Looking back on this past month-plus, it becomes obvious that I don't live the life of the typical retiree. The by far longest off-time at home came right after my return from Birmingham, when I spent a whopping seventeen days in Lubbaville! But—I need to add—right in the middle of that time I underwent cataract surgery on my right eye, and that obviously had an effect on my comings and goings for at least a week, allowing me to play cook.
I am happy to report that the surgery came off without complications and that the recovery and outcome far surpassed my expectations. My right eye had seen some drastic deterioration over the past year, making me feel uneasy on the bike since checking for traffic behind by looking over my right shoulder yielded nothing but a greyish curtain and no useable info. Now, exactly five weeks after my surgery on August 18, I'm done with administering daily antibiotic eye drops and I see much, much clearer. I'm just hoping that the left eye will hurry up and get worse quickly so that I'm eligible for another visit with the very personable Dr. Anderson and his office crew. My own private optician, Ms. Sandy, was an incredible help and offered so much support. Thanks! (She also has a knack for taking pre-op and post-op photos!)
Exactly ten days after surgery I got into the Z4 to drive over to Wichita Falls for the annual madness that's officially known as Hotter'n Hell Hundred. Longtime readers know that I usually refer to it as the Dumber'n Hell Hundred: Why on Earth would thousands of people spend good money to enter a ride in the most miserable of conditions and not even stand a chance to win a dime in a tour that they believe is a "contest"? At least the ancillary USA Cycling races (in comparison, they attracted only a few hundred racers in comparison to the
tourist ride of the weekend) had prize lists, and the number of crashes was fairly low, too. I left Friday morning, worked the afternoon crits, slept, worked Saturday's road race (trailing the men's P/1/2 field in a follow car), and was back home for dinner. OK, so I was a bit worn out, but the paycheck was bigger than what I used to make in a week of teaching back in the days.
Whenever I was home, I tried to go for a ride as often as possible. Lubbock was and is hot, but it couldn't compete with the heat indexes of Wichita Falls, Birmingham, Los Cabos, or the Katy Trail. My home routine during this summer was simple: Sleep until I wake up (sometimes 6:30, sometimes 8:10, depending on how many busy dreams had kept me awake at night), check emails whilst having coffee on the porch, kit up, ride for 2:05 hrs to 2:15 hrs depending both on how the strength of the wind and how I felt (but always 28 miles), and then take an outdoor shower and enjoy the Jacuzzi before having my lunch sandwich while watching the German Tagesschau via the internet. Yep, pretty predictable. The afternoons were spent more inside than outdoors because most days were above 95F degrees, with several cracking 100F. Sandy would come over for dinner a few times every week, and sitting on the porch with the water feature running and the heat breaking was the daily highlight, whether together or solo.
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Hard to believe, but my 70th b'day balloon is still floating,
despite being shriveled like an old man ... |
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My daily ride takes me past Will Rogers, here done up
for the beginning of the semester |
Five days after the HHH, Sandy and I left for our Labor Day trip to Santa Fe and Albuquerque. All three hotel nights were taken care of with certificates or points, and Sandy's Pearl (a white Nissan Rogue SUV) is a surprisingly economical vehicle so that even the insane gas prices were more of an annoyance than a real issue. That left money over to visit a few new brewpubs, enjoy Il Vicino's pizza, and even take a gondola ride up to Sandia Peak, something that Sandy had never done before. To get from SF to Albuquerque, we took the route via Los Alamos and through the Jemez Valley, and I could tell how much Sandy savors all those sights and new impressions.
Three days after our return I took a Lyft to the airport and flew to Madison, WI, where a rental car waited for me to take me to La Crosse, also in Wisconsin. It was the weekend of USAC's National Gravel Gravel Championships, which started and ended in Le Crescent, Minnesota—just across the Mississippi from the host hotel. It was my third time to be the chief referee for a national championship this year, and I worked with another eleven USAC refs (eight of them on motorcycles) to keep 625 starters fair and safe. I should have pressed harder for an extra day on the ground: Arriving at noon on Friday and having to fly home just 48 hours later was just too quick, especially in light of the airport transfers and racers' and officials' meetings on Friday afternoon and a race start at the crack of dawn on Saturday. Still, I managed to add another four microbreweries and a fabulous taproom to my list, and I did enjoy myself. Sleep, as always, is vastly overrated.
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| Fishing the Mississippi, seen from Wisconsin and the far bank being in Minnesota |
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| My crew of mostly moto commissaires |
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| You know you're in Minnesota when ... |
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| Even after 106 miles of gravel it sometimes comes down to barely an inch |
The first two days after my return were so damn windy that I simply could not get myself to going out on the bike. Instead I busied myself with preparations for the final two races on my 2026 calendar, the first one this past weekend in the form of the Texas State Road Championships. Once again, there was a lot of preparatory work for the chief, but that's part of the job. On Friday, I dropped the BMW's roof and drove down into the Hill Country, to Oatmeal (near Burnett). We had a crew of eight commissaires, almost all of whom I have worked with over the years. The race took place on Saturday, and not wanting to push my luck on the long return trip I drove for just a couple of hours to Comanche where I used 15,000 Sonesta points for a free stay in the surprisingly decent America's Best Value Inns. On Sunday I completed the drive back to Lubbock. By now, gas prices have hit $4.00 a gallon, but Ozkar is happiest at 2,000 RPM and sips like a Prius. Just today I read in the NY Times about
hypermilers; I am definitely one of them!
When I publish this blogpost, autumn will have officially arrived in the northern hemisphere. Right on cue, the heat has broken and I can enjoy almost two weeks at home before Sandy and I will fly out to Grand Junction, CO, for my fourth and last national championships as PCP this year, our collegiate mountain bike nats. Sandy is excited as she has been accepted as a
stagiaire, or less impressive, an apprentice. Before then, there will be lots of emails and other race preparations, but there will also be a chance to cook some decent meals and enjoy those cooler fall days.
Jürgen
