Ahhh....life.....

Hazards of being responsible :)

I was hoping to get in a 6 hour ride this Saturday, doing various 20 mile loops startnig and ending at my house, which would have left me no more than 10 miles from my house at any given time. This was for two reasons: Refueling, and I was on call.

A side note about my job: I am an escalation engineer in the IT world, and am on-call every third week for 7 days, 24 hours. Then off-call for the next 2 weeks. If a "Severity A" call comes in, I have 30 minutes to be in front of a computer. "Sev B" I have 4 hours. 99% of the time, this is not a problem as Sev A calls are rare.

So Saturday I'm on my first loop, really just getting good and warm on an out and back. Went out 12 miles and turned around. 4 miles later, the phone rings and I actually hear it! Missed the actual call but dialed up the office to find out I've been hit by the 1% of the time something serious has blown up. So...back to the house. Got there in exactly 30 minutes.

An hour and a half later, problem solved so I head back out to go try to salvage some of the ride. Of course I'm completely cooled down and momentum is shot but I need the miles. Head down the road to do a 15 mile out and back (different from the previous one) that I generally do as a time trial effort. I get all the way to the far end and the phone rings again. Call the office and get voice mail. Nobody is willing to claim having called me, one dude won't even do me the coutesy of asking the guy next to him, and nobody left voice mail or sent an email. Crud. Back to the house.

Get to the house and there are two more calls I didn't hear. This time they actually left VM, and it is something I could put off a few hours. But my ride is toast.

Got in 40 miles, 2 customer issues and lots of frustration. No more calls the rest of the day.

Didn't even bother to ride Sunday.

Aging cyclist lesson: Sometimes the job gets in the way of training, but the job pays the bills and that's part of the game until you get that "Master's pro" contract ;)

Cyclist to pray for: Stephen W.

DB