A lot for a Monday

My Monday evening was surprisingly busy. It started off with the two packages that were delivered. One of them was my new pickleball paddle, the Shogun. The packaging and presentation on this paddle is top notch, by the far the most impressive of any company I have dealt with. This is my second paddle from Bread and Butter, I am hoping I like it as much as the Filth, which I bought late last year.

I also received my third package from Temu, four button down short sleeve shirts, three of which I can use for work and one of them for more casual situations. I tried all of them on, they fit well and looked decent to my untrained eye. Who knows how long the shirts will hold up but since I spent a grand total of less than $40 for all of them I have little to lose. Who knows, I could be pleasantly surprised. My short sleeve shirt collection is the one remaining clothing area that could use some refreshing. I have some shirts in my closet that are approaching the two decade mark.

I then found myself motivated to go out and get some more practice in riding seated on my V13. I was surprised I was able to do it in my brief test on Sunday and wanted to build upon it. It went really well, mostly.

I went on at least a 10 mile ride and the vast majority of it was done in the seated position. I got better with keeping my speed up by putting my hands on my knees. I rode over the speed bumps on the various back streets seated as well, utilizing the front grab handle to keep my ass from flying too far off the seat. I did however have a couple incidents.

One of them was when I was slowing to get off to film a ride by with my phone. I decided I would just come to a stop while seated. Sounds easy enough right, just put your feet down. Well I started putting my feet down when I was still rolling a few mph, thinking I could just create drag to help me completely stop, that was a bad idea. An EUC will continue to want to push forward if you have any degree of forward lean, regardless of if your feet are dragging on the ground. In my case my one foot hit the ground ahead of the other one which caused the 100 pound plus wheel to quickly veer to one side, throwing me off to the ground.

At the time I thought I just banged up my ankle/shin some. When I took a shower later I felt stinging on my side. I looked in the mirror and saw I also somehow got a brush burn back there. I am wondering if that spot ran into a spinning tire. Regardless, I felt like an idiot after it happened and quickly looked around to make sure nobody was around to see it. Luckily the coast was clear.

I had another near fall later while transitioning from seated to standing. I was turning and going slow. The wheel started to wobble a bit as I was sitting and when I stood up it amplified. Suddenly I found myself wobbling severely, even though I was still going slow. The heavy V13 is not easy to control once this happens. I barely was able to recover from it but thankfully did. It shook my confidence a bit but I realized part of the problem was I transitioned to standing too slowly. The faster you sit down or stand up, the better from what I have experienced.

The cherry on top was it starting to rain. I rode the last few miles in steady rain, thoroughly soaking me in the process. The V13 is pretty water resistant so I wasn’t worried about the wheel but I arrived home soaked from head to toe. I posted some of the pictures and video I took on my phone to social media and then went to bed relatively early. It felt like a very full day.