kellewatts.bsky.social
I like bird dogs, bicycles, and singing.
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My upper arms, shoulders, upper back, and neck have been what hurt during these brevets rather than my legs or lungs. So yesterday I did exercises targeting those areas. Wow. That is an express train to pain so bad I can't sit still but also can't move. It had better help because golly... 2/2
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Congratulations!!
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Like rn. Mother's Day I was fine. But just now I donated the trunk she took with her to college and I'm low-key panicking and wondering if I have anything left that was hers (I do) and if it was a mistake, but we have 3 other trunks that match each other and are cedar lined and don't need that one.
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I will of course have lights and charging and reflective vest and ankle bands to accommodate finishing in the dark, but my goal for #LEL2025 is to get the bulk of my riding in while it's light out, and you become more efficient with riding and fueling and stopping by doing it. #NoFaffingAllowed 2/2
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You just keep going and deal with whatever comes up. You might be fine for a while and then suddenly lose it. My mom died just over five years ago and I still sometimes have something come up that reminds me in a way that leaves me raw. It isn't fast, and it isn't linear, and that's normal.
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Yeah, I almost wonder if that's why my mechanic ordered 32s instead of the 28s we mentioned. Not that I mind. My response though would have been that if anyone was gawking at all that clearance I must not have been going fast enough...
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Same, and I have a Canyon Grizl with the stock wheels and 46 mm knobbies as well as a carbon set running Pinarello 32 slicks fitting that description...
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Both, clearly.
The pictures of quiet ports are just the beginning. "Trucker" is the most common job in like half of our states and we're about to see what happens when they're sitting home bored. They voted for this, so I don't feel too bad for them, except that they have families...
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I can't read that without hearing John Ireland's Greater Love. But that's as good an earworm as any to pedal along to today.
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The original links to the YouTube video of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts student, being grabbed in the XKCD cartoonists hometown a month ago. It's terrible.
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Yes! Tomorrow's 300 is a teeny bit long and I think similar in terrain to the bit north from Writtle. My plan is to assess the time and how I feel afterwards to dial in my bag drop choices before the deadline on Wed. My 8:30 am start puts me easily to Hessle but Malton puts more in the bank...
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For me, I guess I also sing. And make more coffee, and go back outside. The clouds have come while I write this and the air smells just a little colder, wetter. The storm is coming, but it's also not here yet, and I know enough now to enjoy what I've got, the alreadies that I'm blessed with. 10/10
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Now though, on this day in particular, the not yet feels pretty strong. I suspect that it's supposed to, today of all days, or there is no joyful surprise three days later. The annual cyclical ritual remembrance is probably good for us. We learn how to mourn, and how to stop mourning. 9/
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This is real Gospel of the Kingdom stuff I'm alluding to, the radical in-breaking of the already while still in a body that was so clearly mired in the not-yet (though sometimes breakthroughs happen there too, in bodies, not just minds). I used to be one who believed in this quite fervently. 8/
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If that exists, I know she's a different person. Years of disability and trauma narrowed her views and shaped how she related to everything. That church finally started opening it back up. We only got the tiniest glimmer of who she was becoming before she passed, for which I'm grateful and sad. 7/
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I know we need to move her before we move. I also know that's not her. I remember talking about heaven with her once (which I maybe think I sometimes believe in), the only part of its description in the Bible that I can embrace, the Isaiah 65 stuff about being productive and experiencing joy. 6/
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She is the only one I have ever known of to be cremated, and during the pandemic after we postponed the funeral her cremains languished in my priest's office until I eventually couldn't take it anymore. She was simply interred in a niche at the Chapel, though she's also named at her church. 5/
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Her people didn't get cremated. They have open casket Southern Baptist funerals, where everyone says how peaceful they look or how nice the morticians made them look, but also where infirmities are put on full display: swelling and weight gain and pallor and infection. It's humiliating. 4/
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That was pretty much the only church she joined after we moved here. We bounced congregations some, followed by lulls of no church, but that one I think offered her hope, and acceptance, and accessibility, in ways the others did not, and also helped her come to terms with mortality. Ashes, dust. 3/
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The stuff I'm singing is sad, and a bit dark, and you're probably thinking "Well, of course, it's Good Friday," but I figured out that's not even it. Five years ago today we were supposed to hold my mom's funeral, at her church, where the flowers would be coming up around the columbarium. 2/
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I suspect Zwift and Wahoo will survive even if this does turn out to have been the final stage of democracy for the US as we know it.
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Today I am going to try to go out with my team. My legs hurt and it probably won't go well, but I got new wheels for my Canyon Grizl rocking 32mm slicks just so I could train with the team, and the best way to make sure the tubeless goo sets up well is to ride it. Wish me luck!
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I can go on and on. I want parks and roads and libraries and schools and research and museums and even information funded, not merely adequately, but generously. Imagine asking "How can we do this in the best way?" instead of asking "How can we scrape by, barely funding things?" 8/8
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I want to live in a place where everyone, not just the rich, have access to high quality public education. Inadequately funding this actually costs us more money later. For example, every $1 we spend on universal high-quality early education is more than a real $1 we needn't spend on prison later.7/
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I appreciate that we have social safety nets in general. We live in an incredibly wealthy society. It is unconscionable that we don't universally provide healthcare, shelter, and food. I don't care about folks "abusing the system," because it's more important that everyone eat. Period. 6/