I had a choice last night; attend a zoom meeting, or ride with friends, a familiar loop in a nice town south of home… I didn’t need a second meeting in a row so I chose the latter because we had another perfect night for a bike ride.

Perhaps conditions were on the hot side of perfect, but with barely a breeze to slow us down, I was looking forward to a fast one.

As things turn out, it ended up being on the moderate side. I was slightly bummed when the relaxing of pace was suggested but I quickly found my attitude much ado about nothing.  It ended up settling into a fantastic ride…

Normally we’re hammering the route so hard, we can’t look around.  Last night was moderate enough to enjoy looking around a bit.

I even had time to snap the rare photo.

We altered the route to take out the main hill, longer in the middle, shortened at the end to help a new guy who rode with us, a move that was perfectly fine with me.

We rolled into the parking lot with just shy of 29 miles (34 for me, I showed up early and did a five-mile warm-up).  I honestly don’t know how we’re getting away with this stretch of fantastic weather.  Rain is rare enough during a Michigan summer, but this is spectacular.

We’ve got a nice weekend planned, though Sunday is starting to look a little sketchy.  Yesterday the weather service was calling for evening thunderstorms… today, they took the “evening” part out of the description.  We shall see.

In other news, I handled what I had to with my sponsor yesterday.  My tolerance for self-inflicted mental pain and bullshit is, thankfully, low.  And the more I enjoy my recovery (and life), the easier it is to handle anything on my angst immediately.  In turn, the sooner I handle this things that crop up, the happier I am.  The only key thing to remember after that is this:  All of my mental pain and bullshit is self-inflicted.

As long as I can remember that last point, life is good.