"Nobody always or never anything!"

That's a phrase that Corinne and I heard a while ago and now we use it to try to moderate our speech a little. I don't know about you (dear reader), but we have a tendency to say, "you always do this," or, "he always does that." Sometimes, when it's said often enough, we start to actually believe it.

An example: "Shane always misses his curfew, and he never calls to say he's going to be late!" The truth, of course, is that he misses it frequently, or sometimes forgets to call, but when you're upset everything seems worse than it really is. Using absolute phrases like that just makes things worse, because you start to convince yourself (or re-enforce it, if you already believe it) that what you're saying is true.

Plus, if you make the mistake of using "you always" during an argument, you're going to go down in flames because not only doesn't the other person "always" do that, but s/he can probably prove it, and all you've done is FAIL at trying to make him/her look worse than reality.

Now, whenever one of us uses "always" or "never", the other one just gets "that look". We've said, "Nobody always or never anything," so many times that we never have to repeat it anymore.

See, I don't always write about cycling here on TruerWords! Speaking of which, it's time for my bike ride! Later, gators.

Left for today's ride with a light heart! Business has started to pick up again since I whined a little earlier this week, and I felt fully recovered from Tuesday's half century. So, feeling good, I knew today would be a chance to try that extended route that I mentioned on Saturday.

On Tuesday's ride, one of the riders felt like giving me a little coaching (which I appreciate), and told me that instead of shifting into an easy gear and riding up the hills - pedalling fast, but moving slow - that I should stay in a harder gear and stand up out of the saddle for as long as I can, so that all of my weight is working the pedals instead of the seat post.

(For future reference, this is called "attacking the hill".)

I knew that, in fact, but I've been really bad about actually doing it. It's very hard work. In fact, this is the part of a ride where a cyclist's heart rate is the highest, because it's akin to running as fast as you can up a hill, but in slow motion. Lots of people have bike computers with heart monitors on them, and have to watch them because their heart rate will get up as high as 200. On a tachometer, that would be well into the red.

Anyway, I'm not inclined to push myself that hard yet, but I did push. I'm certainly feeling a burn like I haven't since high school, when I lived in N.H. and had to ride my bike up really high hills to see my girlfriend. :-)

By the end of the summer, I'll be able to keep up with that Tuesday night crew. I hope.

Stats: 24.65 miles in 78:55, for an average speed of 18.74 miles per hour. No, that's not my best speed, but frankly I think I was saving being a little too conservative while I worried about how bad the hills were going to wear me out, but they didn't! We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Some more interesting stats for your number-crunching pleasure (OK, for my number-crunching pleasure).

• this was my 38th ride, but last year I didn't reach 38 rides until August 19
• by June 28, 2000, I'd only ridden 15 times, my average speed was just 16.45 mph, and I'd only been 272 miles
• this year I've already ridden 738.21 miles
• I've already had more rides this month than in any month since I started keeping track!

Wow, that's encouraging!

(Yesterday an old friend accused me of bragging about my cycling. I'm going to have to write about that separately, but I don't think I'm bragging. I don't think most people really even care about this stuff (I know some do). If anything, I would hope that my success this year, after starting out in such terrible shape, would be encouraging to others. I'll save the rest of my comments for another time.)

While I was taking a shower after this afternoon's ride, Corinne came into the bathroom and handed me the phone! That's never happened before, and she wouldn't tell me who it was.

It was my sister, Sarah Peña, and she was calling to tell me that I'm going to be an uncle! She's just five and a half weeks along, and I think she said that the baby is due February 11, 2002.

I wish I could say that I was shocked, but for some reason she told a stranger about this a couple weeks ago, and that stranger happened to know Corinne pretty well and told her about it the same day. So, we've been expecting this announcement.

Cool, eh? Say uncle! Say it!! I'm not stopping until you say it...