He`s got the Whole World in His Hands

The world is impossibly small.  Get this,

In February Halifax hosted the Canada Winter games.  My sister was competing and my mother went along to watch.  My mother is an Artist, and lately she has been working with digital film, photo and society.  While in Halifax she walked the streets and gave away over 300 home made chocolate-chip cookies in an endeavor to meet 300 strangers.  Ironically facebook is the media chosen to present this collection of personal interaction.  Take a walk through the page, Hi I'm Bonnie.  I helped with some of the technical aspects and became pretty familiar with the footage.  The links discovered between complete strangers are astounding.

Yesterday I moved to Ottawa.  I am renting the second room of a townhouse in New Edinburgh.  When I knocked on the door for the first time, who should answer but a familiar face.  No, it is no one I have ever met before.  Wallen was in Halifax during the Canada Games and, he was the recipient of a single chocolate-chip cookie from a complete stranger. 

KABOOM!


Cuylar Conly 

Can't sit still

I'm moving again.  Tomorrow I fly to Ottawa where I will spend the summer racing my bicycle.  I just finished packing and now I have no idea what do do with myself.  The last couple days I have been whirling my life together into an Air Canada baggage limit.  Now I have it all together but the feelings of focused chaos remain.  I keep bouncing from room to room thinking there is something more that needs doing.  All the doing is done.  How can this be?  Am I really prepared?  I think so.

I can't even sit still long enough to write this blog.  My mind is still whirling in ADHD chaos command mode.  And the post is getting cut off.


Capital City here I come.


Cuylar Conly

Case Closed

Does anyone remember this?

Yea that business of car vs. Cuylar that went down in July last year.  Well I have to reiterate how fortunate I am to be alive, let alone riding my bike.  The physical recovery went well enough and I bounced back to win the Provincial Cyclocross Championship.  Then a couple months later to run for the U of S Huskies at Cross-Country Nationals in Quebec.

Legally this sh*t dragged on forever.  With the amount of red tape and bureaucracy we have in the world it is amazing that anything ever gets done.  I got in there and I pushed pencils like you wouldn't believe.  Number two pencils, mechanical pencils coloured pencils you name it.  Lame jokes aside, the process involved busting my ass for weeks followed sitting on my thumbs for months while I waited for requested documents from various official bureaus.  The most helpful of which was Lawrence O'Neil, Personal Injury Attorney, and the most difficult was Service Canada.  Eight months later and its a wrap.  I have been told that this is some kind of record for an ICBC claim, but I am just glad to have it off my back.   For all the trouble I was granted a bag of financial peanuts and clean legal slate.  Now what to do with the peace of mind that I just got back?


Training shall be based solely on feel,
while racing shall be guided by sensations and instinct.



Cuylar Conly 

Where is your Mind?

This blog has been seriously neglected.  I guess I just didn`t feel much like writing for the past couple weeks.  I can trough around a series of excuses.  Such as.  Writers Burnout from a post a day for two months.  Being home for a couple weeks gives a feeling of "business as usual."  Which makes events seem less noteworthy.  Also I have been cramming several months of errands and appointments into my short time at home. Most of all I just did not feel like writing anything.  So I did not, and it was good.

For two weeks this record of mind lay dormant.  Lately I have been thinking about it.  pondering and rolling it over.  Now, I suppose, it is time to return some regularity.  I am making no commitment to any sort of time period.  I simply feel that my thoughts are returning to an expressive state.  What that will entail I don't know.  I'm just going to go with it.

Now a little of what I have been up to.  It's still winter in Saskatoon so when I ride it is mostly in the basement.  A real test of focus after coming off the open roads of Tucson, AZ.  I watched the world shrink as I found a place to live in Ottawa.  If the world shrinks anymore I might even find myself a part time job.  Fingers crossed.  At the end of the month I am flying to Ottawa, where I will "home-base" for the summer.  Hopefully Saskatoon can get it's melt on in the next couple days and I will hit the roads for realz.


 Training shall be based solely on feel,
while racing shall be guided by sensations and instinct.


Cuylar Conly

Shouldn't I be Training?

Saskatchewan is in the Deep Freeze!  Full on record breaking snow and ice for this time of year.  It is beyond bundle up cold.  I feel like I have to wear a space suite to go outside.  This makes riding my bicycle a bit of a challenge.  With lots of mandatory down time, coming home feels like a vacation.

