Brown Season

The ruins of an old barn overlook brown fields.

Saturday was a weird day at the Guitar Ted Productions Headquarters. I had awoken late, as in really late. It was all due to being up Friday night into the wee hours of Saturday waiting up for my two children/young adults.

NOTICE; Unsolicited parenting advice! So, maybe "waiting up for your kids" seems "old school", but let me tell ya something- that wasn't the "old school way" I was raised. Nope! My parents hardly ever knew where I was, and it seemed as though they didn't care either. I could come home late and no one would be around to say hello. One time I came home late from an away football game to find myself locked out of the house. I wasn't trusted with a key, so I had to shack up in our family's travel trailer on a night where it got below freezing. That wasn't much fun!

So, I waited up for my kids, and they seem happy that I and Mrs. Guitar Ted do that. I would suggest that if you have a loving relationship with your children that it isn't a bad thing to wait up for them. But to each their own........

Pardon the digression, but this waiting up deal figures into the current story. Because I didn't hit the hay till after bar time, I woke up just before noon and with half the day wasted I had not much time to get around to riding. That had to be put off till around 3:00pm, and that doesn't leave much time for daylight anymore.

Airline Highway looking West. This is a fast set of rollers.

I decided to get a little time in on the pink BMC for the Guitar Ted Lube-Off testing. I hauled the bike out to the North edge of town to save time and planned on maybe riding East a fair amount since it's been awhile since I've been out that way. once I reached Gates Park I unloaded and got kitted up. I might get two hours in, if things went well, I figured.

Well, I figured wrong......

A harvester in a corn field North of Waterloo, Iowa.

See, I forgot that the pink BMC is the bike with the new Time pedals I am testing and I had the Shimano RX8 shoes on instead of the Fasterkatts which have the Time cleats.

Doh!

With so little time available for a ride I just made do. It wasn't an ideal set up, for sure. In fact, I doubted I could trust the foot to stay on the pedal if things got a bit sketchy. So, I took it easy, went slow down the hills, and decided that two hours out was one hour too many. Definitely with that bad match of pedal and shoe. So, I cut it back to an hour of riding and that was that.

While it sucked that I had the wrong shoes on, I at least got a ride in. Riding is better than not riding any day, and so I was happy. It wasn't what I was going out for but any ride works for me. Especially after a dismal October where it rained so much there were several days I could not even get a ride in at all.

While things look possibly snowy and colder in the near term, I hope to get some decent November miles in. We'll see.