Hectic week
This week has been a tough one, hence the lack of blog posting. I mentioned an incident with my son in the last post. That was hard to deal with and it has hung heavy on my mind all week. It made it hard to concentrate on just about anything.
We’ve been having trouble with him testing boundaries and making bad choices since his hormones kicked in. It has been hard for me as a parent to deal with it. He was the kind of young child that other parents were jealous of – mindful, funny, obedient, quiet and good at everything he tried. We never had any incidents, tantrums or things of that nature. He’s still great at anything he tries, still funny, still a great kid, he’s just becoming a man, and if I think back to my high school days, I remember them being pretty damn hard too. In fact, I hated high school, and I don’t use the word hate lightly here.
My dad wasn’t around and I was dealing with abandonment issues and anger and it spiraled out of control into drugs, alcohol and all around partying. Looking back on it today, it seems as if I was trying to escape reality. I was a deep thinker (big surprise huh?) and despised the fake, shallow interactions of high school. Alex reminds me of myself back then, which is not the best thing. He is also a deep thinker and is a young, strong, angry man-child. I thought in my head that he has it so good – we support everything he does and I AM around for him, so he would have no reason to act out right? But everyone has to deal with their life and their becoming an adult in their own way. Teenagers have it hard because they haven’t dealt with many years of these adult “things” yet so everything seems like a huge deal. Everything seems like a life changing event. At my age, nothing does, because I have been through years of “things” and I realize this is just one more thing. In a mathematic sort of way, every year is 1/16 of Alex’s life where it is only 1/38 of my life. 1/38 doesn’t seem like a big deal compared to 1/16.
One thing I learned the other night with Alex, and my mom knew all the time with us kids, is it’s not good to challenge or give an ultimatum to a becoming adult that is trying to make a name for him/herself. It created a blow up between Alex and I and seeing my child, no longer a child, ready to strike me down was a bit upsetting, OK, way more than a bit. But to be honest, part of me was happy to see him standing up for himself and exerting his newfound manhood. I was just hoping it wouldn’t be against me. I couldn’t find how to deal with this behavior anywhere in the manual that came with my new child, in fact, I have been winging it now for 18 years (Marcus was 5 when Jen and I got together). For me, the hard thing to do is to make that transition in my mind that Alex is no longer a child, he is a man-child and I need to start treating him like a man. This thought has been with me all week and is something we will figure out together. Now, I have one more thing to look back on and laugh about when I am an old man.
116 Miles on a Cyclocross bike
Since the Fargo’s rear derailleur blew up, Matt at High Gear was his usual awesome self and let me test ride a used Trek X2 Cyclocross bike. It is aluminum with a carbon fork and 700c wheels. Bobby transferred my pedals, seat, and stem to the Trek. I was hoping I wouldn’t like it and that it wouldn’t compare with the comfort of the Fargo, being aluminum and having skinnier tires. I think the racing bike looks pretty funny with my sprung Brooks saddle on it, but overall, it was super comfortable. The big 700c wheels, same as my Fargo’s 29ers, the carbon fork and stem, plus the sprung saddle gave me a ride that was so comfortable, I was quite surprised. The lightness and responsiveness of the bike made climbing hills and maneuvering over technical terrain or even bunny hopping over cow grating (whatever they are called to keep the cows in) a breeze when compared to the Fargo. Oh, I love the Fargo but now I realize why I wanted it so bad. It is for taking long rides at a leisurely pace, carrying all my stuff with me and never being scared of going off road – that’s precisely why they call it a touring mountain bike. It can do single track and I can ride it in the Dirty Kanza, but here’s a little something that changed my mind about that last detail.
On the Fargo, I average around 10-12 mph, depending on the wind, on my 100+ mile rides and it takes around 10 hours to finish. Last Sunday on the Trek CX, I averaged 15 mph over 116 miles and shaved around 2 hours of time off the ride. But wait, there’s more! When I ride these rides on the Fargo, I come home and am beat. No more activities besides eating everything in sight for the rest of the night. But last Sunday, I got home, felt pretty good and ended up playing catch with Melissa and not being completely sore! I was somewhat amazed.
Here’s a few shots of the Trek X2.
The Trek X2 XC bike, Wingnut Enduro on the ground
Oh, but I did find a downfall – flat tires. On the meaty Fargo tires I have experienced some torn sidewalls, but zero flats over 1000+ miles 100′s of those on Flint Hills gravel. That’s impressive and I bragged about it the other day at the bike shop. With this CX bike and skinnier tires, I experienced three flats in around 130 miles. I am thinking I need some better tires. Changing flats on the DK200 will not be a whole lot of fun. I am going to the bike shop today to talk this over with Matt. Here’s me changing flat number one. Oh and by the way, if you ride far, go get a CO2 pump – I found out how great they are. No more pumping a frame pump for 45 minutes to end up with an almost aired up tire. I see the necessity to have one, but the one I have sucks. When I get a flat after riding 92 miles I am in no mood and no longer have the ability to pump a hand pump for 45 minutes to end up with an almost aired up tire!
I think I want to make this bike mine, if I can figure out something in the tire arena. This bike is great for fast gravel riding, and then I can trick out the Fargo like I wanted to in the first place. Tricking it out to me means fenders, good racks and panniers (saddle bags) so that I can start doing some overnight bike camping trips and get ready for the Transamerica ride. I know this is going to sound flaky and weird but another thing that happened on this ride is that the Trek X2 comforted me. The blowup happened the night before and as you can expect, I got very little sleep. I was very upset and was replaying the incident in my head and trying to figure out what to do and I was dealing with my own issues of being very angry at my son and myself. This bike and I made friends and she comforted me as I dealt with all this as I pedaled all day long. There was nothing else that would have felt good to do when I felt like this besides ride a bike. God gave me the most gorgeous 60 degree day with puffy clouds and light winds too. It was perfect, she became my friend. Hey, don’t judge, I love bikes! Yes, I would love to buy a brand new Cyclocross bike, maybe even one from Salsa, but I have little money and this one is used and almost affordable. I do accept gifts though, just in case your out there listening Salsa people
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Here’s a few scenes from the day.
Adventure Monkey T-shirts!
They have arrived. We have version one of the T-shirts available for sale. They will first be offered at the 100 miles to nowhere ride this Saturday at High Gear in Emporia. Then I will make them available to all! Version one is a simply designed T-shirt that will announce to everyone that you are an Adventure Monkey. It sports the official logo on the front and the saying “Feed Your Monkey” on the back with the cute monkey on his bike. My wife choose extra soft cotton t-shirts for your comfort and t-shirt wearing pleasure. They remind me of the super soft t-shirts I get at Old Navy or the Gap, very comfortable (and I am very picky about t-shirt comfort!). More designs will come, as I am going to work with a T-shirt artist, but this will always be the first. I hired a super model to show them off. Ordering details to come for you out of towners. I hope to have a paypal button available here on the site to make things easy. Let me know what you think. Don’t forget to visit High Gear this Saturday the 8th to see us raising money for Livestrong. If you can’t make it, go HERE and donate a buck or two to help support the people fighting this deadly disease.
This kid was pretty sad and then I put this T-shirt on him and now look at him!
Feed Your Monkey!
Eric
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