Don’t kid yourself: No matter where you live in North Carolina it’s going to be hot this week. Real hot. Again.
As the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough take a second look at the thermometer and say, “To heck with this. I’m staying inside.”
If we wanted to live on the Sun, we would have moved there. Instead, the Sun apparently has decided to move here. More record-breaking heat is upon us, which would have more more sane people opting to stay indoors. For those of us of hearty, boiling stock, that’s not an option. We just need to play it smart: Instead of going out in the daytime when it’s 102 in the shade, we’ll simply wait until the evening when it cools off to the upper 90s.
“I … I just didn’t have anything more to give,” I confided to my cycling psychologist on our ride this morning. “I was empty.”
Allen and I ride one morning a week at Umstead. It’s typically a mildly competitive ride where we save just enough air to chat about bikes (lot’s of debate about whether to go the 29er route), rides (mountain centuries that Allen does and I talk about), juicing (Allen is obsessed with making fresh OJ). And, occasionally, why we suck.
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast, especially come summer. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday, at least during the summer, called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s in the sun.
For 10 years, the Huck A Buck has been an institution for Triangle area mountain bikers. And for the last two years, the race’s organizers, Happy Fun Racing, have said the 2011 edition would be the last.
But a month ago, we detected waffling. It might be the last, one organizer let slip.