Backyard Fun

    December was a time of fun riding at home. Some of it for training, but most of it just to have fun riding bicycles. The only race I had scheduled for the month was the State Championship Cyclocross, which I skipped due to being sick. Skipping it was a good thing as I got better and was able to get out on the trails more. It rained A LOT during December, keeping me off the road bike for most of the month. The trails were covered with leaves though and that keeps the mud down and mountain biking possible. My Epic was still being rebuilt so I spent the month riding on my old Titus Racer-X. It feels so weird going back to 26" wheels. Holding momentum is much more difficult on small wheels. The old Titus is also pretty worn out after nearly 10 years of riding and racing, but it still gets the job done and allows me to ride trails when my primary bike is out of commission.

I did a lot of night riding in early December. This was a shot on the trail during the last warm night of the year.

A pond on a road ride near Springfield, TN. I think this was the only nice day for a road ride the entire month of December.

I loved the sky and this dead tree in this picture. There's also an old barn buried in the woods in the background.

Big pond and some cows on the same road ride

     Something I haven't talked much about on the blog recently is my work life. It's been rough because I haven't had much work. Racing has forced me to take on multiple part time jobs because I have been unable to find any job that will let me have a day off to race. Personal days should be for whatever you want to use them for, but that isn't the way it has worked in my experiences. My coworkers can call out every other week and totally screw everyone in the clinic and nobody minds, but I ask for one Friday off for a race, six months in advance, and I'm denied and told I need to be a team player.

     I've had to adapt by getting multiple part time jobs to allow for flexibility while also keeping up a decent income to support my habit. Basically, my part time jobs are just extra help for whatever company I am working for. I have known from the beginning that with this type of work there was always a chance of having a period of time where I wouldn't get any work. In the three years I have been doing this it has all gone well. There have been some slow times, but nothing to ever put us in a strain. Most of the time I am turning down work because I get so many requests that I just can't cover them all.

     One of those bad periods finally came this summer. Both of the outpatient and home health jobs I was working started to reduce my hours. Outpatient cut me out completely in July. At the same time, home health stopped giving me patients. It was so weird because they would call me to ask if I could still work that day, then never move patients onto my schedule. That company had the poorest communication I have ever seen. It was really annoying because I would have to stay close to my phone waiting for patients to be added. I had to check my schedule constantly and many days no patients ever appeared. That happened multiple days a week prior to our trip to Snowshoe for MTB Nationals. Losing that many hours made us tighten down our budget and that was part of the reason why I didn't get new pedals befor that race.

    After we returned from Snowshoe it was even worse. They didn't give me patients for about 10 straight days that I had scheduled with them. My third job of doing the cookie dough fundraisers was also on hold as it is all school fundraisers and it works on the school calendar. So there was no cookie dough work to be done June-September. I didn't get many physical therapy hours in August or September, then we were gone to Utah on our trip into October, which turned out to be a great time to go since I wasn't getting any work hours anyway. The drought continued through October, then finally it broke in November when I got some regular hours at two outpatient clinics. Home health is still not giving me work and cookie dough has been slow so they have not needed my extra help. I don't think home health will get any better as they have now had me turn in my smartphone which is what we use to do all of our documentation.

     We have our budget set up so that we can survive on one person's income per month. We have to do that in case of this very situation. A single income budget doesn't give us any extra for savings and doesn't give me race money, but we can survive. If I want to race, I have to get more hours since we have no help with race expenses other than a few sets of tires. I had enough race budget left to finish the year, but I haven't been able to build it back up for 2018, so we are going to have to make some changes to my racing next year after this work drought and inability to find sponsorship.

