boss where I had to classify every program in the department according to the new fancy system, which involved emailing and cold-calling all the Program Managers everywhere and picking their brains about their projects (which, as a mostly introvert, sucked).

Outside of work, once the worst of the vax #2 side effects passed, had a couple of beautiful bike rides out in the sunny 80° weather, at least until Thursday afternoon, when five miles into my after-work ride, I broke a spoke on the rear wheel, and had to walk the bike back a few miles to the car. Luckily, my local shop, Molly’s Bike Shop and Blind Dog Brewery, were able to squeeze me in between projects on their crazy busy schedule, and in the span one beer (a tasty Train Wreck NE IPA), they had my wheel fixed and sent me back on my way. I am tremendously grateful; the service, the beer, and the friendly dogs there are always top notch.

After wrapping up my bike fix and a couple of errands, I returned home to tackle a last-minute recording job for the new Humdingers record, and after knocking out four solid B+ takes for the song, in the middle of what was looking like an A+, the cable jack on the Jazz bass crapped out…again (and I also clicked the wrong button and lost the good two minutes…). Hopefully we’ll be able to salvage something from what I did get done; at least the bum notes are in different places on all of them. Looks like this weekend is going to involve some quality time with the soldering iron, alas.

So, yeah, I guess none of these breakdowns were anything I couldn’t recover from, but when I had a second beer last evening while winding down, I drank it out of the can instead of pouring into a glass.

Just in case.

So, tunes. Spotify seems to think it’s 1991; grungy stuff with a few doses of obvious classic rock. Not the worst (and I was totally banging my head a bit to #7 this morning):

1. “Jenny Says” – Cowboy Mouth
2. “Lay Down” – Priestess
3. “Layla” – Derek & The Dominos
4. “Monster Magnet” – Negasonic Teenage Warhead
5. “King of the Road” – Fu Manchu
6. “What’s Inside A Girl” – Daughters
7. “Mother” – Danzig
8. “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” – The Rolling Stones
9. “King Rat” – Modest Mouse
10. “Electric to Inept” – Madde
11. “Nearly Lost You” – Screaming Trees
12. “Train Kept a Rollin'” – Aerosmith
13. “At Night In Dreams” – White Denim

As I had indicated in Friday’s post, I got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine that afternoon. The mass vaccination site I’d been scheduled for (a local university athletic center) was much less crowded this time around, in part because we’re doing pretty well in this state in terms of vaccinations overall, two, because many Americans are idiots.

As I also indicated, after seeing what other folks have gone through, I didn’t make any plans, which, as I expected, was prudent. While I didn’t get it as bad as some, I spent 36 hours or so with a low-grade (<100°) fever, some general lethargy, and a ton of muscle aches all over, which, here on Monday morning, still haven't quite passed, but are certainly tolerable.

I think it helped that immediately after the shot, I visited a nearby NPS site I hadn’t been to in a while and hiked a couple of miles, because I knew that once things really kicked in, I wasn’t going to get much exercise for the weekend. If it didn’t help the vaccine side effects, it certainly made me feel better.

Saturday I honestly spent most of the day in bed reading or (occasionally) napping, managing fever and aches with Tylenol and drinking fluids. I wasn’t particularly hungry at all this weekend, though what I did eat stayed down, which was nice after what some others have gone through. Sunday I got up and did a bit more; I did some laundry, cleaned my fish tank, recorded a couple of bass tracks for the upcoming Humdingers project, and made a quick grocery run, though by early afternoon, life was taking it out of me, so I spent some quality time in front of the television burning through the first few installments of the Fast and Furious franchise (a not-at-all-guilty pleasure of mine) before deciding it was time for bed.

As I start my week today, I’m feeling mostly human again, though I’m not going to push things too far physically for another day or so; the bike will still be there (besides, the weather looks much nicer tomorrow anyway) when I come out the other side.

As for the rest of the week, it looks remarkably normal, if a little heavy on the work schedule, but that’s because I’m still doing the work for two different positions at the moment, though, pleasantly, my efforts are being recognized, and will hopefully pay dividends at evaluation time. Otherwise, I still owe my bandmates tracks for two more tunes by the end of the month, and there’s prep to be done both for my upcoming half-century ride, and to get the house ready to have another body in it (hopefully only temporarily) in a week or two.

