It has been a particularly challenging year for me mentally as well as fitness-wise, and nowhere has that last one been felt the most than with my usual summer exercise routine.  My morning core routines have now died a slow death and have been replaced by caffeine enhanced painting binges in the garage, and my easy evening jogs through Crystal Beach and Ridgeway at dusk are now more about crushing beers and playing Frisbee (click HERE) outside my front door with Hailey.

And truthfully, I’m okay with that.

However, I’ve really missed my cycling. 

By this time in the normal season I would likely have had (as well as have been now reaping the benefit of having) a lot more kilometres in my legs than I currently have so far this year, specially seeing as how I’ve only just recently started being able to actually enjoy myself in the saddle again.

Yeah …

I know.

I admit it though, I got very lazy and withdrawn during those early COVID months and it was much easier to come home and “stress drink” instead of doing something healthy like going for a run, a walk, a swim in the lake or – heavens forbid – a bike ride. Sure Hailey and I managed to get out a few times for a short spin earlier in the Spring when the weather was more agreeable and of course, there’s always Lucio, who is absolutely relentless in his attempts to coax me out on the bike at the end of the long work day, but truthfully, well, let’s just say that it’s been a lot more difficult to agree to those friendly invites as they usually would have been.  And even then, I used to love going out for solo exploration rides but, honestly, I don’t remember the last time I’ve even thought about going out for a ride on my own.

For whatever reason, I just haven’t been as excited to ride this year as I normally am.

I dunno.

It’s been frustrating indeed.

So as you might expect, my normal cycling fitness is absolutely %100 gone as weeks worth of Frisbee and beer doesn’t necessarily lend themselves well to anything resembling a meaningful fitness “work out”, so it was suddenly all I could do in the saddle but do my best to just KEEP UP, and that unfortunately, was a hard, bitter pill to swallow.

Poor me.

I mean, back when “stay home” was a thing, I stayed the fuck home – what can I say? 

Perhaps I just got a little too accustomed to staying put – namely in my garage. Other smarter people took the opportunity to lift themselves up during the mandatory lock down, and used some of their enforced “alone time” to indulge in tackling some pretty amazing fitness achievements, especially given all the chaotic bullshit going on around them at the time, and then ultimately come out at the end of that long, exhausting lonely period looking like complete buffed-up versions of their former selves having some accomplished something positive.

And I’m envious.

I really am!

In fact, I feel that I should have been one of those people and under normal circumstances, I would have been one of those people … 

Or so I thought anyway.

However, instead of being smart and following the positive and healthy examples being set by others around me in the wake of the past COVID lock downs, I had almost completely abandoned my customary daily fitness regimen in favour of ‘chucking discs’ and painting random shit out in the garage in my own half-baked attempt to keep me from pulling my hair out.

Go figure.

Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

However that was all until just about a little over a month and a half ago when, quite randomly, I happened to join a rather “rag tag” group of cyclists who had at some point started riding together at 7:00am for what would become unofficially known as the “coffee ride”; essentially a lot of pedalling and a bit of sweat, some good-natured ribbing along the way and, yes, the promise of a hot caffeinated beverage somewhere en route.

Quietly, I like to refer to the group as “The Black Wydows”.

And yes, I named it after these guys:

(Play THIS for the musical accompaniment to the above)

At least that’s what goes through my head as we ride through the rural Concession roads between Fort Erie and Port Colbourne, or north and south along the Niagara Parkway into Chippawa, Black Creek or Stevensville.

Why?

Largely, because I’m an idiot and it simply makes me smile.

(Also, it sounds totally bad ass.  I just changed the “i” to a “y” to sound even badder.)

