My last ride featured forty-seven miles of sandy roads, crap pavement, steady winds, unusually hight fall temperatures, dehydration, cramping and a semi bi-annual bonk due to suck. Fast forward four days of slack to today, and my ride featured ten less miles, firm dirt and gravel roads, little wind, perfect early fall temps, plenty of water and good legs. If last Thursday’s ride had me feeling like Fredwardian moron, this one had me feeling like a cycling god. Then I remembered that I only rode thirty-seven miles with about 800 feet of elevation gain. Whatever, for a few seconds I WAS a cycling god!! I’ll take that feeling over the bonked moron feeling any day, even if it does only last a few seconds.
Dirt road traffic.
Wifey is out of town (yet again) on .gov business, and B-Man is going camping with his 6th grade class from Wednesday until Friday afternoon, so there is the potential to get some longer and/or different rides in over the next few days. With that said, today I just stuck to my normal dirt road loop north of town and hoped that my legs felt good after Thursday’s bonk and four days of slack and sloth for various reason (mostly slack).
My sign to sing: “I’m caught in a trap, I can’t walk out…”
Thankfully, as I mentioned above, my legs did feel good and it felt great to be back on the bike. With about five miles to go I was rolling down the smooth pavement of Baseline Road when I kept hearing a tick-tick-tick sound coming from my wheel. I stopped and saw there was a hunk of rubber stuck to my tire. Thinking it was stuck on with tar or something I pulled it off. DOH! it was was actually a hunk of a car tire and it was stuck in my tire with the steel threads. The puncture wasn’t too bad, so I kept rolling, thinking that I would change the tube when I got to my right turn onto the less busy Bamber Road. When I stopped the tire seemed to have lost very little air, so with just a few miles to go, I headed home, hoping for the best and getting it.
Lots of these wagons out in the fields these days.
Today’s ride will set no personal distance or speed records and it didn’t take me anywhere I haven’t been many times before, but I got out on my bike and had fun getting some more shots with the x100s. I am really digging what I can do with the camera and look forward to using it even more after my TCL-X100 tele-conversion lens arrives this week.
Time to make sure B-Man has all his gear packed for two nights away from home.
Later.