The Oldest Guy in the Room

The Lovely Wife and I attended a surprise birthday party for a much younger friend of mine this past week. Though his is entering the stage of life that is past 40 I still consider him young.  Funny I can easily remember when I thought 30 was old.

Anyhoo as I looked around the noisy room I came to the realization (again) that I was by far the oldest person there.  This seems to be a recurring theme with me.  I guess it doesn't really matter as long as they enjoy having me around (and how could they not) and I enjoy their company.

The jokes about knowing Noah personally and looking like Santa (I still don't get this one but it seems to keep coming back) don't bother me.  I figure age is just one of the things we can make fun of.  This crew has a long list defects to pick from so I rarely run out of ammo.

The Past

I had a whole nuther set of friends from my moto days before I graced this new group with my presence.  And no, I wasn't the oldest in that group (by far).  But slowly they stopped riding as much, couldn't go to races (or didn't want to), or just faded out of the group.  I'm sure they miss me.  We did the birthday thing and had loud drunken parties at the beach.  So all of this is starting to look a little Deja Vu.

The Lovely Wife has ridden a lot of mile on some pretty uncomfortable bikes, and never complained.  Well maybe a little.

See, my hair wasn't always gray!

The Hammerhead

The kid and I are planning to do 50 miles of this race next weekend.  We're not sure if we'll solo or team.  If we team it'll make for a long day.  I'm not really taking this as a race, more of a tour.  It helps keep me focused to have an event like this to train for, even though I'm not taking it seriously.  

We did a forest loop last weekend which helped me get my hydration and nutrition down for 55 miles.  Grinding along those soft forest roads into a headwind got the hate flowing.  The single track sections were fun though.

I'm just happy they let the old man tag along.