     We also are in a bit of tight spot as we need new vehicles. My car has over 280,000 miles on it and is no longer dependable enough to take on longer trips, while Shannon's car is up to 220,000 miles now. I am hoping to keep steady work over the winter months to save up enough money to buy us at least one new vehicle, preferably a van. We would love to get a Sprinter, but they aren't really in our price range and I'm not going into major debt to get a vehicle. I hate debt anyway, but with the chance of me having another dry spell in work income it is just not smart to sign up for a monthly payment knowing you may not be able to pay it in the future if the work schedule falls apart. We are actually hoping to get a Dodge Caravan like the one I rented back in May to go to the Pro XCT race in Utah. I really liked the way it drove and the storage options. It has enough space to allow us to carry bikes and gear inside, which will be great for being able to stop at things like hiking trails and waterfalls like we enjoy doing on our race weekends. I hate leaving an S-Works bike exposed outside the car while we go out of sight because I know if someone steals it my racing is over because I cannot afford another bike right now. I am hoping to get a van by the end of March, but we will see if I can save up the funds by then and also find a good quality used van for sale.

    One of the good things about not working so much is that it gave me more time to work on the farm. I worked really hard in the fall to not only produce all the peppers I could, but also to sell them. I have one buyer that takes most of my peppers, but I wanted to sell every single one of them if possible. Yes, I am officially to the point of selling peppers for race money. I sold more than I ever thought and people were also beating down the door wanting more of our tomatoes. Apparently, we are the only local farm that had tomatoes that produced in the late summer and fall. We took the peppers that didn't sell and dehydrated them. I posted them on Ebay just to see what would happen and we have actually started selling quite a few. Things are looking pretty good on the farm and it keeps amazing me all the time how fast it is growing. I just wish it was big enough for me to not have to worry about doing physical therapy anymore, but we are still a very long way from that.

     Now that I have vented my work problems, let me write about some better things in the world. Since the solar eclipse this summer, I have been much more aware of events in the sky. I never realized how often we have solar and lunar eclipses. They just don't always appear on the part of the earth where we happen to be standing at that moment. Meteor showers are also more common than I thought. My Dad and I got to enjoy the Geminid Meteor Shower in the middle of December. There were many meteors streaking across the sky in the two hours I sat outside staring up. We had a really clear night for it. I took some pictures with the new camera. While I didn't catch any meteors streaking across the sky, I was surprised with how clear the stars were in the pictures. I am really liking this new camera and I feel like I still don't really know how to use all the features yet.

Starry night during the Geminid Meteor Shower

     I adjusted my position on the new cross bike and have tested it at home with backyard cross events. Dina and I had a muddy cross day at my house. I have accumulated enough course tape now that we could actually tape us off some turns and make it feel like a real course. My neighbors probably think I am nuts, but that's ok. I took a paint roller and attached it to a drill to make rolling the tape back up a breeze so we can use it again. Shannon came out to cheer us on while we did our race effort and took plenty of pictures.

Dina on course

Into the taped section that included some good climbs and off-camber turns on the slick hillside

Snoop was running the course with us. She didn't mind the drizzle.

Me coming towards the tape

     The course we made also went over to our neighbors' land, the ones that recently logged and own the majority of the land we ride on. We found out they will be moving January 1. We made sure to include some of their trail in our course as we may lose those trails if the new owners won't let us ride. I've been going over there as much as possible the last few weeks because I know every ride there could be my last. We connected in some of the trails we don't use often and made a fun, fast loop using the logging roads for this cross course. We also cut in some new trails behind my house to make a new run-up and some technical features like tight turns and tricky dips and downhills. It was a lot of fun.

GPS Map for our home cross race

Got a little sideways in this turn

Dina lugging her bike up the main run-up

Coach Snoop making sure I keep going hard

Over the barriers. We use PVC barriers because they are easy to set up and move. They are max regulation height.

Knocked over the last one. Our rule is that if you knock one down you have to go back and set it up before you can remount.

     A few days later it was still raining and the course was still set up so I did another practice race by myself. It was super muddy and had standing water in some places. I ran a lot of the loop backwards and changed a few of the turns. I definitely got enough ride time out of this course to make it all the course set-up worth it. I just really like riding in the mud and working on my skills.

Still shot from my GoPro as I navigated the taped section during my second practice cross day of the season.

     More from the end of December coming in the next post as it got really cold as the Christmas season arrived.