Let's redecorate the living room.

It was just about a year ago when my now ex-wife revealed the first of many reasons she had for needing to leave me (ultimately there were more than 20; I kept a list). In October 2024, about two weeks before she actually got around to telling me that she didn't love me anymore and was moving out, she told me that it was deeply upsetting to her that “everywhere I look around here, I just see your shit. Especially the garage!  Oh my god, you have completely taken over the garage!"  

True, I'll admit, but only to a point.  Lots of bikes and skis, workbenches and tools out there.  Hard to be a bike rider without owning a few bikes, or a skier without a quiver of skis...

Let's get a divorce.

Divorce is a world of suck best avoided. 

Divorce is a towering rogue wave sufficient to rend asunder, without warning, half a lifetime's worth of promised hopes and dreams.

Divorce is a muddled muttered mantra of repeated regret.  

Divorce is a long lonely road to nowhere, inevitably heading somewhere, albeit only god-knows-where. 

Divorce is an explosion of great magnitude resulting in the complete and utter destruction of all-things, leaving behind only charred scattered remnants and thoroughly annihilated particles.^*

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I conferred what feels as if it could be one of the last physical reminders (that and this apparently indelible and resistant-to-all-lasers ring-finger-tattoo on my left hand) of my now defunct 28-year marriage to the good folks at the bike shop this week. 

Let's go to France!

Went to Paris (the one in France) for a post-divorce "Tuscan Sun" adventure in July.  Fair to call visiting Paris a long-standing "bucket-list" item of mine. But, given the sad situation I found myself in in January 2025, planning and accomplishing this trip solo came to mean a lot more to me than just another item to check-off that list.

Pleased to report, I had a truly amazing time!  Aside from one breakdown on the RER-B train on my way into the city from the airport (which required me to navigate the massive Gare du Nord train station unrehearsed in order to find an alternative route to my hotel), everything went super smoothly travel-wise. I met lots of good people, ate tons of good food, drank gallons of great wine, and visited innumerable amazing places.  All the things one does while visiting that ancient, complicated, beautiful city.

While I was there, wandering around the city by day on a janky rental bike (and each night via the Métro), I posted a few pictures, along with some wordy captions, to my Instagram.  They're all embedded (and thus preserved) in chronological order below.

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Just about a bike: Specialized S-Works CX

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A 2000 Specialized S-Works CX popped up on our local Craigslist the other day.  

During our first salvo of correspondence the seller told me he'd had the bike shelved in his garage for several years and now needed the space for other things (a tale as old as time). The seller also told me he had converted it to a 1x11 recently, but that he would willing to include "a box of old parts" in the deal. This turned out to be the entire original XTR-M950 group, the original right-hand Ultegra integrated brake/shift lever, the bespoke S-Works front wheel, and the stock Body Geometry saddle.

I arranged to meet him in a corner of one of the parking lots at the hospital, cash in hand.  Took me 2 minutes to eyeball the rig and shake the seller's hand, "I'll take it."  And that's how deals like this get done.

Let's use a heart-rate monitor!

Several of the following observations were originally posted to the Fifty+ Years Old Forum at mtbr.com on 01 October 2024.

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I started riding with a heart rate monitor, a Garmin Forerunner 45, in April 2024 and, after several months of data collection, I now find myself absolutely fascinated by what I've been learning about my cardio-vascular health and fitness. I am especially intrigued by the corroboration of what I feel has been a distinct increase in my overall-fitness and threshold-endurance during this summer's riding season. 

Bottom line: I love doing the things I get to do outdoors. My objective in learning to use a heart rate monitor has been to better understand my general overall fitness and health and, quite simply, to maximize however-many years might remain to me to continue to be able to do these essential activities that I love. Below is an inexpert run-down of what I think I'm beginning to understand better about my body based on what my new monitor seems to be telling me.

Just about a friend's bike: Dale Shewalter's 1983 Specialized Expedition

I was first introduced to Dale Shewalter in 1993. His sixth grade classroom was located two doors down the hall from the room where I was about to start my student teaching, in fifth grade, with the legendary Grant "Brad" Gerver at Weitzel Elementary School in January of that year.  The always gregarious Gerver was great about taking me around and introducing me, right away, to everyone that I would be working with, and Dale's room was one of the first stops on my first-day tour. 

Having grown up in a multigenerational family of teachers, I immediately recognized Dale as a teacher's-teacher, cut from the same bolt of no-nonsense but ever-compassionate fabric that my mom, grandmother, great-aunt, and great-grandmother had likewise each been hewn from.  Naturally, I liked him right away. And it was my great good fortune that we were able to remain friends for years, long after I completed my student teaching, well into my own career as a professional educator.

Just about a bike: Monē SB2 Klunker [UPDATED]

3.3:1 gain ratio, 45.6 gear inches

Cjell Monē (pronounced: shell money*) proudly runs his mobile custom-fab bike shop out of the back of a former Wonderbread work-truck which is currently parked (at the time of this writing) somewhere near Silver City, New Mexico.

I'm sure Cjell's one-off custom bikes are amazing.  His initial apprenticeship at Black Sheep Bikes, and many subsequent years of experience as a successful independent bike builder, would seem to indicate: he knows well how to wield a torch.  But a one-off custom bike tends to be the sort of unobtainable unicorn which, for most of us run-of-the-mill average-type bike riders, is maybe something we get to plan for and purchase once in a lifetime.  That's been my experience, anyway.