Not bad

Considering my lack of fitness and my back woes, which lead to leg woes, I'm riding fairly well. I did my figure 8 of hills today, with the worst, Oakwood, being last on the adjenda. For a historically horrible climber, I'm doing alright. Seated, I was able to ride in a 3 gear tougher gear. Shows some strength is coming back. I didn't stand much. Once, where the outer road of 44 turns right into Valley Park road and another time during where the grade goes to 12% on Oakwood. Not a bad ride. It was fun and very enjoyable. Later, I rode into/from work. I didn't do the extended ride, as it was colder than I expected and was underdressed. I'm going to ride this morning. Speaking of cold, the ground is covered with frost. Should be a "refreshing" ride.

Lately, I've sort of rediscovered one of my favorite musicians, Steve Winwood. The guy is an amazing tallent. He can play about any instrument, which he did on many of his solo albums. Heck, look at the credits to the Blind Faith album. He plays a ton of stuff, while Eric Clapton just played guitar. With Traffic, it was the same way. Steve would play about everything. He wrote one of the all time rock classics, "Gimme Some Lovin'" and recorded it with the Spencer Davis Group when he was only 14 or 15!!! Here is a video of Empty Pages, during a reformed Traffic tour stop at the Woodstock concert in 1994. Not a great recording, and not nearly as good as on the Barleycorn album. But, it's still a great song. Heck, the girl dancing topless is a nice bonus to this video.



Here's Stevie at a young 15 doing Gimme Some Lovin with Spencer Davis....



Added later.........

My ride this morning sucked. I just didn't have it. I was dressed perfectly for the weather, but, I just had no power. So, I just rode the Fenton flats at an easy pace of around 15mph. I did finish off by climbing Oakwood on my way home. I had to stand twice and much earlier than of late.

I recently got a great coffee table book called The Compition Bicycle, which shows old racing bikes of days gone by, with complete specifications of each and some cool old stories. A note to my friend, who the other day, said my bike was "heavy..." My bike, with all it's stuff on it, weighs about a pound LESS than the bike Eddy Merckx used in the 1974 Tour de France.

Everything is relative and meaningless.