Saturday night fun

Peter’s out of town for the weekend, so it’s a wild and crazy night at the PoofHouse tonight, lemme tell you. Stargzrgrl is also home alone, as her boy is out on a ST.N ride, so we’re drinking beer, IMing, posting to ST.N, and just being generally dorky. Dontcha love the internet?

Anyway.

I went on the Wind Dancers End-of-month Putt this morning. It was a small group today: me, Laureen, Jamie, and Kate. We first rode over to Redwood Road, which none of us had been on in a while, and then onto Pinehurst Road. Fun! I was in the back, snapping pictures, of course. Most of them are sort of blurry — hard to get fixed focus when you’re riding in the twisties — but I did get a couple of nice shots of Kate.

Here are the rest of the pictures, plus a map of the interesting parts of the ride (i.e. I didn’t bother including the freeways I took home). We rode the little red line on the map, south to north.

I did pretty well in the twisties, though being in the back, I didn’t really get to set my own pace. My lines have definitely improved since going out with Leslie a couple of weeks ago, though. Hrm, I don’t think I blogged about that. Basically, I emailed Leslie (a fellow Wind Dancer, who’s also an MSF instructor) and asked for help. I’d been out of focus: my lines were terrible, I was braking in turns, etc etc. So Leslie and her girlfriend Paula came by for lunch and a short ride a couple of weeks ago. Peter and I went out with them, Leslie following me, and when we stopped for a break, Leslie offered some suggestions — mostly that I relax my arms and shoulders. She rode ahead of me for a while after that, showing me lines and occasionally flapping her elbows in a sort of chicken dance to remind me to loosen up.

Since I’m convinced that the majority of my original problem was psychological (nothing changed about the bike set-up or the roads), this kick-started me back into riding without my head up my ass. Yay!

So that’s the upside to my riding lately. The downside is that I think I pinched a nerve in my shoulder on the ST.N ride last weekend. It’d been hurting all weekend, and it’s continued on into the week despite my self-medication with ibuprofen and hot baths. I’m going to put sports cream on it tonight and hope that helps (the stuff reeks — lucky for Peter he’s out of town!). Worst case, I see the chiropracter again next week. It really hurt on the way home from the Putt today, though — like someone was jamming a butter knife under my shoulder blade. It’s making my hands tingly and my neck sore, too, which is why I think it’s a nerve. Blah. I suppose this is my own fault for having the posture of a gorilla. I do all my physical-therapy stretches during the workday and totally forget to do them while I’m out riding or while typing on the weekends. Doh.

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