Ridden to Distraction

Last Tuesday afternoon greeted me with a combination of mild weather and several errands to run. I had some potential carpentry work to scout out in Farmington near the country club, after which I needed to pick up some groceries, pick up a new bottom bracket and finish assembling a bike.

I called around to locate a 113mm square-taper bottom bracket and struck out repeatedly. Mini-rant: The majority of the bikes I see being ridden have square-taper BBs, yet bike shops seem averse to stocking them because they are “obsolete” Grrrr…

I set aside the BB quest for the moment and made the time-sensitive Farmington visit the first errand on my list. I made it to the appointed location on time in one hour and 11 minutes, a personal triumph not because it was particularly fast (not even for a cargo bike), but because I had estimated one hour and 15 minutes. It’s rare that I am even remotely accurate in my estimates, rarer still that I err on the expedient side.

Post appointment, I rationalized a less-direct route back to Hartford with an arbitrary quest. I was in Farmington off of Town Farm road and decided to see for myself if there was actually any farmland on this bifecta of agrarian naming. I headed north. There was a polo club, which I decided was too toney to count as a farm, but I had a bona-fide farm sighting just before crossing into Avon. Things were getting so rural, there was even a red-nosed reindeer crossing sign.

I eventually ended up north of Route 44 and found myself en route to Simsbury. I remembered that there was a bike shop on Hopmeadow Street worth checking out, though I couldn’t recall the name. Also, Simsbury has food and I was feeling a bit peckish, having polished off the last of my on-board snack rations.
The Simsbury sojourn was a success. The Bicycle Cellar came through with the bottom bracket and I was able to refuel and top off by demolishing an abundantly large eggplant grinder at the pizzeria next door. Have I had tastier grinders in my lifetime? Yes. Did I care? Not a whit.

Happily sated, I looped around northward to cross the Drake Hill Road Bridge and rode over Talcott Mountain through Bloomfield and back home as night fell. It occurred to me a bit late that it would have been wise to wait a few more minutes between stuffing myself silly and doing a sustained climb on a heavy bike, but my stomach took it like a champ. I never made it to a grocery store, but I was too full to mind. My afternoon to-do list was in for some culling, but I chose to not beat myself up about it for one day. It had been a while since I had ridden any significant distance and I realized more and more how much I had been missing it. As the sky grew overcast and the temperature dropped through the afternoon, my head felt increasingly clear. I needed that.

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