One catharsis at a time please

When I was in high school, there were a group of guys who had a band and they put out a couple of tapes (yes -- tapes). They were older and cooler and oh so deep and affected (come to think of it, I might have been out of high school at the time, and the band had graduated a while before. Anyway. . .). At the end of one of the tapes there was an untitled song and I was hanging out with the coolest of the band members and he told me he'd named it Cat Hair Eulogy. "Cat Hair Eulogy?" my starry-eyed-self asked. He explained that the song was a catharsis for him and . . . well hence the name. And then, later than night, we did some kissin' (sorry you had to hear that, Mom. If it's any consolation, I'm unlikely to make out with another guy, well, ever). Yesterday I went for a ride and was thinking about the cat hair eulogy.
If you're thinking about having some catharsis of your own, I recommend finding one form at a time. Example:
1) Long Bike Ride,
2) Crying
3) Throwing up OR
4) Singing loudly
Notice the disjunctive statement. It's not terribly cathartic to do it all at the same time.

Last week we were supposed to have a ride out in Winters with lots of hills and orchards and whatnot. Then we had a storm. I went out to do a similar ride because I'm in desperate need of hill-training. Here's what I found:

Remnants of the storm. I'm glad we weren't out there. There were several areas that had been marked as flooded. And several downed tree branches. This week, however, was lovely, and a good reminder of why I like to ride:

Spring blossoms and lambs:
How cute is this little guy? I stopped to try to get a photo here and the lambs skittered away. The photo below was actually an action shot. It's hard to tell, but the little guys are following the momma around trying to suckle, but she's on the move.















For those of you who know the area, I rode from Steady Eddy's, out to Gibson, did not turn on Steiger, did not do Cantelow, but went out Pleasants Valley Road to 128 and climbed up to the damn Dam (hi Jana!). It was windy and chilly, but felt good even when I was watching my speedometer hover around 12 mph on an upslope. So it goes.
Here's how it looks at the top of the dam hill:
Check out the rocks here -- you know what this means? This mountain tipped over. Sort of makes me want to take some more classes. Maybe I could just read books.

Here's what I look like at the top. Not too torn up. Especially considering that I haven't climbed a hill in . . . a while. Notice the Colorado jersey from my Mom:

I also am slowly starting to figure out how to use my heart rate monitor that is too fancy to make any sense of. Whoever thought 'the more functions the better' does not understand the vibe of someone who can't make sense of her staple gun. I was able to get it to record my heart rate, which was fun and informative to watch, and I also got the calorie counter to work. 40 miles, 3 hours, and 2300 calories. Then I left the monitor on for a little while while I did some other stuff and when I finally took it off, it was at 2700 calories.
This morning I went to the gym and forgot the heart rate monitor. It's not so fun anymore.
"They" predict no rain for next Saturday -- we have a great ride and a big hill planned for next weekend.