Walk and Ride

In honor of bike to work week, I ended up walking to work. I suppose that’s a bit messed up, but that’s how it is. Work, by the way, is about six miles away from home, so it’s a bit of a hike. The problem was that circumstances beyond my control (or at least beyond my awareness) meant that I had to leave my bike at work a while bike, and a good opportunity for getting it back home again was slow in coming. Today turned out to be the day.

The six miles are practically all on the same road – two lanes, with the speed limit ranging from 45 to 55 mph and no shoulder. It actually isn’t a bad ride (assuming the traffic is right) but it’s a bit difficult to walk. This is largely due to one two mile section during which the road is bordered by corn fields and wheat fields and then a bunch of trees.

There is a ditch that runs along the road maybe 18 inches away. It is generally filled with black water and a variety of plants. The ground between the road and the ditch slopes downward toward the ditch, so the footing is a bit uncertain, and the thought that, if you stumble one way you get smacked by a car and if you stumble the other way you end up standing in the black water is a bit disconcerting.

The most beautiful section, where woods border the road on both sides, is the worst for walking, since it’s unmowed and the grass before the trees is lush, thick and very high. At one point, I was standing there as a truck towing a very large farm vehicle (large, in fact, than the lane it was occupying) came toward me. I wanted to move farther away from the road, but something that seemed quite large was scuttling around under the plants just there. Nice.

I finally got to work where a few little details had to be taken care of, then I climbed in the saddle and headed back home. Unfortunately, my bike had been here for rather longer than I realized, so the tires were a bit soft. Well, it was only six miles. I could live with that.

(My first group ride was also my first 20 miles ride. It was hard, but I enjoyed it. My bike was still so new that it was due for a free servicing the next day. I went in an told Steve about the ride, and he said, “You might have enjoyed it more if you have more than 20 pounds of pressure in your tires.” That was how I learned you have to check the air in your tires a lot more often than I thought you did.)

The ride home was more fun than the walk to work, but, as you can imagine, I didn’t push the pace at all. I just cruised gently along on my soft tires. I don’t know what kind of picture I present all kitted out and riding my road bike. I probably look like nothing on this earth, but I was struck at that moment with how I must have looked just then sitting up on the hybrid and wafting my way along in comparison to how I look pushing the pace into a headwind. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ride bicycles.

I was also a bit concerned, as I rode back along the route I had just walked, to notice how many dead snakes there were right at the edge of the road. Hmm. So how many live snakes were there hidden in the grass I had walked through earlier? Best not to think about that.

Steve says, “Any walk over a quarter mile sucks. That’s why I always carry a spare tube.” Well, all I can say is that riding back over that road was sweet. My legs were tired and my feet were tired and I was glad to be pedaling instead of walking.

I’m ready for a real ride now, though, and the weather and my work schedule may combine to allow me to get it. I hope so.

See you on the road.

Sore Legs

Do you know what happens when you got for an unusually long walk (a little over six miles in this case) to which you are not accustomed and then you spend a lot of the next day sitting down?


Anybody?


Yes…you in the back row…


Correct. Your legs get stiff.


That’s why, even though I got home only slightly before sunset, I decided to go for a ride. I tossed on some jeans and a sweatshirt, helmet and gloves, and hit the road. I figured I could only get in about fifteen minutes of ride time before it got uncomfortably dark, but, hey, fifteen minutes is better than no minutes, right?


Every ride has its own flavor, and this one was largely contemplative. It was cold (about 38 degrees) with some wind on top of that, but it was quiet and really quite pleasant, except for the frozen cheeks and blocks of ice where my ears were supposed to be.


I was listening to the iPod of the mind, which is my way of saying I had a song running through my head for much of the ride. This time it was The Braes of Balquhidder by The Tannahill Weavers, which is a good song to accompany a quiet ride.


At one point I saw a dog ahead of me. It appeared to be a Lhasa Apso with a shaved body but not a shaved head, which gave it a remarkable resemblance to a dandelion. So, this dandelion ran down the street toward me barking at the top of its little lungs. Then, as it got near me it suddenly swerved into a driveway and began to sniff the ground. It gave every appearance of a dog who would have been whistling nonchalantly if only it had been able to figure out how to purse it lips. It kept up this attitude of indifference as I rode past and then, when I had gone by, proceeded to bark and chase after me for a few minutes. It was clearly a very brave dog.


I passed a few people out exercising. People exercising generally fall into two groups:


A) Those who are focused and intent and will not acknowledge your existence and probably don’t even know you’re there anyway.


