Breaking Some Rules

Monday's slow ride was rained out, my reschedule for Tuesday was kinda bumped around by me having the girls a day early this week.




I had an absolute shit day at work. Suffice to say, if I could get to an actual responsible party at Xerox, I could have done actual violence today. The DocuColor 700 hasn't entirely lived up to its sales pitch, and in a couple of specific areas it is, if I'm to believe the analysts and techs at Xerox, designed in a way that can only be described as broken. Which doesn't reduce our customer's expectations, and it shouldn't. If it was up to me I'd have this thing back on the truck. Actually, I'd have the thing out in the parking lot and I'd be ramming it with my car.



That scene in Office Space? This copier would not get off that easily. Especially if the decision makers who obviously never worked a day in an actual production environment, could be strapped to the thing.



So what better way to construct an imaginary gulag for antagonists so remote they might was well be imaginary, even if they aren't, than a training ride?



It was startlingly therapeutic. Not so much me attacking the pedals by pretending I was stomping the shit out of some Xerox executives. Because, really, I would have pulled muscles if I could have managed that fantasy. No, really, just cranking up the hills and figuring out where the hell the trail resumed, if it did, was plenty of distraction.



I parked at the park at 87th and Lackman, and set out on a trail that seems to abruptly end. Rode the streets (which is against my personal rule: ride the trails alone, ride the streets with a group) until I spotted trail a bit further north. Then when I got to 79th, a fellow rider convinced me to try climbing 79th and riding it into Shawnee Mission Park. Which I did, and next thing you know I'm below the dam on the Mill Creek Trail, a trail I know. And I know I have some serious climbing to pay for all that downhill action in order to get back to the car.

I took the trail 3 miles to the 95th/Prairie-Something-Parkway access point. Then found myself at the foot of a hill that goes at least 3/4 miles up. Then out of trail.





I could go back downhill, which was tempting, but then I'd have to climb back out of the valley somewhere else, and I didn't want to end up in the woods in the dark again. So I crossed 435 on 95th Street and went further south on Legler, winding through office parks that are blessedly light on traffic in the evening. Remember that rule about riding streets? There was no sidewalk for a good bit of this leg. I ended up on 99th, then Santa Fe Drive, then I spotted Widmer and thought, 'Didn't I pass Widmer near my car? Wonder if it goes through.'



It doesn't. But it connects to stuff that does. Much of it, actually, downhill, ninety-something, then Mullen, Acuff, 89th Terrace, Gallery, then I'm back at my car by the skaters on the ramps.

I drove part of it to check mileage, relied on maps for the trail portions. I think it was roughly 17.5 miles in two hours. Now I gotta go to bed so I can get up and tilt at Xerox's windmills tomorrow.