Anyway, the Wydow’s are largely at the behest of Lucio, the chief ring-leader, organizer, motivator, mechanic, and Italian ball-buster. I have cycled with Lucio for a few years now and I consider him to be among the finest and knowledgeable cyclists in Niagara and he has definitely helped to shape me into the cyclist I am now, err, was, will be again … you get the idea. Never mind that he smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, Lucio is the prime pace setter at the front, spending most of his time keeping the group moving forward fast enough to ensure that everyone has worked up a healthy sweat by the time we reach our coffee destination; often preferring to avoid the draft altogether when it comes his turn at the back of the group, instead riding out just far enough to keep some wind (i.e. resistance) in his face.

(Sorry, couldn’t help myself)

Lucio has also eaten just about every animal that’s ever attempted to crawl or fly over God’s green earth and likely has the perfect recipe to go along with it should anyone ever feel the inclination to eat something we might have rolled past laying by the side of the road.  (Thankfully, no one has)  I guess what I’m trying to say is, that besides being uh-mazing conversation, he’d also be a handy guy to be stranded with should something dire happen like, say, breaking down in the middle of nowhere or bonking altogether and there’s a sudden urgent need to forage for food.

Billy “Big Gears” is the oldest rider in the group at 70 years young. Don’t judge his stocky 5ft-ought frame or his age too lightly though, Billy has a natural strength about him that only a retired mechanic can have which is completely evident in the fact that his spends the majority of our two-plus-hour bike rides torquing at his pedals in the biggest gear he can manage … which, coincidentally, is the biggest gear on the bike. To watch him cycle from behind, you’d think he was trying to ratchet down a particularly difficult nut and bolt with his feet.  He’s not ‘spinning’ so much as he’s beating his pedals into submission, and his calves look like two sleeves filled with croquet balls.

Billy knows only one speed: FORWARD.

Samson is a local mailman of Turkish decent who, seriously, has the best Mediterranean accent you could ever hope to listen to for a few hours over open roads. Honestly, I could listen to him talk about stripping wall paper and be absolutely enthralled. Like Lucio, Samson likes to scoff and kid throughout the ride and, fortunately for me, it’s usually at everyone else’s expense which in my mind, only makes him all the more enjoyable and fun to ride with.  Samson also happens to ride with one of those “rear view” mirrors attached to his cycling glasses, which makes him particularly useful in calling out approaching traffic from behind long before the rest of us are even remotely aware of it’s presence.  And “with great power comes great responsibility”, so Samson is most relied upon to keep us safely out of harms way.

Renee is the newest “rider” to the group and the only female. I originally met Renee as a participant in my spin classes from the YMCA back when that kind of thing was still possible sans-mask …

… and now she rides Hailey’s first road bike which is pretty damn cool.

(I think anyway)

Along with “finding her outdoor riding legs” this year, proper ‘group dynamics’ – or riding within a group of other cyclists, a ‘peloton’ per se – has largely been a learning opportunity for her. To say she has risen to the challenge would be an understatement. While always willing and able to take her turn at the front, she has particularly excelled in “finding the draft” and being able to “recover as you ride”, two equally important things to become confident with for truly awesome group riding.

I believe Renee would tell you that she’s just focusing on “not being dropped”.

(And she doesn’t)

Me?

I like to think of myself as the group’s self-appointed “domestique”. I’m currently not in shape enough to take the big pulls at the front of the group to set the pace – a la Lucio and Samson – but I can help keep the rest of the group together by lending support where and when it’s needed.  Perhaps all those years as the “Tail End Charlie” for the Big Move has wired me this way, I dunno … but what can I say?  I like riding in the service of others, which is exactly how I look at it.  I’m also probably the most familiar with the local back roads, so whether it be providing a decent draft to recover behind (something we larger riders are particularly good for), a quick ‘alternate route’ around construction, or a steady yet comfortable pace at the front, or maybe a gentle shepherd at the tail end, these days it makes me most happy while I’m riding to feel like I am “helping”.