The wheels, they keep turning…

So, I came to the realization mid-way through yesterday that I’ve been working way too damned hard the last two weeks. It’s true, I’ve been hugely productive at work, I’ve ridden a ton of miles on the bike, and I’ve even gotten a start on the Humdingers tracks I owe my bandmates down south.

That said, I am exhausted, drained, and all kinds of other words you might find here, and I am just kind of done.

So, I guess it’s probably for the best that I’ve got my second dose of Pfizer this afternoon.

Given the anecdotal evidence and what I’ve seen first-hand in others, it’s probably going to hit me pretty hard, so I’ve made absolutely no plans this weekend; I fully expect to be crashed on the couch or in the bedroom with a book or remote, Tylenol every six hours, and a beverage nearby.

Nothing at all wrong with taking advantage of the biologically-enforced downtime, and I plan on doing just that.

And honestly, that’s about it. Here are some tunes. Lots of 80s alternative interspersed with some neat other stuff (#13? amazing), an all-time favorite there at the end:

1. “Adolescent Sex” – Japan
2. “Satch Boogie” – Joe Satriani
3. “Panic Attack” – Dream Theater
4. “Randy’s Hot Tonight” – Electric Six
5. “Post Toastie” – T. Bolin
6. “The Killing Moon” – Echo & The Bunnymen
7. “Metal Fatigue” – Allan Holdsworth
8. “Ziggy Stardust” – Bauhaus
9. “21st Century Schizoid Man” – We Hunt Buffalo
10. “Tattooed Love Boys” – Pretenders
11. “People Who Died” – The Jim Carroll Band
12. “A Life of Illusion” – Joe Walsh
13. “Pipeline” – Steveie Ray Vaughan, Dick Dale
14. “Constantinople” – The Residents
15. “Bastards of Young” – The Replacements

The weather this weekend was rather beautiful, so I spent a good bit of time on two wheels, and even hit a couple of personal milestones. It’s one area where I can feel like I’m not failing at life; cycling is giving me a consistent string of “wins” that I’m sorely in need of.

Even if I am taking more of those little brown pills lately.

After a stretch of not particularly great weather this week, I got out for my first ride of the weekend on Friday afternoon after wrapping up work. The plan was to ease back into things; fifteen miles or so on my favored portion of the VCT. I didn’t quite get that far due to one more instance of the universe indicating to me that the whitetail deer population of Virginia is out to get me*. As I’m cruising along between fallow cornfields and greenery in one of the sections that’s not directly parallel to Route 5, a deer jumps out of the bushes less than ten feet in front of me, forcing a quick reaction on the (thankfully just adjusted) brakes so as not to hit the reckless cervid, leading to some interesting spinal geometry on my part to keep from taking a spill. I did not fall, nor did I hit the deer, but was nursing a pretty sore back afterward. At that point, I slowly pedaled back to the trailhead, putting about 11 total miles behind me.

I rested up a bit with some proper analgesics, and felt better to the point that after running some errands Saturday morning, I felt good enough to give it another go in the afternoon, putting 21 miles down on a different section of the trail that I haven’t ridden much, or at all, this year, figuring I’d want to get some recce time on it before covering the whole distance in a couple of weeks. In spite of the rolling hills (and a couple of big ones), I made a good pace (almost 15mph), and felt remarkably not sore afterward.

Full of myself, I hit the trail again Sunday morning aiming to increase the distance traveled; from Four Mile Creek trailhead out to Charles City Courthouse, where I turned around on my forty-miler last weekend coming from the other direction, so I could claim to have covered the whole distance of the trail this year before the big one, and so I did. Another 42 miles (and a few hundred yards) in the can, again at nearly 15mph, a beautiful couple of hours in the sun, and no near collisions with deer.

So yes, a couple of milestones: Covering the whole trail in sections this year, my first encounter with large wildlife on the trail, just edging out last weekend for my longest single ride by a quarter mile or so, and, upon looking at my dashboard on the drive home from the trailhead, realizing that I’d put more miles on my bicycle this weekend than I did on my car.

I indeed felt good about my progress this weekend, even if it did involve a few more morning painkillers than I’d necessarily prefer, but it’s better the alternatives.

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* –Over the last few years, this weekend was far from the first time I’ve had a close encounter with a whitetail; apart from a few other instances of “near misses” as described above, I’ve had a small deer bounce off my hip while riding on a dirt trail, and had a deer hip-check my car on the highway, even after I slowed and nearly stopped to avoid the thing, leading to a small but interesting battle scar on the driver’s-side rear door.