 Down time seems to be just what I need. physically, mentally and logistically.  Sleeping on an air mattress for two months and driving across the continent sure does a number on you.  I can`t tell you how glad I am to be in a real bed every night.  Logistically It is far too cold to train outdoors so my focus has shifted a couple days from pedals to the dreaded to-do list.  This list contains some real whoppers and seems to be growing twice as fast as I can knock it down.  The current big fish include finding a place to live and a Job in Ottawa.

Other than that I am really glad to be home to see my friends and family.  I was able to make it home in time for my mothers 50th birthday.  This was a great time with family.  It felt just like Christmas because we had a chance for the whole family to be together for a couple days.  Happy Birthday Mom.  Now with everyone back to business and my feet up in the air, I wonder I f I havn`t become some sort of vagrant liability.  Then I get motivated to tackle my own business.

The lack of riding just seems to bring my energy down.  When you go from 25+hrs a week to a "home-cacation"  the body says great lets sleep all day.  It's like classic vacation syndrome where the more you sit around the more you just can't get up.  I am constantly assured that rest is good, but I also can't help the thought, "Shouldn't I be training?"  Then again shouldn't it be spring time already?  Bah,  maybe I will just clean something.


 Training shall be based solely on feel,
while racing shall be guided by sensations and instinct.


Cuylar Conly

All Things Come to an End

I have made it home safe and sound.  Julia Garnet and I drove non-stop from Tucson to Saskatoon in 30.5 hours.  Impressive if I do say so myself.  I am glad to say that the drive is over.  I am more than certain that road trips, although worth while, cannot be good for your health.  In the last 30 hours I was seated 95% of the time and my diet consisted primarily of nayonnaise and chocolate coffee beans.  And now, it is over.

Also over is my time in Tucson.  I had quality weather.  I had quality training.  And, I had quality adventures.  In  two months I rode over 4,100 kilometers, climbed over 36000m and got my tan on in a big way.  I would even consider myself spoiled by the warm weather.  I feel like I have come home to an absolute deep freeze.  If I intend to train over the next few weeks I am in for a healthy dose of HTFU.  The fourteen day trend predicts highs between -8C and -18C.  I cannot wait for that to come to an end.

Just like my drive and my life in Tucson, I supose that my daily posts will also come to an end.  It's hard to believe but I have made one post a day for two months.  This was never something that I planned to do.  Rather it is something that I just began, and continued, and now have finished.  Sometimes writing was just something to do.  Sometimes thinking of a post was a chore or a challenge.  Most of all, I enjoyed flexing my literary brain waves to maintain this personal web-log.  Furthermore, in some strange way I enjoy that it is anonymously read.  For some reason you all keep coming back for more.  I hope that it is more than just frequency, because now that I am home the posting will have a more casual regularity.  I still intend to keep the world updated on any noteworthy action or opinions that come through my life.

Thanks for reading.
Thanks for giving me reason to write.

Cuylar Conly

I`m going (going) back (back) to Saska (Saska)

I`m in a Car.

I`m going Home.




Are we there yet?




 Training shall be based solely on feel,
while racing shall be guided by sensations and instinct.


Cuylar Conly

What is Left in Tucson

Well, today is my last full day in Tucson.  I am half-assed packed and the house is half-assed clean.  Whats left to do is not all that stimulating.  More cleaning and more packing....  These are two of the most exhausting things I can think of.  No matter how badly I want to go home it is still hard to get the ball rolling.  That being said I am so ready to come home.  Tucson has nothing to offer right now to keep me here.

I have enjoyed the weather and the training has been superb.  Tucson as a whole is just not somewhere that I could live long term.  There is something so strange about the desert.  So dry, and everything is prickly.  Nothing is green and water is nowhere to be found.  I have often wondered to myself, why would anyone have settled here in the first place?

I don`t mean to sound jaded.  I suppose I am just home-sick.  I guess its official if its in print.  Once again I have an epic road trip ahead of me. Tucson, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Canada, Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.  3,050km  non-stop if I can help it.  I am really looking forward to some familiar suroundings and to see my friends and Family in Saskatoon.  Now as I mentioned above I have some things to do.  pack, clean and make sandwiches.

The plan of Attack

Training shall be based solely on feel,
while racing shall be guided by sensations and instinct.


Cuylar Conly