In Which 30 Days End in Badass Ride

Gloves on, Monday morning, ready for my badass mountain bike ride. Heigh -ho Fancy Beast!

It’s hard to know what October will bring. While typically a rather nice month in this part of the globe, odd is the new normal in weather, these days.

I am supposed to be finishing an exam and grading student papers—and, in my defense, I’m writing this during a break in test writing. Blogging can be a nice release. Not as nice as beer, but again, to be honest, I’m applying that remedy to my woes, too. Multi-remedying.

Anyway, my wife and I ate supper in the basement during a tornado warning on October 1. October is not typically a wet month, and it’s raining now, with the possibility we may see our normal monthly rain total tonight.

Today, on the first day of October, the rain in the forecast was one reason that I drove rather than rode. The other reason is that this afternoon I went down to NewBo to pick up my hybrid bike at Goldfinch Cyclery. It was overdue for a tune up, and I had broken a spoke on its beefy back wheel.

Cloudy afternoon between rain showers. I arrive at New Bo bike shop to get my bike.

“You know the deal with spokes, right?” the mechanic asked me Saturday when I dropped off the bike. When you break one, your chances of having another one or two break in the coming weeks is enhanced—the broken spoke puts pressure on other spokes.

Well, here’s hoping that deal doesn’t come true. I got the bike tuned partly because we plan a fall break trip to the land of cheese, and, if the summer thunderstorms have finally passed us by and drying fall air has moved in, maybe get some biking in.

New tyre on the Fancy Beast, parked Sept. 30 in hallway by my office.

Well, it was nice to get the bike back. And I had purchased a new rearview mirror because the previous one was broken—when I got my bicycle home, I put new mirrors both on my hybrid bike, and also on my wife’s bike. I had purchased a mirror for her bike some weeks ago, and it was time to put it on.

Yesterday was the culmination of the a poem. Indeed, September hath 30 days, and yesterday was the final one. It was humid and breezy, but at least the sun was shining.

When I took my hybrid bike to the shop Saturday, I also took in my mountain bike. A tyre was worn and the back wheel had a wobble. In fact, the wobble on the mountain bike was worse than it was on the hybrid bike, but fortunately, the wheel on the mountain bike was just getting old and wonky. No spokes broken, and the bike mechanic was able to true it, even if he complained about it some. The back wheel on the mountain bike is getting due for replacement, but it’s true for now.

So Monday, with the hybrid in the shop, I rode the mountain bike to work, partly to celebrate it being not wobbly. I put on bike gloves, which I don’t normally do for my work commute, but I was feeling a bit badass, an old man tooling around on a teen’s mountain bike.

Well, technically when my son received the mountain bike from Microsoft during a summer internship, he was already a young adult, not a teen. But I still feel like a teen when I ride it, and somehow the gloves added to the faux penumbra of teen angst.

Just to be a badass rebel, when I rode home in the humid early evening, I rode down the Lindale Trail and did a loop on the Boyson Trail because it’s limestone and I have a mountain bike and I’m a badass Monday mountain bike biker. With a bell, that I use, as I slowly and politely approach other trail users.

Being badass is no excuse for being rude.

Pretty creek view on Boyson Trail, late afternoon, Sept. 30.

When I was getting ready for the morning ride, my wife suggested I wear a t-shirt and take a polo shirt to wear at work. I did, and it was a good move—even in the morning, the ride was a bit sweaty.

September, you were summer in Iowa in 2020. Fall frosts, cool rides, dry autumn air—Oct. 1 didn’t feature any of those, but let’s hope. Knock on wood. In a badass way.