A Preoperative Ride

Alas, this is not a new ride. I'm still hoping to make it onto the bike on Saturday. We'll see what the remnants of the appendectomy have to say about that. In the meantime, here's a ride I got in before the surgery:

Time for another solo ride around the neighborhood on the hybrid where I learned some things. I learned that I haven’t been eating properly. I learned that I didn’t know where my shorts were. I also learned that it was really hot out. This is not a good combination.

I pulled on a pair of jeans (feeling, quite rightly, I think, that while riding in my nice work clothes would net me style points, it would also make me look like a complete goober, and I can do that well enough on my own without any help from fancy clothes.)

As I was pumping up the tires, I happened to glance out the garage and see a kid ride by, his head firmly encased in a helmet. “Good for him,” I thought. I’ve been spending time in South Carolina, where motorcycle riders are not required to wear helmets. Hey, it’s your head, right? Do what you want to with it. But I still like seeing kids wear helmets when they ride their bicycles.

Since I was riding around the neighborhood, I had the iPod on. Yes, I am woefully inconsistent, but at least I am consistent in my inconsistency. I’m perfectly willing to wear the iPod if I’m pedaling around the neighborhood, and I’m not willing to wear it if I am out on the road for reasons that we don’t need to get into all over again, now do we?

Well? Do we?

Nah.

So picture me, looking not at all like a cyclist and very much like a guy on a bike – and a rather silly looking guy on a bike at that – with my blue jeans and my helmet and my gloves and my iPod. (I should probably make it clear at this point that I was, in fact, wearing other clothing as well, just in case you were wondering. I’m not that much of a goofball.)

So what was I listening to, I hear you failing to ask?

I’m glad you asked. (Well, I’m glad I asked for you, anyway. You know, it’s really convenient how, when I ask for you, you always ask exactly the right question, don’t you think?)

I was listening to Planxty.

If you have just asked, “What the heck is a planxty?” then you probably don’t know who Planxty is. (It’s amazing how I can pick up on subtle clues like that.) I will now utterly fail to answer that question.

I was chased by a dog. Well, sort of. I mean, I was sort of chased, and the animal was sort of a dog. It was a very small dog. (One day in the past, when Lisa and I were leading the pack – such things do happen - we saw a mouse at the side of the road. Spotting us, it ran into the brush. This dog was only slightly larger than that mouse.)

The dog suffered from what my Lovely Lovely calls “little dog syndrome.” It has to prove that its little size doesn’t make it any less of a dog, and it took off after me at top speed, barking its head off. It kind of needed to save its wind for running, though.

This dog was not even big enough to be a speed bump, but I still had no desire to have it under my front wheel. Fortunately for both of us, this was never really a concern. The dog saw me coming and put on a tremendous burst of speed, his little legs just churning away and managed to exceed ten miles an hour briefly, which I think was pretty remarkable for a dog that size. (I mean, he was no thirty mile and hour Chihuahua, but there can’t be many of those around, after all.)

I grinned at the dog as I rode past. It was kind of fun to see him (or her – I really wasn’t that close) having a good time. (It would have been less fun if she (or he – I was getting farther away, not closer) had been bigger and in actual danger of catching me, but as it was I enjoyed it.

Other than that, the ride was largely uneventful, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I had a good time, I stretched my legs, I got my blood flowing. Life is good. That’s what riding is all about.

See you on the road.