Bless me readers for I have slacked.

It has been 6 months since my last posting.

(This is a picture of a confession booth in a Catholic church, in case you don't recognize it)

I've been not blogging for the last half a year. You might have noticed, or not. That happens sometimes. Since I started this thing I have often let it go for a month or so, but this has been kind of a fundamental shift. Those of you who know me at all have heard me explain (in nauseating and repetitive detail) about how my lifestyle has changed.

It has.

I spent most of this decade living a life of copious freedom in a little Colorado mountain town. I worked from my house or I worked at a bike shop. It wasn't what you call regular work, and I didn't have to show up anywhere at 8 AM 5 days/week. It was really flexible, and quite often really seldom.

When I moved to Salida it was to be a telecommuter. I was really busy in my little home office at first, then things changed at my company. My workload started wandering off to the Far East. My deadlines began to be more like critically ill-lines. Then out of the woods-lines. Then completely cured-lines. Finally I got laid off. Freedom to do whatever became my lifestyle.

After I became a divorced guy several years ago my freedom and independence increased even more, as amazing as it is that that's even possible.

Lots of you have heard this shite before, so let me fast forward to my point: I got really really spoiled during this decade, the one that's hard to name (the oughts?). I got used to the idea that work is something that happens in no particular place, without any set schedule. Sure, I also got used to spending into my savings account almost every month, but I took for granted that work really didn't interfere with My Life™ to a very significant extent.

Then, almost by accident, I got offered a good job. The kind that pays enough that you can actually SAVE money. But here's the hitch: 8 to 5, 5 days per week. Holy Crap!

It was a dramatic, sometimes painful adjustment. But I've adjusted for the most part. I have a routine that involves heading up to Buena Vista, CO every day, getting there around 8 and leaving around 5. Every two weeks a paycheck lands in my account. The same amount every time. Magic.

So that brings me back to this blog. It started out as Team Velveeta™, the story of a man of modest natural athletic ability who would seek the limits of his physical capabilities and write about what it's like to do things on a bicycle that the actual elite riders do, only much more slowly. I did big underground races like the Rim Ride Moab and various NMES and AZES rides. I rode in 24 Hour races, and mainstream hundies like the Cascade Creampuff, the Crested Butte Classic 100, and the Leadville 100, finishing among the last and slowest. But doing it! Finishing all of it. And I did big solo efforts, like my midnight ride down Agate Creek under a full moon, and several circumnavigations of the White Rim. I took pictures and I wrote. And I rode a TON. I was fit. I had time to be fit. For a while there, fitness and this blog were what I really had going.

So now what? What's up with Team Velveeta™? Well, now I guess I'm really everyman. Now I still want to do those big things but I really only have two days per week to train. And often I am so dead tired in the brain that I just don't feel like going when the door is open!

So maybe now Team Velveeta is really about Velveeta more than Team. I'll be doing what I can, a man with not much natural athletic ability and constrained time to train. I'll be fighting weight gain more than budget problems. I'll have days where I ride way out there only to find out that I'm too tired to ride home--finding that I wasn't really fit enough to be doing it at all.

Maybe I'll be writing about the after work rides. Riding on rollers during lunch hour in the warehouse at work. And probably, commenting about what others are doing. Voyeurism. Yikes.

But seriously, thanks for actually keeping tabs on this silly blog to a point where you notice a posting after 6 months of none. I'll try to put something interesting here once in a while as time rolls forward.