Finding Time

The family schedule is getting intense, more so by the day. Tennis has started for me, so that means 2 hours of workouts each afternoon. Once matches start that means several hours after school and several Saturdays worth of tournaments. Le Dauphin, much like in the Fall, is doing two sport this Spring, track and soccer. That consists of two soccer workouts, T and Th, and eventually Saturday/Sunday matches and tournaments. He's running track as a continuation of cross country in the Fall, so that means M and W and S morning with some F cross training thrown in. In some ways it's even busier than it sounds b/c there is the transportability issue. El Segundo, meanwhile, is starting his own school soccer, also on T/Th. And due to soccer his music lessons are now moved to M (guitar) and W (sax). So on T/Th afternoon the 3 Smith boys have to be in 3 different places at both the same and different times. And Saturdays will be Hell at some point.

The point is that my riding in the Spring often disappears, and if I color-code my google calendar, I can visualize why. There are just too many activities to do. And funnily enough, I don't consider us a family hell-bent on being over-scheduled. I have a co-worker who I would consider more in that role. Her two boys (12 and 8 or so) have soccer, dance, math, arts, theater, and maybe some other stuff. But she may be like us. Her boys expressed an interest and she ran with it. Of our boys' activities- much less my tennis- the only "forced" one was the cross-country/track thing, and le Dauphin has grown into really enjoying that, especially seeing his fitness in action of the soccer pitch.

So when do I ride?

• I can get up at 4.30. I've done this a bit before, and I'll be doing some of it more if I can ever get some sleep back.
• Monday it rained so I cancelled tennis and came home a tad bit early and took at 1hr singlespeed ride on the Trek in the muck. Of course, given the schedule I had to drive back to school to pick the big one up.
• Yesterday was a full sprint, finishing up with a parent Track meeting back at school. I rode the LHT and tried out the new IQ CYO-R N+ (nicely reviewed by Ecovelo here.). It has an at first odd rectangular field, but it powers up at something goofy like 3mph and is nice and bright for urban riding. I'll spare the reviews b/c there are others out there but I liked it. I hatched a plan for an after-meeting with Dave, during which we went to ZA's for a glass and slice. Funnily enough, I ran into him en route to the meeting and he proceeded to give me a Cat 6 thrashing into G'town. He's dangerous on the SS. Afterwards I ran up to the grocery for the wife, giving me 16+m on the day and 30m over 2 days of "found" miles, found moments amidst the chaos of The Schedule.
• And that's how the Spring is gonna be. Found time...and then there's summer.