I may well have been that person in the past - not because I deliberately ignored anyone but because i was so focused on my ride (or so wrapped up on a lactic acid induced haze of pain) that I simply didn't realize anyone else was there.


Jörg recalls calling out to me while I was riding past in the rain, head down and wet and focused, but I never heard a sound other than that of my own wheels on the road.


B) Those who think that being fellow exerciser makes you a comrade to be greeted cheerfully.


I saw a couple of people who were clearly walking just for the joy of it.


It's easy to tell the difference between people who are walking to someplace in particular and those who are just out walking for the sake of the walk. (It’s easy to be certain about what you know when you're sure you won't ever have the opportunity to find out if what you know is right or wrong.)


They smiled cheerfully at me and waved. I waved back. I'm polite that way.


I didn’t have a lot of time, so there were two ways to get the most out of it. One way was to go as hard as I could the whole time, spend every last erg of energy that I could. The other way was to go utterly easily, no stress, no sweat, just enjoy spinning the pedals. That was the option I went for, and why not? A hard ride is its own reward, but so is an easy ride, just so long as you're riding.


See you on the road.

One Fine Day

Yesterday I expected to go home in the same way that I went to work: in a motorized vehicle. For reasons that shall remain obscure, I had to walk instead. Now, If you are an avid follower of this blog and have diligently committed every random fact to memory, then you know that’s a distance of a little over six miles. The weather was fine, and it was a very nice walk, but you learn some things when you finally walk a ride that you have so many times ridden. (I realize that sentence may perhaps be described as grammatically awkward, but I prefer to think of it as being intriguingly constructed.

1. Steve says: “Any walk over a quarter mile sucks. That’s why I always carry an extra
tube.”

Well, at the beginning of the walk, I did find myself wishing that I had my bicycle. Also, at the end of the ride, by which time my feet were beginning to complain a bit, I did wish I had my bicycle. In the middle of the ride, however…well, I wished I had my bicycle then, too.
The walk really was quite pleasant, but I do have to admit that I would nearly always rather be riding.

2. Many drivers care just as little about pedestrians as they do about cyclists.

I have often wondered if those drivers who honk as they are coming up behind me would honk if they were coming up behind a pedestrian. The answer, in at least one case, is definitely yes. This is particularly odd since I was walking on the correct side of the road, so the car was coming up behind me but was in the other lane. I don’t really know what message that particular honk was intended to convey, so I’ve decided it was something like, “Hey, how come you aren’t riding your bike?”

Drivers who don’t pull over to give any clearance to a cyclist hugging the shoulder, certainly don’t pull over to give any clearance to a pedestrian who is actually walking on the shoulder. I’ll admit that I tend to swing out to give such people a little extra room, but a lot of people don’t.

3. Dogs are different when you are on foot.

I’m not sure how to explain this one.

Two dogs who typically ignore me when I am on the bike came trotting out to meet me as I walked past. Well, I don’t know that they wanted to meet me precisely. One of them, fortunately the extremely small member of the pair, was giving every indication of wanting to see the color of my insides. Neither of them actually left their yard to pursue me, however. In the case of these particular dogs, I think they ignore me when I’m on the bike because they don’t want to chase me. Even the one who sounded like he was cussing me out in dog language was merely sauntering after me. If you can’t catch a guy who’s walking, then you aren’t really trying.

\There is a self storage place along this route with two chows guarding the fenceline. When I ride past, they bark at me and run along the fence and generally look fearsome and dangerous. (When I say two chows by the way, I actually mean six chows but four of them are recent additions and are slightly smaller than throw pillows. They are puppies, in fact.)
As I walked past, the puppies looked at the adults to figure out what to do about the interloper. One of the adults ignored me and the other one ran to the fence and wagged it’s body and gave a doggie grin and seemed to do everything in its power to communicate the fact that it was a good doggie and wanted to be friends.

I didn’t actually try the experiment to find out.

4. I see a lot more when I am walking.

Well, that one makes sense. I’m closer to the ground and going slower. Not everything that I saw was worth the seeing, mind you. I never realized how much manure gets spread on some of the fields that line this route. I never realized how much garbage lines the road, especially beer bottles and, oddly enough, cds. (No, I didn’t look at them to see what they were. They probably had manure on them.) I didn’t see that dead fox the last time I rode by.

I’m sure there was some natural beauty out there. It always seems like it when I’m on the bike, but I didn’t notice it this time.

I think the next time, I’ll ride instead.

See you on the road.