Finding time to ride and a couple longer ones

Work has been crazy busy lately, we're going through a startup after some construction and those times are always hard.  That's meant two things - riding time is scarce and energy is low, but the NEED for riding is high.

I'm super lucky that Kris understands that, so I've been able to sneak away the last 2 weekends one of the days in the morning for a longer ride.  Two weeks ago I went Sunday morning to the Refo Camp and did 3 laps for a good 30ish miles of riding.  The last of the 3 laps was semi-with the Broken Spoke guys, although they were on lap 1 and I on lap 3 so I only hung with them for about a mile.

This weekend I did a fun ride, rode from the house to Baird Creek (about 10mi) then did a lap, then home.  It was super fun and the miles came pretty easy.  Riding through town on a Saturday morning is pretty fun as it's quiet and there is lots to look at as you ride through the different neighborhoods.  Riding home the town had waken up a bit so I didn't go back on the same busy roads I'd gone on to get there.  The lap at Baird was unremarkable, I just tried to push up the hills but rode easy on the rest, figured that'd give me a semi-interval workout while I was there.  Those trails are really fun, I prefer them to the camp but they're harder to get to so I end up at Camp a bit more often.

A bit of rambling, but the 42t conversion is working well, with exception of the 16t cog that came with it.  That thing doesn't shift nearly as well as the Sram cogs do, I'm going to see about getting a 16t from the shop to swap in there, then we'll be solid.  The 42t seems to function very well, just a bit more driveline noise than I'm used to is all.  I don't want to ever spend all day in that gear but it's nice to have when I need it.  Also, I've been riding the scalpel on singletrack lately with the lockout on, seems like the way to go unless it's very rough, I prefer the tighter handling I get that way.

Forgot to mention, Noah and I rode in between those rides to a school think for his Kindergarten next year. We had a massive crash about a block from home, we were riding in the neighborhood road, then Noah just blindly veered over in front of me.  I did what I could to stop, but hit him and ended up going over my bars in order to not crush him.  I think fortunately I took the brunt of the injuries.