Or so my lizard brain has it all worked out anyway …

Sadly, our riding season is drawing to a close and soon these regular rides will be more difficult to do before becoming totally impossible altogether when the snow starts to fly. Personally I will miss these social, drama-free “coffee rides” as they have been particularly beneficial for my mental health – late in coming as they may have been. After all, SOME riding season is better than NO riding season, right?  Lord only knows what I will do in lieu of these group rides come winter, however, knowing now what I get to come back to next year?

Well, that’s something worth getting excited for.

It’s a start anyway.

The Black Wydows

God help me.

I just put this up on Facebook Marketplace:

Yup …

A purple commercial tomato cutter.

$2.00

Because why not?

This is just an example of a whole bunch of random items I just listed for sale including three gaudily-coloured step stools, a set of recycled ice cream freezer shelving I figured might have come in handy for storage long before now, a few homemade bird feeders that didn’t quite make the grade, a rusted metal standing ash tray I never got around to do anything with, a squirrel trap that I  managed to fix back into working condition, and a stack of old Goodwill records I acquired largely to torture my family with (click HERE) among other seemingly useless shit; a real treasure trove of crap.

But why a purple commercial tomato slicer you ask?

Well, I guess at the time I figured that a purple commercial tomato slicer would look interesting sitting on an old stump in the backyard over winter. 

Go figure! 

In my defence, I also have a bright neon yellow cast iron show last, a fire truck red, long-handled sausage press, and a few rusty, oddly-coloured bow saws that I am still choosing to hang onto. I suppose this is all just further evidence that I do in face have some of my mother’s bat shit crazy OCD in me.

Regardless, I am now ready to part with some of it – purple commercial tomato slicers included.

–

In case anyone’s curious about from whence it came, I found the tomato slicer underneath a pantry rack in the basement cellar of the historic Olde Angel Inn in scenic Niagara-on-the-Lake buried in about four decades worth of mouse shit. I decided at the time that this might also be a good thing to salvage for some unknown reason – maybe even paint it purple – so I conducted an elaborate rouse for the waitresses upstairs about my having an autistic step-daughter (sorry, Hailey) who had developed a unique coping mechanism over the initial pandemic months of painting weird kitchen items for our backyard to look at over the winter months.

Good one, right?

And honestly, this is all more or less all true.  Minus the part of course, about it actually being me as the autistic dweeb with a penchant for painting random weird shit as a means of dealing with his inner turmoil. 

Regardless, after rounds of “Ooo’s” and “Ahhh’s” from the girls it was decided that a) I was the best step-dad in the entire history of step-dadding, and b) of course I can have the old shit-covered tomato slicer. So I ended up bringing it home, hosing all the mouse shit off it, and painting it purple to sit on a stump alongside our fence over the winter, along with all the other brightly-coloured “items of interest”.

Why I thought this was such a marvellous idea at the time is completely lost on me now. Just like all the other stuff I tinkered with and knocked around in the garage during those initial long months of self-isolation and pre-vaccine uncertainty … it just kind of happened. There wasn’t a formal plan or thought process behind getting it. A purple commercial tomato slicer just seemed like a good idea; something to scrub, tinker with, knock about and paint in the early hours before work.

Essentially, it’s the purple metallic embodiment of my COVID experience thus far – all my pent-up stress and frustration put into a single unusable purple kitchen implement, and now all that purply stress can be someone else’s for a whopping $2.00 as I am ready to let it go and I am taking this willingness to purge these things now as a positive sign; a sign of brighter happier times on the horizon maybe?  A  normal world where purple commercial tomato slicers don’t necessarily make sense.

At the very least, I am getting rid of some acquired shit and that’ll inevitably make Kelly happy.

Now what kind of person sees an online advert for an old formerly covered-in-mouse-shit commercial tomato slicer – purple no less – and thinks to themselves “I need to have that!” I have no fucking idea but regardless, I’ve put it out there into the ‘Web-o-sphere’ to see what bites. Who know? Maybe there’s actually someone out there who will look at my purple stress slicer and immediately know that they have the perfect stump in their backyard to showcase it on over the winter.

Hey, you never know …

God help me.