I can get my busted ankle (foot) inside my cycling shoe!!

It's been a week since I broke my ankle and the soft tissue swelling has significantly subsided in such a way I can get it in my specialized road shoe. In fact, yesterday before the kids woke up, I put on my sock, shoes, gloves and shorts and rode the rollers for three-quarters of an hour and there was little to no discomfort. I kinda had to preset the foot angle to make sure it was in the position of no pedaling discomfort. It was great! Today, I ride with the team manager, director sportif, homeboy extraordinaire, satanic mechanic, brew-master junior, grizzly adams, and general good guy: Kenny L. and nice guy/new recruit Garth!

But before I begin, sweet Melissa started her Saturday by going skiing with her girlfriends (picture perfect weather Saturday by the way). That left me, gimp-master, with our kids. Dat's okay though, my kids are generally badasses.

If there's no other breakfast that's stuck with me growing up in Texas other than breakfast burritos with chorizo, chilies, and salsa, it's biscuits and gravy. But being the pescatarian that I am, I had to go on-line to find a "vegetarian, white gravy" concoction. Lo and behold I found that recipe and it's vegetarian biscuits, gravy, and sausage. Yummy. My kids usually dig the breakfasts that I dig with the exception of my middle daughter drowning her sausage in ketchup.

Earlier this week since I can't walk in deep snow, when the rest of Team M was off, they rounded up some cut tree trunks worthy of becoming firewood. So the kids set themselves up with the Sports Wii disc and off I was in our snow covered driveway cutting up firewood. I put a plastic bag over Das Boot (I know it means boat, but as written, it's wrong syntax funny) to prevent wood hubris from attaching to it but it still got peppered. 2 hours later, we be gots firewood!!!! This and what's remaining from the cord I requisitioned last month should take us to the end of January where we can buy another cord from our neighbor, across the way. Have I mentioned how much I dig my chainsaw. It's a Stihl "Wood Boss". Been three years now and I haven't even sharpened it. Should. I do take it apart and tension the chain and lube what needs to be lubed though.

Next, we head down the hill to go visit Grandma where they can watch "Home on the Range" and some random R. L. Stine "Goosebumps" DVD. I also wash and wax my truck. I like to put a layer of wax on my truck as a barrier to the magnesium chloride they spray out here on the roads as anti-freeze measures. I get a text from Kenny L about our ride Sunday. As my kids are chillin' with Grandma, I ask 'em "who wants to go visit Kenny with me?" Mason volunteers and we go over to Kenny's who's conveniently located next to Grandma's house. As the satanic mechanic that he is, Mason and I enter his garage where he's inspecting a corvette transmission he liberated from a junkyard that's potentially going into his Volvo 740 that runs 11 second quarter miles! We chat about the location of the start of the ride and other stuff bike related. When he was in graduate school attempting his Ph.D in organic chemistry he made friends with a Kinesiology doctoral candidate who's involved with an American, UCI pro-tour, licensed team. He was telling me how his friend said it was kinda sucky with his current outfit and was considering different options. Then one night, as Kenny and his bud were out at dinner, his friend's phone rings and it's Lance asking him to be part of his team. Of course he accepted and within days, Lance's private jet picks him and his gear up and they're off to do some structured, world class training. Geeky, bike gossip are just some of the types of conversation bike trash (term of endearment) talk about. If you've ever been involved with bike trash and you're at a party where they find other bike trash, and you're their greenhorn date/significant other, it'll sound like a foreign conversation and incredibly boring. We can go on for hours about bike personalities, gear ratios, quality of chamois, bike fits, plushness of forks, personalities of bike frame materials, differences between: shoes, pedals whatever, team rosters, candidates for winning the Tour de France in 2010 etc...it's kind of our holy grail.

Sunday I meet Kenny and Garth in north Golden for 3.5 hour ride that turned into a 4 hour ride if you include the flats (3 total; one from me, two from Kenny L.) and stops to increase the glycemic index. The ride on the roads and bike trails were amazingly slushy to icy and of course I didn't bring my fender. No worries though because the company we kept distracted us from the wet cold creeping into our kits and drinking the rooster tails of water from drafting one another and the headwinds both directions. It was a blast and the occasional hills we encountered was just enough to tax our prime movers. That last hill going up Washington Street in Golden was a rude but honest effort to end the ride. I was probably the weakest one in our group because I instigated the stops to spike my blood sugar. I'm digging the new batch of racers/recruits with Kenny as the DS. We probably put in a just-shy-of-60 miler today in 4 hours (including the stops and flats). If I'm worth anything I'll hop on the rollers tomorrow...

My bike's a mess and it needs some loving but not not tonight kids. I'm pooped out.