Monday, July 10, 2006

Boy Did I Work My Gas Trucks

Whew, yesterday was a doozie! I'm not sure where to start, so I'll get into it with what I did on Saturday, then on to the crazy day I had Sunday.

Saturday was a pretty low-key day, as I was tired as a mug from Friday. I kept thinking that I didn't do a whole lot on Friday, but I guess I paddled for a few hours, then the work we did do on the picnic table was fairly labor intensive. Plus it was hot, so I'll take credit for that too.

Anyway, on Saturday I slept in, had some breakfast, lounged around the house then got to work on the lawn. With the grass on the hill next to the driveway filled in, I have to weedwack it every time. I normally only got out the old string trimmer once a month, but now it's a weekly ritual. I also have these "bushes" right at the property line that my previous neighbor kept in check pretty well. They're ugly as sin at best, and have gotten out of control lately. Frustrated with their complete lack of control, I took the weed wacker to those puppies. Let me tell you, the weed wacker is not the tool of choice for pruning bushes but I did a kickass job. Next step: rip those damn things out and plant something reasonable.

The neighbor actually stopped me again to discuss ripping them out. What a treat it is to be on the same page as your neighbor when it comes to property line flora. But that's for another time, perhaps one of my truck owning friends can be persuaded to help pull a few scraggly bushes from the ground. Hint, hint.

After the wacking came the mowing. I got the lawn good and cut, with nice pretty lines running perpendicular to the road and parallel to eachother. Ahh, me likey a properly groomed lawn. After that, I rested. Remember, I was mad tired.

After dinner I got a good old fashioned barrel fire going to try and burn a stump and some other yard detritus. Conveniently the stump didn't fit down into the barrel so it was a battle to keep the fire going beneath it. Eventually I got the coals deep enough that it pretty much consumed anything I dropped in. Barrels are ugly as sin (especially my dented up, rusty barrel), but they get the fire so hot they make short work of just about anything you put into them. With the stump gone, I can concentrate on the rest of the mess I need to burn. It really slowed me down to have to wait on that; it was still in stump form when I left it around 9:30, but a solid night of smoldering and it had reduced to ashes by morning.

Warning: High Activity Ahead


Sunday I awoke ready to do some paddling. The plan was to load up my boat, pick up my friend at 7:00 and be on the water shortly after. We did alright and managed to get out by 7:30. We were going to tackle the Housatonic River and eventually end up in Woods Pond in Lenox (or is it Lee?). From the way it had been described to me, it was about an hour and a half paddle to the pond and about the same back to the launch. With the leisurely pace and the unending supply of photo ops, the paddle down the river took 2.5 hours. We sat in some pond-like body of water and called it quits; we were going to have to try and find Woods Pond another time.

In the interest of time and not getting sunburned, we paddled ferociously towards the other end of the river, back to the car. The current is weak, but it was an uphill battle nonetheless. We made it back in about 2 hrs at which point the insides of my legs were nice and red, as were my arms (nice farmer tan). It was a scorcher, so the post-paddle coffee run turned into a post-paddle ice cream run.

After 4.5 hours in a kayak and a belly full of ice cream, I rested. After that, I rested until I could rest no more. That time was 4:00. Feeling refreshed, I suited up for a quick bike ride to New York and back. For those of you familiar with the area, I'll describe the route I took.

I headed out Rte 20 towards Albany. In Hancock, MA I busted a south onto Rte 41 and followed that through to Richmond, where I banged a west onto Rte 295. This took me up and down a killer hill, at the bottom of which I swung a north onto Rte 22 (somewhere in NY). This too was a nice long downhill with a few uphill sections, ending back at Rte 20 in Lebanon, NY. The fun was over.

Anyone who has traveled east on Rte 20 would describe it as "heading over the mountain". This is a terrible drive in a car because of the slope of the mountain. It's even worse on a bike where you exercise more than your right foot. This section of the ride required a short break about halfway up where I stretched out my back and drank some well deserved water. The sweat was pouring off my head, arms, legs and back.

Back on the bike, I finished the ride feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the road. And tackle it I did!

The entire ride covered roughly 30 miles and took almost exactly 2 hrs. It seems hard to believe that I averaged 15 MPH when a long section of it was at a snail's pace, but I guess that's why it's called an average; some of the downhills were FAST!

After the ride was crash time. I chatted with my mother for a while, showered up, ate more ice cream, watched about 1/2 hour of TV then caught some Zs. Oh, my mother asked if I had given my lateral or medial gastrocs a workout. Not knowing what the hell she meant, I changed it to 'my medium gas trucks' which obviously I had given quite a workout going up that mountain.

For the record, medial and lateral gastrocs have something to do with your calves. They may in fact, be your calves. I don't know for certain, but what I do know is that my gas trucks are tired today.

Over and Out,
Old Coot

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"Something inside of me just said 'Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him.' and I just took off." -Pre