Riding as therapy

For any of you that I know closely, you know work has been tough lately.  It's been rough and time has been scarce to ride at all.  I have been lucky to get out one day a week lately and when I do get out it's a squeeze.  I was able to do one Friday night urban ride with a couple buds a couple weeks ago, then on Saturday I was fortunate enough to have Kris watch the kids so I could go on a ride down at the John Muir trails.

I haven't ridden down there for years, I was trying to figure out how long it's been and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it's probably been 10 years.

The trails were great.  I got up super early to get on the road in time to ride and then drive back before dinner.  I rode blue loop first, then came back and grabbed the fatbike for a loop on Orange then on Red(Brown?).  After that, I exchanged the fatbike for the scalpel again, headed down the road to the Emma Carlin connector trail and rode that up and back.  There was a race going on at Carlin so I didn't go around those loops, I'll save that for another trip.

It was one of those days where it's humid enough it feels like it could storm at any minute, but never does.  It was wet - sticky, and hot enough for me.  I left the trails pretty tired but mentally refreshed after a couple real ass kicker weeks at work.

What I need to do is keep finding ways to carve out that time to ride as it definitely lets me clear my head up quite a bit.  Short rides help, trail rides help, commuting helps, anything.  What I find is that riding a bike just does that for me.  I just need to find more time to make that work out for me.