The Wind finally allowed Double Cross and I out onto “The Dirt” for the first time this Spring. Springtime is the windiest season on the High Plains, as Mother Earth begins to warm up from the cold, dark Winter. Winter doesn’t give up easily here though, in fact, the forecast says it’s going to snow tomorrow. The last time that we went riding together on the High Plains, was back in November. It’s the middle of April now and I’ll only get a few more training rides before the annual “Pedal My Age” tour. I’ve been working on the trainer in the basement but it’s boring, and going nowhere is not very exciting. So, I was jonesing for a ride out in the sunshine and decided to ride out to the Smoky Hill Trail marker, (twenty-mile round trip).
At around 5 miles, I came upon the new biggie-sized power line cutting across the countryside. Xcel Energy calls it the Colorado Power Pathway and is spending 2 billion dollars on the 550-mile double-circuit transmission line. Xcel is the largest energy provider in the state and has raised the price for their electricity by almost 40% over the last few years as they “green” up their operations. Here’s what they say about the project: “Colorado’s Power Pathway will boost the economy, connect new energy resources in eastern Colorado and increase the reliability of the electric grid. The new transmission lines encourage more wind and solar farms, to bring more low-cost electricity to our growing state.”
I wonder why the low-cost electricity that Xcel is bringing to our growing state costs 40% more than regular electricity? How much more will their low-cost energy cost once they complete their $2,000,000,000 boondoggle, oops I mean Colorado Power Pathway. A lot more is my guess.
“The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang” defines a “boondoggle” as “an extravagant and useless project,”
Enough power line (“boondoggle”) talk. The first ride of the Spring was cool at the start but the wind jacket came off at the power line, five miles in, followed by the stocking cap a few miles later as the temperature headed towards the forecasted 83 degrees. Then I hit a couple of miles of deep, soft gravel and had to unclip from the pedals as the back wheel kept slipping in the soft substrate. It was slow and steady for a while but when I turned the corner and headed North, I was back on solid ground and it stayed that way for the rest of the ride.
I donned a bike jersey for the first time in months for the ride, and when I caught the reflection in my peripheral vision as I walked past the mirror, I wondered who that was, before realizing the Michelin man I was seeing was me. I wasn’t completely unaware of the winter weight gain, I know what the outcome of spending more time scarfing tacos, pub grub, and beer than time at the gym or on the bike looks like, I’ve seen it before. But I kept telling myself it’s a bulking phase and I could cut it into rock-like slabs of muscle, later in the Spring;>)
However, when I looked in the mirror and Butterbean was looking back, I realized I might have overcooked the bulking phase a bit. So when the wind wasn’t blowing again for the second morning in a row, I decided to get back out there and rack up another 20 miles of High Plains gravel. The beauty of the bike is that you can get two hours of zone 2 & 3 cardio and it doesn’t feel like work, it’s fun kicking the metabolism into high gear and burning through the winter fat stores.
It’s not that we hibernated down on the Third Coast this winter, we didn’t. We logged hundreds of miles of walking while we were there but a number of our afternoon walk breaks came at one of the dozens of Brew Pubs scattered across the Coastal Plains, which meant beers and appetizers of course. Walking is good exercise but it doesn’t crank up the cardio like a bike. It’s a more relaxed pace that tends to stay in Zone 1 or perhaps the low end of Zone 2 if you really push. Somewhere between jogging and pub crawling.
“NOTHING BETTER THAN SITTING IN A PUB, LOOKING OUT OF THE WINDOW AT ANOTHER PUB, TO WORK OUT WHERE YOU’RE GOING IN LIFE.” ~ Benny Bellamacina
Which brings us to the moral of the story. Your body’s designed to move. Movement creates healthy joints, strong bones, strong muscles, proper cardiovascular circulation, and good coordination. It improves cognition, concentration, mental well-being and mitochondrial function. Without movement, you’ll rapidly deteriorate, get sick and die. Being sedentary causes numerous illnesses such as back pain, obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, cancer, depression, and the list goes on and on.
A bicycle is the perfect vehicle to get your daily dose of movement, have fun, and explore the Great Wide World. There might be something better out there but I haven’t discovered it and I’ve searched for quite a while. The 2-day ride total was 42 miles with an hour and a half in Zone 2 and an hour and a half in Zone 3. The movement and training are fun and fulfilling but it’s nature that makes the experience enjoyable.