Was it that bad?

2019 Outdoor Season: Ride #44

The Route: The View

The Miles: 28.0

The Time: 2:03

The Ave. Speed: 13.2 mph

The Weather:

Sunny

Wind, 10 mph

Season Total Miles: 964

This was another eventful ride, less than 24 hours after yesterday's effort.

Let's start with the picture to the left. I title this route "The View" because of this view. It comes after a bit of climbing as you can see, but the reward is spending a little time up high taking in 'the view' and it's always good, no matter what the season.

Second tidbit from today was the fact that it was a nice quiet ride, in more ways than one. The buzzing noise from my bike was now gone. Not only is it fixed, I managed to wrench on it myself. Yup, this guy, who needs directions to use a hammer, fixed it myself with coaching via phone from my buddy in Florida, Jerry Pearce who talked me through making an adjustment on my shifting cable.

I took an alan (allen?) wrench and a pliers and I snugged it up. At first I did a lap in the neighborhood checking to see if it was fixed. Indeed it was. No noise and clean shifting with everything holding where it should.

Thanks Jerry!

Then there was the peace and quiet of riding on sun-drenched country roads today. I enjoyed the entire ride out, with a little cross-to-tailwind along the way.

I talked before about the random phone booth in someone's driveway on this route, but until today had never stopped to take a picture of it.

There it is. Living proof that I never shot before because it comes up at the end of a nice downhill and you hate to stop and lose all that momentum before you have to start going back up the next hill.

When I hit mile 20 I felt an all-too-familiar sensation in my left leg. My quad was on the brink of cramping up. You can almost feel the knot starting to form in your thigh.

As I began to go up a little hill it almost popped and that's when I knew I had to back way off with about 6-7 miles to go yet. If that thing locks up there's no staying on the bike.

In fact, I was able to noodle it for about four miles but I knew it was lurking there. And I knew I had one substantial hill to get over before getting home, which would strain the situation. When I got there I dropped the bike into the easiest gear it has and just tried to keep moving at 5 mph up the hill.

My plan didn't work

About a quarter of the way up the thing started to lock up. I could feel the knotting pain shoot down my thigh past my knee all the way down my leg. As quickly as possible I dismounted and tried to stretch. I walked the bike up the rest of the hill and then babied myself home for the final couple of miles. I guess doing this much on back-to-back days was a little more than my body was ready for after a couple of weeks off the bike.

There is one more story to tell about this eventful ride today. While waiting to go straight at a stop light a UPS truck pulled up on my right to make his right turn.

The driver yells out to me, "Hey, who dressed you? Your outfit doesn't match!"