Damn the golf courses

I've been battling general allergies these past two weeks since the golf courses in the valley have collectively scalped their greens and are now overseeding. Of course, this means a perpetual brown cloud of particulate matter sloshing around in the "Valley of the Sun", lapping up against the mountains like dirty bathwater on the rim of a bathtub. I happen to live and sleep on the rim of that bathtub with my riding primarily occurring on and around the rim of that bathtub...the eastern rim of the bathtub if you want to get particular about bathtubs. I'm not sure what kind of bathtub it is; porcelain, plastic or copper....I digress.

The point is that my lungs are on fire every time I have a heavy climbing ride. My breathing sounds like someone is taking hit after hit off of a bong, somewhere in my chest. Only the hit's are the invisible particles of grass, pollen, coccidioidomycosis, and good ole' fashioned dirt. Let's not forget the ever present ozone and smog too....but that's the least of my worries right now.

Don't get me wrong....I love to drink beer and head out with the buds on one of pa-honix's many 3rd tier golf courses and knock a few balls around, but the overseeding process is killing my lung capacity these days. Hell, just the other day, Dr. Sooner, his friend and I got paired up with an old lady....we'll call her Grandma. Grandma kicked our ass out there on the course....and she was trash talking us left and right. That's right....calling our drives "dainty" and our inability to make putts evidence enough of our hearing problems. Classic!

Granted, I just posted up about how I feel "ONE" with my bike....and this still remains the same. I just don't feel "ONE" with my lungs right now. Yesterday on the ride, I was hacking up a mucus pod from deep out of my alveoli and tried to spit it out after a climb up mudflaps. It formed this yellow, semi-transparent streamer coming out of my mouth, dangling between my legs yet still attached to the inside of my parched mouth. I tried ejecting it, but it actually was viscous enough to dangle over my right leg, wrap around my crank and flip up on my rear shock. This is some tough mucus. I actually had to stop, saw my front teeth back and forth to sever the "connection" between this lung butter and then scrape it off my quad and my rear shock. It was as if I had been slimed by some extoplasm from Ghostbusters.

This Friday will be another no-work Friday....which means long ride day. I hope this crap blows out of my lungs and the bathtub by Friday morning so I can enjoy my ride sans lung butter. Perhaps I should go ride Sedona on Friday....it's not like they have golf courses there......