Early Morning Onwards

Sunday morning, bright and early. Well, it was definitely early, but I was not exactly bright. Despite the fact that I was running on way too little sleep, my body decided that I would be awake now. I disagreed, but my body won. I figured that, since I was up while everyone else was asleep, I might as well go for a ride.

The last ride I was on, I had a GGRRRREEATTTTTT! legs. That ride got cut short by a flat, and I remember expressing the hope that I would have GGRRRREEATTTTTT! legs on my next ride.

We now pause for derisive laughter.

Done?

Good. Let’s move on, shall we?

While changing the aforementioned flat, I noticed that my tires were in rather sad shape. A quick trip to the bike shop revealed that they only had one tire in stock, and I was clearly in need of two. I bought one and placed one on order, all of which meant that my trusty bike wouldn’t be heading out of the stable for the next few days. Fortunately, I have my trusty Trek 1000 still handy. It has toe clips on it now instead of clipless pedals (I still have the scars from making the change) but that’s okay.

The Trek is occasionally ridden by someone who sometimes disagrees with the computer about how many miles he’s gone. (“How far did you go?” - “About ten miles.” It’s always ten miles, though a glance at the computer will show anything from 3.5 miles to 9.5 miles. Must be a hole in the space-time continuum. )

I climbed into the saddle and hit the road where I promptly got pounded into submission by the wind. It was unrelenting and just about beat me to death. I rode for about 36 miles, and there was one glorious 4 mile stretch when the wind was pushing me in the direction I wanted to go. Other than that…well, it was tough.

The wind is my friend.

This is what we tell ourselves, and today the wind was my friend by making sure that I got stronger.

It was a dog intensive day. The three sisters were out and ready to run, but I fooled them. I did this by going so slowly that it was utterly uninteresting to chase me, so they left me alone. A miniature dachshund came after me, its little legs churning like mad, but it didn’t come anywhere near me. A little while later I got chased by a dog that shouldn’t have existed outside of a cartoon. I have no idea what it was. It looked like a mouse on steroids, but it was definitely barking. It didn’t actually leave its yard and couldn’t run over five miles per hour anyway, so I didn’t get a very good look at it.

There were several other loose dogs, but, fortunately for me, none of them raised my heart rate for me.

There was also the fact that I deviated from my planned route – I don’t know why – and I got lost. I had a vague idea that home was over that way somewhere, or possible over this way but I eventually got back there, so it all worked out.

It was just a really hard ride.

Still, every ride is a good ride.

P.S. The title of this post is a reference to one of my favorite musical groups. Anybody out there get it?

See you on the road.