My mind’s always spinning. Constantly keeping a list of things that I’ve gotta do in my head. My bicycle commute in the morning becomes a traveling zen moment. At my best I weave the three and a half miles to work in an unstopping spinning of pedals, dissecting my movement into inches at traffic lights, near-motionless in the balancing act of a track stand, sliding behind buses, waving to friends on foot, smiling at the other bicyclists. Every block of so a bubble of analytic thought rises to the surface of awareness, and I slip past it, immersing myself again in [View Full Entry]

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I had forgotten about Daylight Savings Time. I’m not referring to the usual Sunday, or even Monday morning, social embarrassment of “Oops, I forgot to change my clock,” but rather I forgot that Daylight Saving Time was even coming up. What with the baby and all, it just wasn’t a consideration. So last week I was explaining to a new rider on the Monday night club ride from East Coast Bikes that we would be riding mountain bikes until the Daylight Savings kicked in, when we would switch to road bikes. I think it was Bill who pitched in, “That’s next [View Full Entry]

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4:45 AM, and I was awake a quarter hour before my alarm clock. I rolled over in my sleeping bag to look at my tent ceiling, not twelve inches from my nose. “Oh well, might as well get going,” I thought to myself, unzipping my way into the cold darkness outside. The tent fly zipper stuck for a moment, reminding me of another cold morning in the French Alps when the condensed moisture of my breath had frozen and jammed up the zippers of my tent just as I most desperately needed to heed the call of nature… In the confines [View Full Entry]

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Things didn't go as planned last night...but then when have then gone according to plan with our new child? Jenn spent the last nine weeks of her pregnancy on bedrest, but she held out through numerous bouts of contractions until week 37 , when she would be able to give birth in the midwifery center, as her dream had always been. But at 10pm last night, our midwife said, "Uh oh..." and called in the attending obstetrician. A quick look with the sonogram confirmed that our baby was breech- turned the wrong way. Natural, breech births are risky, and even more [View Full Entry]

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Baby, it’s cold outside. My pregnant wife is huddled up under the quilt with the dog to watch a John Cusack romantic comedy that she’s already seen a dozen times. Meanwhile out in the garage, I’m holding my hands atop a space heater so decrepit that I can actually hold my hands atop it without burning them off, hoping that my fingers will thaw enough to thread a new shifter cable. In the flickering fluorescent light my breath puffs up in clouds, and I step warily past the patch of ice in front of the double doors. I doublewrap my handlebars: [View Full Entry]

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It was a day that I knew would come sooner or later, although preferably later. Still, when I felt a slight bump from my rear wheel, followed by a feeling of general squishiness from all parts rear of my pedals, I merely assumed that I had punctured my tire on a piece of broken glass at twilight on my way home. But a quick comparative check of tire pressure at the next traffic light dismissed that theory- both my tires were solid as could be. “Hmm,” I thought to myself, “Maybe I busted the axle.” The traffic light turned green and [View Full Entry]

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I kick myself whenever I don’t have a camera with me, because inevitably that’s when I see the greatest bikes. There’s a great little biking renaissance currently underway in Norfolk. Seems like everyday I see another cool bike, a serious bike, a bike that ain’t no Huffy from K-Mart. So yesterday I took a walk to the mall, half an hour late on my lunch break. Too many pressing projects had kept me at my desk later than I had anticipated & so I decided to fill the gnawing pit of anxiety in my stomach with some food court Chinese stir [View Full Entry]

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Block after block of abandoned suburbia stretched out in front of me at the foot of the interstate off-ramp. To the left stood a shuttered shopping plaza, plywood covering the windows of the oversized department store. The random parking lot litter of shopping carts was replaced by flood-damaged cars and trucks that more often than not did not rest upon four wheels, but leaned up against light poles or lay flipped over in the grassy median. And of course, there were the boats. Judging by the number of bass boats, ski boats, sail boats, speed boats and boats in general, just [View Full Entry]

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My goal was to not finish last. And yet when I was waiting in line at the registration table, a fellow cyclist called out to me, “Hey Wes, are you gonna be riding in the Clydesdale category?” “If they had one!” I jokingly replied, a smile on my face to cover the engrained awkwardness of perpetually being the biggest guy in the room. Look, I’m not fat. Yes, there have been times when I’ve been chunky, such as after spending 6 months on crutches while recuperating from a broken hip. I’m just big. I blame it on a confluence of nature [View Full Entry]

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At 7 AM this morning Jennifer's contractions stopped. The birth of our baby has been postponed, hopefully for another three months and full term. Jennifer will be in the hospital for another three days, and faces three months of bed rest. Thank you for your support and prayers. Wes [View Full Entry]

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