Hello October Break!

This cow was scratching the top of its head on the side of the walkway when we got there.  That's Kenny across the way.

 October Break arrive and envelope me with your sweet arms of non-work, no fighting students, no belly-aching teachers, no needy pupils, absence of alarm clocks, with time to read recreationally.  Today's Friday, the day before my school's October Break.  Other than being completely frazzled and time mismanaged at work, the break arrives nonetheless.  It arrives as my mental state's on the verge of collapse with our district (as well the State really) functioning on a deficit (we all knew this is year two of "suck" as opposed to rebound), a new schedule my circadian rhythm's all cattywampus from, and juggling the schedules of three active chilluns, it tends to make one Cycling Dad's trajectory o'recreation and mental health kinda wacked!  Sweet Melissa's attending her cousin's wedding in Texas for the weekend and I get the privilege to hang with my two remaining kids.  Maricel has soccer almost the same time Mason has swim lessons so she's spending the night with Gramma.  This evening, the Moose and I are chillin' on my bed.  He's so pooped out he just fell asleep before I could read him a book.  Gramma, being the ever-awesome Gramma, agreed to watch the Moose and Maricel (after her game and swimming) so I can go ride with one of my teammates who lives nearby.  Gonna bust a 29er ride with him.  Speaking of 29er, did another cyclocross race on my 29er in Boulder last weekend and came in exactly underneath the apex of the bell curve:  35th out of 70.  It was a real fun race, with a "maze" portion and one barricade that had a notch where people were bunny-hopping it at speed-including me.  The sprint to the finish line was on pavement and it ended with me having a nice cushion from Mr. 36th place.  I looked back a couple of times to make sure I wouldn't get passed at the end.  Had that $hit happen before and I felt flummoxed for letting my position drop by one at the last possible minute.

The Murphy's Law of Weather-To-Outdoor-Recreate-In is in effect, which states: as the bourgeoisie toil at work the weather shall be accommodating and purty; whereas said bourgeoisie's days off will consist of cold weather complemented with precipitation.  I have cold weather gear.  I ain't scared; but it's a deal breaker if the temps hover near-freezing.  Everything's cold then, including your Willy and toes and when that happens, it's time to stay indoors.  Got frostbitten once at A-Basin skiing with Jay.  On my my nose and near my cheek.  It was weird.  Yeah.  Ski season I is sooooo looking forward to you too.  I wanna ride with another teammate who just moved near the area.  He's an excellent 'crosser and mt biker to boot but I ain't gonna ride on wet trails peeps.   My boy Hez-chilly's going to Moab with his familia this weekend.  Nice.

Saturday is a wee bit cold but glorious for a Fall Day in Colorado.  Talk about the phenomenon of synchronicity.  My brother just recently made the switch to tubeless.  Today, before I take my son to swim practice (he's kicking butt by the way), as I load up my 29er to go riding with my homey Kenny L. and notice that both my tires are flat from all the goatheads that gravitated to my tires in my last cyclocross race.  At the rec center I call Kenny and tell him my tires are flat and he suggests I by some Stan's sealant to make my tires tubeless.  How cosmically hip is that?  Once I get to Kenny's he performs his magic and voilà (not more than 7 minutes later) I have a tubeless wheelset.  It also helps to get a UST compatible wheelset.  I have the Mavic C29 Crossmax.  Excellent design but a smidge heavy as a 700C, mountain bike wheelset.

Off we go to get a 3 hr, 35 mile ride in Boulder that consists of traveling on roads to hit some singletrack.  We meander around Marshall Mesa which goes over some private ranch lands and open space.  Kenny too has a 29er, a Gary Fisher Superfly.  Nice ride, also tubeless.  Oh yeah and it's a hardtail.  We can't believe how awesome today is weather-wise. 

Our view of the Flatirons from Marshall Mesa-ish.  Yes it's October in Co.

On one of our stops, a rider states that he saw some of our teammates in today's previously raced Interlocken Cyclocross event.  We used to have a very distinctive color scheme back in the day:  orange/light purple/white kits.  Now we're Halloween colors.  Oh well. We ride at tempo, cruise over rocks and the occasional cow patty and my tubeless wheelset's hanging tough and not losing any pressure although I did have to pump it up once when we were on the bike path.  Holding air nicely now.  The ride gets interrupted by milking cows loitering on the singletrack doing their niche as a primary consumer.  They're huge beasts and what resounded in my mind was:  I'm glad I'm a vegetarian.  Looking into that creature's eyes with that kind of mass and still knowingly consume it does not compute in my head.  I won't hold it against you though if you're a flesh eater (with no soul, selfish, artery clogging, ego-centristic species elitist). 

After I get my kids from Gramma, we travel home in order to do some familial bonding over a DVD only to find a tractor-trailer has overturned on our highway back home.  The jumbo-tron over the highway said, "Accident ahead, expect delays."  We sat for at least 40 mins.  It sucked.  I tried to snap a picture of the vehicle on its side with my cell phone.  See if you can make it out.

The median-barrier letterboxes it but see the cab on the left and trailer on the right?

 It's almost surreal because of the lights from the emergency vehicles reflecting off the cab and trailer like a billboard at night.  Once home, we hunkered down on the couch with Doritos and Dr. Pepper in hand to watch the 4th installment of the Shrek series.  Very cool movie both visually and of its plot.  At the end we all clapped with silly grins on our faces due to its wondrous audio-visual performance.  Kid friendly with some sly adult stuff.  Highly recommend it to y'all family types.  This is a good start to the Break.  Let's hope the new weather front isn't too harsh.